ABSTRACT
Since the 1990s and the rise of the knowledge economy and cognitive capitalism, mainstream narratives have positioned education as a driver of economic progress and employment. For individuals, educational investments and acquisition of credentials holds the promise of personal empowerment, a secure livelihood, and meritocratic self-realization. This chapter considers how such economic conceptions of education may increasingly lose coherence as technological displacement of labor tracks with stagnation, precarity, and inequality. Contemporary concerns over automation can be traced to the 1990s and the rise of globalization and the IT revolution. Accelerating automation stands to exacerbate these trends, creating a potential crisis of legitimacy for educational systems and the neoliberal rationalities that have shaped their purpose and value over the past few decades. The limits of human-capital education and the intensification of the credential society signal that automation could fuel a crisis of legitimacy as the deeply engrained faith in economic advancement through education is questioned and thrown into doubt.
