They started high school as COVID disrupted classrooms.

Now, as they sit their final exams, AI is reshaping the jobs they hope to enter, the cost of living is making independence harder and some are questioning whether a university degree will get them where they want to go.

For this year’s Year 12 cohort, the pressure goes beyond getting the results they need.

It is about what comes next, and whether the path they have been preparing for will lead to the future they want.

The cost of further study is already influencing how young people think about their futures.

Dr Jessica Arnup, a research fellow at the Australian National University, works on the GENERATION study, which began in 2022 and initially surveyed more than 18,000 Year 10 students from about 300 schools across Australia. It follows the same cohort over time to track their mental health, education and career aspirations.

Dr Arnup said the cohort had faced a series of challenges during their secondary schooling. They were in Years 8 and 9 during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, when many experienced school closures.

As they progressed through high school, she said they also faced “increasing cost-of-living pressures and higher costs of university study”.

A 2024 survey of the cohort, when they were in Year 12, found 62% said the cost of study and training would influence them to choose a course with better job prospects. The proportion planning to attend university also fell between Year 11 and Year 12.

Seventeen-year-old Ruby Nable is among the tens of thousands of teenagers sitting their final exams this month.

She worries that years of schooling could be “judged by a handful of results”, but is also questioning what a university degree will actually deliver.

“No one has ever actually told us what happens after university, and how we get a job using said degree,” she said.

Ruby is concerned that a degree alone may not be enough to secure a well-paying job, particularly for graduates without industry connections or work experience.

“Getting a decent job that you can live off requires networking or years of experience, lots of uni kids just don’t have, so then the degree becomes somewhat useless in getting high end jobs,” she said.

Grace Farrell, 18, shares Ruby’s concerns about what lies ahead, including whether home ownership will be possible for her generation.

“I am also concerned I will never be able to buy a house in my life. I find that so restricting and claustrophobic,” she said.

But neither student sees exam results or a university degree as the final word on their future.

Grace sees an ATAR and degree as “building blocks for the start of a journey”, with different pathways available if things don’t go to plan.

On top of the cost of study and uncertainty about what a degree can deliver, students are also trying to figure out which careers will even be available by the time they graduate, thanks to the advent of artificial intelligence.

Arnup said students were navigating “the emergence of Generative AI (GenAI), such as ChatGPT, and the uncertainty around how these technologies may reshape education, work and future career opportunities”.

Grace is already thinking about how that uncertainty could affect her choices, worrying that “new technology like developments in AI will make some jobs redundant in the upcoming years”.

The concerns come as graduates face an uneven jobs market, with around 65% or fewer of communications and creative arts graduates securing full-time work, compared with more than 90% of pharmacy, medicine and rehabilitation graduates, according to the 2025 Graduate Outcomes Survey.

“There's troubling data that's starting to emerge. AI is taking away this bottom layer of the career ladder,” Toby Walsh, Laureate Fellow and Scientia Professor of Artificial Intelligence at UNSW, said.

“There's been a 20% decline in the last four years in jobs compared to jobs that are not exposed to artificial intelligence.”

Liz Volpe, founder of Tomorrow, an education movement focused on preparing young people for a changing world of work, said the uncertainty also raised questions about how schools measured students’ readiness for the future.

“The question isn't simply whether exams are still worth it. It's whether we've confused a measure of academic performance at 17 with a measure of readiness for the future,” she said.

Volpe said exams and university still had value, but should be “pathways, not the definition of success”.

Daniela McCann, a family psychologist and director of the Australian Association of Psychologists, said the current cohort experienced major COVID-19 disruptions during important years of their development.

Those years are crucial for teenagers learning to “manage stress, develop independence, build friendships and work through challenges”, she said.

Some psychologists are now seeing students who find it harder to tolerate setbacks or uncertainty, with some becoming overwhelmed more quickly when pressure builds, McCann said.

For some students, exam stress sits alongside broader anxieties about what comes next, from finding a job to affording a home.

McCann said that while exam anxiety had a clear focus and endpoint, anxiety about the future could be harder to manage because there was no simple answer to questions about jobs, housing or how technology might change the workforce.

“Having more choices doesn't necessarily make those decisions easier,” she said.

“For a young person already under pressure, being told there are endless possibilities can sometimes feel less like freedom and more like another decision they are frightened of getting wrong.”

McCann said supporting young people meant helping them navigate uncertainty rather than promising everything would work out.

“The goal isn't to convince them that everything will be fine,” she said.

“It's to help them become more comfortable with uncertainty, work out what matters to them, and focus their energy on the things they can control right now.”

She also emphasised that one set of results did not determine a young person's future, with different pathways available into university, training and employment.

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