Relentless advancement to produce new gen of 
seppos
I asked Wendy if I could read the paper she turned in, and when I opened the document, I was surprised to see the topic: critical pedagogy, the philosophy of education pioneered by Paulo Freire. The philosophy examines the influence of social and political forces on learning and classroom dynamics. Her opening line: “To what extent is schooling hindering students’ cognitive ability to think critically?” Later, I asked Wendy if she recognized the irony in using AI to write not just a paper on critical pedagogy but one that argues learning is what “makes us truly human.” She wasn’t sure what to make of the question. “I use AI a lot. Like, every day,” she said. “And I do believe it could take away that critical-thinking part. But it’s just — now that we rely on it, we can’t really imagine living without it.”
but that implies work requires a lot of thought, it really doesn't majority of the time, just being accepted and shown the ropes.
that really depends on the job.
where a credential opens a door to a role in an organization requiring a balanced skillset and competency--as in say public/civil service--someone who cannot think through a problem and develop/implement a solution is going to be recognized as a "bad fit" among stakeholders and colleagues.
but yeah, if you're just pushing emails and being a monkey for some loser petite bourgeois heir, then nothing really matters anyway because they will cut you lose to save a buck when they get caught by their uncle buying coke with petty cash. so, by all means, don't waste any energy on personal edification when you can waste it on appearing to personally edify for what is certain to be a very enriching and totally not alienating future.
there are still actual jobs doing actual work that requires one to actually think using the context of their training, formal education and experience to deploy resources in a way that helps people. these roles are real and necessary and the lack of recognition for them in the US, by and large, is not some honest understanding of the deeper material reality. it is a cynical normalization of capitalist ideology, and the more young people with opportunities to learn buy into the frame, the more any potential collaborative future is cannibalized by The Ever Expanding Grift Maelstrom of now.
Most people in civil service jobs are already like this. Have you ever tried to get a building permit? The whole process is slap dash and bullshit in almost every jurisdiction. Because of this almost every contractor has a guy they pay to expedite permits. The process of that in every jurisdiction is that the guy who expedites your permits is the guy friends with everyone in the permit department. It's thinly veiled corruption.
The reality is that you're describing an era that's already flew by. Austerity, capitalist computerization, and political issues have hollowed out civil service in the US completely. Our federal revenue service, the thing that is a profit center for the whole government cannot for the life of it create a standard accessible digitized way to collect taxes without spending boatloads of money on contractors who make a half working system and suck maintenance fees out of it.
there is far more to civil service than rejecting your 3rd iteration of gazebo plans.
indeed, I have met many in civil service, having been in it for over a decade in more than one jurisdiction.
sorry your experience has been one inviting you to universal disdain for public facing personnel, but you might consider that if all you ever meet are assholes... you might just be the asshole.
schools, infrastructure, adult education... the list of valuable work to provide for communities stretches to the horizon, but I suppose with your totally-not-capitalist-and-actually-empirical perspective, public service is not for you.
I wouldn't want someone who cheats through evaluations and hates public servants on my team of all day suckers that give a fuck. a cheating anti-government zealot is more of a resume for a high level political appointee of a MAGA official, which are really hot right now in the most underserved places in the US.
so, maybe you can make your mark and have a grand legacy, a great many political allies, and a life you can hang your hat on after looting some libraries or whatever.
Which AES country do you hail from that you've mostly experienced public service based on a Marxist Leninist party line instead of a decrepit capitalist austerity system? Here in Amerikkka that's all we know and until the revolution comes that's not changing no matter how many bright eyed and bushy tailed valedictorians throw themselves willingly into the pit. They'll still be managing a payments clearing house whose sole purpose is to funnel tax money into private coffers. Even if you import cadres of bureaucrats from the glorious FALGSC of the future they'll be fired, burned out and ineffective by the end of the week. Don't kid yourself. It's nice that you have a high standards of public service, but that's just you, that's not the United States.
I'm not inditing the people who decide to choose public service, I'm sure many of them have good intentions, but they work in a system that does not care about them or their humanitarian dreams. Teachers are the prime example of that. You think teachers want to be working in a system that fails children every single day? They don't, but the reality is no matter how hard they try that's what the system does on average. Not only that but they pay an average of $500-$1500 a year out of pocket in supplies for their own job, for other people's kids, and for the pleasure of maybe just maybe affecting a single child's life in a positive way. Through economic, moral, and psychological occupational hazards public service members are victims of this system too.
Pretending that reality is any other way is playing into the same systemic functions that keep public service workers underpaid and ineffectual. Yeah it's "a higher calling", but that intrinsic personal motivation of a public service worker should be secondary to the proper functioning of the state in service of its people. Our state functions primarily in service of capital. I don't know what state you're talking about.
So ultimately it doesn't matter if your public service worker graduated from ChatGPT, Harvard or wherever. It doesn't matter if they are doing it for the love of the game, or an ever dwindling paycheck. The system on average going to flatten all those differences away and keep the austerity train rolling. These things literally don't matter because just like the private sector there's always a boss in the chain that's going to tell someone below them, "fuck your opinions, do what I tell you", and that shit rolls down hill. My views on public services in the US are bad because that's what I've experienced, and ultimately it doesn't matter what I think because the system doesn't care. I don't have time to get to know the nicest guy down at the permit office and invite him out for beers. I have plenty of other horrifying interactions with various government agencies to get to, so I've quit trying to figure out how to get the fourth iteration of my gazebo plans approved.
This is the same in other western countries as well.
I was really talking more about psychological collapse