By Jake Angelo
Publication Date: 2026-02-13 17:47:00
For the back half of the 20th century (what Fortune founder Henry Luce called “The American Century”), MBA and law-school degree programs were a ticket to a great office job and a path to the American Dream. The 21st century is asking the question: What happens when all those office jobs get automated?
In a recent conversation with the Financial Times, the CEO of Microsoft AI, Mustafa Suleyman, delivered another in a series of predictions from AI leaders that white-collar work is on the precipice of a radical transformation thanks to AI. His timeline is 18 months until those law school and MBA grads—and many less-credentialed peers—are out of luck.
Suleyman predicted “human-level performance on most, if not all professional tasks,” being done by AI. Most tasks that involve “sitting down at a computer” will be fully automated by AI within the next year or 18 months, he said, naming accounting, legal, marketing, and even project management as vulnerable….