The expansion of higher education in knowledge-driven economies has boosted economic aspirations based on the meritocratic belief that effort leads to rewards. However, in recent decades, advanced democracies have witnessed stagnating occupational upward mobility. While growing evidence shows the declining occupational returns of higher education, the behavioural implications of these trends remain largely unexamined. As increasingly linked to educational choices, disappointed expectations may heavily impact beliefs in equality of opportunity and meritocracy. The paper investigates the causal impact of changes in the occupational expectations of full-time university students. It argues that negative shifts in employment prospects can undermine beliefs in meritocracy, while positive changes can reinforce pre-existing ones. To test this argument, the study links data from an individual-level panel survey with administrative data on online job vacancies in the United Kingdom from 2017 to 2024. It employs an instrumental variable approach that exploits a quasi-exogenous shock to job vacancies triggered by the introduction of Generative Artificial Intelligence in November 2022. This allows us to examine how individuals who enrol in different fields of education before 2022, experience changes in their expectations due to fluctuations in vacancies after the shock for the occupations they are most likely to pursue. Importantly, the findings confirm that individuals whose fields of study make them more amenable to AI-exposed occupations display reduced beliefs in meritocracy. These results hold important implications, as beliefs formed during labour market entry can have a lasting impact and influence attitudes towards redistribution and vote choice in the long run.