Stand-alone bottom-up observations (even if valid) obscure the fundamental problem that AI (or "AI" if you like) is inducing systemic change across human civilization.

If cohorts are graduating into the workforce with decreasing stand-alone skills, that implies the economic value-add of labour is shifting to AI, which implies broadly falling standards of living, falling political power, and an ongoing transfer of power and wealth to capital.

If students are taking shortcuts with AI when their brains have the highest capacity for learning they may be permanently weakening their prospects. It doesn't seem likely that whatever "AI management skills" they incidentally learn will make up for, over their lifetime, the economic value loss they suffer due to reduced cognitive skills.

On an individual basis, in the next few years, this might not matter. Across decades, economies and polities, it will.