About 1-2% of earnings forever, tech workers will be on a path for this anyway, it just won't pay for younglings at all. Suppose you need a bunch of certs to remain accredited in a competitive field. Several of the relevant certs are always expiring on any given year, the costs go up but the wages don't, and the field just gets more competitive so you need all the certs and a degree. If wages also go down because of AI, if you find it difficult to retire.. then yeah, even when you've paid in full for your education once already, you're kind of doomed to keep renting it. Employers tend tend to pay this (for now), but if you're ever not employed you'll have eat the costs yourself as a prerequisite for ever getting employed

I neither have a CS degree nor have ever got a single certification and it's never hurt my ability go get SWE jobs, so I really don't know what you are talking about.

You may never be affected, it depends on what you do and how we as an industry decide to approach credentialism in the future. From the standpoint of many vendors though, it's just another possible source of revenue, so they aren't going to just leave the money on the table if they can find any way around it. Employers already have LOTS of applications for every job and are happy to filter with useless bullshit whether it makes sense or not.

I'd say it's currently the worst for SecOps people, senior data-engineers working closely with infrastructure, cloud engineers who specifically prefer to not focus on one platform, etc. Three main clouds each offering many cert levels, plus the major vendors in your adjacent spaces, it can add up pretty quick.

And just to be clear.. keeping up with changes is something I do consider table-stakes for working with tech. But I really do not like the hassle/expense of yet another bullshit administrative burden forever when life is full of such things as it is.