Abstract: Despite the extensive and influential literature on the effects of labor-displacing technologies, very little is known about whether and how individuals alter their human capital investments in response to these technological innovations. This paper provides detailed empirical evidence on this question by examining the consequences of the unprecedented advance in robotics technology that took place in the 1990s in the United States. Our research design exploits variation in the penetration of robots across locations and in the timing of exposure across birth cohorts in a cross-cohort identification strategy. Our results show that cohorts differentially exposed to robots before or during the typical college-going ages are significantly more likely to complete a Bachelor’s degree, an effect driven by individuals in the middle of the skill distribution. We also observe an increase (or a smaller decline) in the labor market income of early exposed cohorts relative to older ones who could not alter their educational decisions. Empirical tests suggest that changes in the college premium and opportunity costs are the key mechanisms generating these effects. We then propose and estimate a structural model of human capital investments that incorporates an individual’s response to changes in automation technology. Mapping this model to the data, we find that the skill premium is the single most important component of our results, accounting for approximately two-thirds of the overall effect. Further simulations from the estimated model indicate that the effect of robots on earnings inequality declines substantially over time as younger worker generations with different educational choices enter the economy. These findings have important implications for the role of skill investments for the adjustment of the economy to technology in models of skill-biased technological change.