6 minSociety
Universities add AI bachelor’s degrees as students question their value
As AI reshapes entry-level work, universities are launching dedicated bachelor’s degrees in artificial intelligence. Students and faculty debate whether four-year programs can keep pace with a fast-changing field.
As artificial intelligence reshapes the entry-level job market, a growing number of American universities are launching bachelor’s degrees in AI, even as students and faculty question whether a four-year curriculum can stay relevant in a field that evolves by the month.
Syracuse University’s School of Information Studies will begin offering a bachelor’s degree in integrative artificial intelligence in fall 2027. The program is part of a broader wave: as of June, Northeastern University’s Center for Inclusive Computing had identified at least 74 AI majors and 89 minors at U.S. colleges, from Ivy League institutions like Columbia and Cornell to regional public universities like North Dakota State.
The push comes as recent graduates face a labor market where tasks once reserved for junior employees are increasingly automated by tools like ChatGPT. According to data from the New York Federal Reserve, the unemployment rate for recent graduates was 5.7% in June, compared with 4.1% for the overall workforce. Even coding, long considered a reliable path into tech, no longer guarantees a job.
Jeff Rubin, Syracuse’s senior vice president and chief digital officer, said the initiative has taken on new urgency as AI raises expectations for workers. “The eight-hour workday is going to get reset,” he said. Students who graduate without knowing how to apply the technology in their field, Rubin argued, risk being “less valuable to an organization.”
Faculty members say the Syracuse program is designed to go beyond technical proficiency. Julie Hasenwinkel, associate provost for academic programs, said the major focuses on “developing critical thinking skills around AI”—not only how to use it, but “why do you use it, where are its limitations, and where should we not use it?” That distinction could become especially important as automation takes on more of the work traditionally assigned to junior employees. If some entry-level tasks disappear, Hasenwinkel argued, graduates may need to arrive prepared to operate at what was once the next rung of the ladder.
The degree is built around a multidisciplinary approach. Jaime Banks, an iSchool professor who helped develop the curriculum, described it as a response to growing student and faculty interest and to the university’s responsibility to equip students with relevant skills as society evolves. “The degree really is a manifestation of SU’s commitment to a multidisciplinary approach,” she said, adding that technology “doesn’t exist in a vacuum” and “is not monolithic.” The program brings together faculty from different fields, with the expectation that these skills will translate across a wide range of industries.
That breadth is partly intentional. It also reflects a reality universities cannot easily plan for: a job market changing faster than they can predict. When Syracuse designed the program, Banks said, the goal was to prepare graduates for roles across many industries rather than train them for a single occupation. “[It’s] a four-year experiment in some ways to see who comes into this program and what kinds of jobs there are,” she said.
For universities betting heavily on this kind of education, the central challenge is preparing students for a labor market that could look very different four years from now. “I don’t think it’s up to [the university] to actually have a crystal ball to say, here are the demands,” said Bei Yu, an iSchool professor and director of the integrative artificial intelligence program. “I think it’s being collectively invented by all of us.”
A four-year AI curriculum risks aging faster than students can complete it. Yu sees that race against obsolescence in her own research. “We are all having this question in the back of our minds,” she said. A paper she publishes could be “outdated in six months or even sooner than that.”
Rubin acknowledged the tension inside universities. “Curriculum governance moves at a slower pace than perhaps corporate innovation,” he said, but argued that the degree was designed with “agility in mind.” He said the fundamentals have a longer shelf life than the tools themselves, allowing the degree to adapt without being rebuilt from scratch.
The committee designing the degree wrestled with the same question. Banks said the issue came up “maybe on a weekly basis.” To account for that, the program will have an expert board regularly reviewing courses for their timeliness and appropriateness, with the expectation that the curriculum will continue changing alongside the technology. “And so as the field shifts, we will be reviewing the program to ensure that the content stays up to date,” Banks said.
