College Students Join the AI Gold Rush

The AI gold rush hits America's campuses. Artificial intelligence isn't just changing tech companies, it's changing college itself. According to the Times, universities across the country are racing to build new AI majors, departments and degrees as student demand explodes and industry investment surges. At MIT, a new major called A. AI and decision making already has nearly 330 students, making it the school's second largest major after computer science. At the University of South Florida, more than 3,000 students enrolled in a new college of AI and Cybersecurity. UC San Diego launched its own AI major featuring courses in machine learning, advanced math and the social impact of emerging tech. One student summed up the excitement, saying, this is so cool to me to have the opportunity to be at the forefront of this. But behind the boom is real anxiety. Traditional computer science enrollment is slipping, tech layoffs are widespread, and many new grads are already struggling to find work in an industry now asking them to compete with the AI tools they're studying. Okay, so what's the real message here? Students with their fingers in the wind are saying, hey, let me chase the latest trend, let me major in artificial intelligence, then I'm guaranteed of getting a job, right? Well, maybe, probably better off getting a job if you major in that than doing what I did, which was major in philosophy a long time ago. But still, if you're not really committed to learning hard math, hard statistics, hard computer science, just having an AI label at the end of your name on your major isn't going to do much. Let's dig a little deeper here. Now to me it is fascinating that a place like MIT, which truly does get the best and brightest students from not just the United States, but at least until a year or so ago, the entire world. The fact that now the second most popular major is artificial intelligence, I do think means something. And certainly you've heard me talk about in recent months where top AI scientists are getting hundred 150 million dollar pay packages from companies like Facebook. And I'm sure there's some students out there thinking wow, I could be in the bottom 1% and just get a million dollars a year and be happy with that. I don't know if it's going to work like that. I mean the problem with, with everything in our modern hyper connected digital world AI world is the spoils go to just a handful, everyone else gets crumbs. I have no doubt that graduates from a distinguished and let's not beat around the bush, a very, very elite and high snob appeal, rightfully so. University like MIT all of those people are going to have good jobs. They're going to do well, regardless of what happens. But when you're talking about every second or third tier private school, every second or third tier state school or community college giving out degrees in artificial intelligence, it raises a lot of questions. First of all, who are the AI experts teaching these courses? Because if you are an expert on AI, you're probably already making a million dollars or more in the private sector. So what will often happen is you've got professors and adjunct professors at a lot of these schools who don't know what they're talking about, and then they're teaching students something that they don't know anything about. So you've got a bunch of people walking around kind of confused. So let's look at some more of the facts here, because I want to be fair to this. As I mentioned to you, 330 students at MIT are now majoring in artificial intelligence. 173,000 undergrads majored in computer science in 2024. Many of those are shifting into AI. Only a decade earlier, 65,000 students majored in computer science. So arguably too many people shifted into computer science because it was seen as the sure thing, the easiest way to be employed. And what a lot of recent graduates are finding out right now is, nope, they're not needed because artificial intelligence can do basic level skills that a newly minted college grad with a computer science degree can do. So we've already seen people simply chasing a trend and it end up not working out very well. This fall, 62% of computing computer science programs reported undergraduate enrollments declining. Well, that's reflecting the marketplace. No surprise there. 66% of surveyed programs said 2025 computing grads struggled to find jobs. One professor says, you know, the problem now is they're really good students having trouble finding jobs. And in normal times, someone who just is an average student struggling, someone who has that, you know, B minus B, they might have always struggled to get a really good job, but now it's affecting everyone, even the top students in computer science majors. So is this the major you should take if you're a young college kid, if you are 19 yourself and trying to figure out what your college major is, if you have a son or daughter or child or a niece or nephew, 17, 18 coming to you, asking for you for advice on what to major, should this be what you advise? I gotta be candid. I don't really know. What I do know is that artificial intelligence has a huge, huge impact on Every career, there's virtually no career whatsoever that can't be dramatically improved, enhanced, made more efficient, made more scalable through the use of artificial intelligence. So I think it is a core skill. In the same way we don't tell someone, only learn how to write if you want to be a professional writer. No, from the first day of first grade, children are taught how to write. We don't say, only learn math if you want to become a professional mathematician. We live in a society for a long time. It's just been assumed everybody needs to know math. And I think regardless of what field you're in, you're going to need to know how to use artificial intelligence, certainly as well as everyone else in your industry is currently using it. Beyond that, if you want to be a superstar, make more money, rise up the corporate ladder, build in esteem, you have to get better at using technology in a way that is ahead of the curve of what other people are doing in your industry. Doesn't necessarily mean majoring in artificial intelligence. Now, if you really have no idea what you want to do in your life and what you want to major in, the old standby was you just major in business, which frankly I always thought of as sort of a BS degree, and I don't mean a Bachelor of Science. What should you do now? I think you would probably enhance your skills. If someone were asking me a choice between majoring in business and majoring in computer science, I would say majoring in artificial intelligence. I would say, yes, major in artificial intelligence and take as many business courses as, and for that matter, writing courses and what I did, philosophy courses as possible. Try to become well rounded. Try to really learn how to think critically, because I can't tell you. No one can look into a crystal ball and tell you, yes, it's people with AI majors who are going to get all the good jobs and all the great starting salaries. No honest person can tell you with absolute certainty that that is the future. What I can tell you is people who really know how to think critically, people who are smart and who develop their intellect, people who are constantly thinking about the future and experimenting with ideas of trying to reach the future in a better way. Those people will be successful, or as successful as anyone can be until general artificial intelligence makes us all 100% irrelevant, which may happen according to some tech prognosticators, but no one really knows if that's going to happen in 5 years, 50 years, or 500 years. My guess is it's going to be more than five years from now. But maybe less than 50. So whatever you want to do with your career, the main thing I think is you always got to be learning. I mean, I didn't major in computer science. I didn't even see a computer when I was in college. But I certainly had to spend most of my time in front of computers today, working on computers. I have literally five screens in front of me right now, four video cameras. So I had to use technology, but it's not what I majored in. The most important thing you need to learn in college is how to learn every day for the rest of your life and how to do hard things, how to do stuff that other people don't want to do. Now, I have failed more than most people I know. I have had countless failures. TV shows, radio shows, websites that have failed miserably. But I still look upon myself as a success in terms of joy from my career, but also, you know, money stuff, financial security. I do look at myself as a success, and it's primarily because I always kept experimenting with technology and didn't just stop or give up When I failed. Almost two years ago, I started spending a lot of time investing in artificial intelligence. I have my own AI clone, which you've seen me talk about in the ads on this show, tjwalker. AI. It's still not making profit, but I'm in it for the long run. I started using the technology of online learning, online video based learning, in 1998. Way too early. Lost hundreds of thousands of dollars on it for years, but boy, did it pay off eventually. I have 12 million student enrollments today and it's allowed me to have financial security. So I say that I realize it sounds like I'm bragging. Don't cut out the first part. I did it wrong. I bet wrong. I was too early. I lost money and failed for 15 years. Now I hope you are smarter than I am and you don't have to fail for 15 years. It'd be nice to just, you know, be Mark Zuckerberg, get it right when you're 18, and be hugely successful ever after. But we can't all be Mark Zuckerberg. What we can do is have an attitude of lifelong learning, regardless of what you major in. Now, I wish luck to anyone majoring in artificial intelligence. Like a lot of college degrees, I think the value is going to vary dramatically based on the teachers, the school quality of the student and what they're actually learning.