Universities report boom in AI courses, degrees amid surging employer demand

Students are rapidly enrolling in newly created AI programs and majors at schools such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of California San Diego, and University of South Florida. 

Educators and experts told The College Fix that the boom in the field of generative AI brings both benefits and risks.

According to MIT’s registrar, the number of students majoring in Artificial Intelligence and Decision Making has surged from 37 in 2022–23 to 328 in 2025–26.

Professor Antonio Torralba, faculty head of the AI and Decision-Making unit at MIT, said that the major goes beyond teaching generative AI.

“The AI major is not only good for learning about generative AI. The major provides the foundations that many parts of AI are built on,” Torralba said via a media statement from the university to The College Fix.

“Generative AI is one, but there are many other important areas in AI and decision-making. Our goal is not to teach them to be users of gen AI; our goal is to teach them the foundations needed to build the future of AI,” he said. 

At UC San Diego, over 150 first-year students have enrolled in the school’s new AI major, according to The New York Times.

Meanwhile, over 3,000 students have applied to USF’s Bellini College of Artificial Intelligence and Cybersecurity this semester.

The college was established in 2024 to “bring together the disciplines of artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and computing,” according to the college’s website. It receives over $18 million in active federal research grants.

In addition, the State University of New York at Buffalo launched a dedicated Department of AI and Society, which offers “seven AI-focused bachelor’s degrees,” according to the department. 

But while universities race to keep up with student demand and industry growth, some experts are sounding the alarm.

Peyton Hornberger, spokesperson for The Alliance for Secure AI, told The College Fix that these new programs highlight the current and potential risks of AI. 

“The AI field is changing so fast. It will be easy to design programs to ‘keep up with AI,’ rather than examine AI’s larger impact on society,” Hornberger said. 

“These programs can limit vulnerabilities by including literature on superintelligence, existential risk, and current harms,” she said. 

Hornberger also stressed the importance of understanding AI in order to fully harness its benefits.

“Alignment and interpretability are the most important yet least funded and explored areas of AI development. The more we understand how AI systems ‘think’ or ‘reason’ the better we can utilize the power of AI to benefit humanity,” she said. 

Hornberger also told The Fix she is glad that universities like MIT, UCSC, and USF “are committed to making sure students learn about the real-world impacts of AI.”

She hopes more schools will follow their lead, as graduates will enter a unique job market that urgently needs professionals capable of understanding and addressing the risks from the new technologies.

Further, Hornberger said she “would love to see new graduates leave with a robust sense of the risks and benefits of AI.”

Similarly, CATO Institute Program Director Stephen Rowe told The Fix that students need to be well-versed in the new technology, as “employer demand for AI skills has exploded.”

He cited a major workforce study from the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta showing that job postings requiring at least one AI skill have more than tripled over the past decade.

In addition, he said separate data indicates that postings for generative AI engineers skyrocketed by 588 percent, rising from around 1,600 in 2022 to more than 11,000 in 2024.

“Universities also know they need to stay tied to industries that are growing, not shrinking. AI-related programs have surged nationwide, with nearly 200 bachelor’s-level AI majors now offered in the U.S.,” Rowe said.

He also told The Fix that AI offers a major advantage, as it permeates every industry, from business and healthcare to technology, public policy, and beyond.

The greatest value for students lies in combining AI with a specific domain, such as economics, biology, or public policy.

“That combination protects graduates even if the AI job market normalizes. I don’t see any oversupply challenges in the near future,” he said.

Finally, Rowe suggested that universities “give students hands-on experience, not just theory, and push them to understand the ethical and policy challenges that come with deploying powerful models.”

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