Goldman Sachs has found the first clear evidence that college students are turning away from majors exposed to artificial intelligence. Enrollment in computer science and programming fell by more than 10% in the 2025-2026 school year.
The decline is part of a broader repricing of higher education. Now students, employers, and even business schools judge their degrees by how well they survive automation.
Students abandon college majors exposed to artificial intelligence
This decline reflects years of booming computer science enrollments, a pattern absent from data prior to 2024-2025.
Enrollment in fields associated with a low risk of AI displacement rose about 3% on average, led by healthcare and engineering.
The decline appears at individual universities. in Arizona State University, computer science enrollment at the undergraduate level declined approximately 14% between fall 2024 and fall 2025.
At Washington University in St. Louis, the share of computer science majors declined by 16% over two years.
Instead of polling students about their concerns, Pierfrancesco Mee, an economist at Goldman Sachs, studied where graduates were already working.
He mapped more than 180 majors to their jobs using population survey data from 2022 to 2024. He then scored each occupation for automation risks.
Computer science, statistics, and quantitative business majors carry the highest risk. Pharmacy, nursing and education are rated among the safest.
These students read about a market where Goldman estimates AI is holding Cutting American jobs per month. Mai expects the response to come faster than in previous technological transformations.
“Historically, such adjustments have taken a few years…but the current adjustment may unfold more quickly, given the growing importance of AI disruption,” Fortune said. I mentionedQuoted by Mai.
The pressure extends from entry level to business school
The anxiety has a basis. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York estimated the unemployment rate among recent graduates near 5.7% at the end of 2025. The underemployment rate was 42.5%, the highest level since 2020.
Employers are automating entry-level degrees that previously required trained graduates. Amnesty International Now Demands entry level roles Through technology, Block alone has eliminated about 4,000 jobs with the decision linked to automation.
ServiceNow CEO Bill McDermott sells AI agents that automate. He warns that unemployment among recent graduates could rise to the mid-30s, as these agents absorb work early in their careers.
Repricing has reached graduate school. Middle class programs are Reduced MBA fees By up to 50%, with Purdue University cutting its online MBA from $60,000 to $36,000.
Applications continue to decline by 20% to 30% this cycle, yet none of the schools making the cut fall into the top 20. Elite programs still commandeer their prices, while discounters are those that sell the technical skills that AI now provides at a cheap price.
A new graduate borrowing cap of $100,000 will take effect in July. The frustration is palpable on campus, where… Stanford alumni came out On Google CEO this month.
AI may reshape work, not erase it
Not everyone sees this transition as a clean escape. Many economists believe that artificial intelligence will transform most jobs rather than eliminate entire professions.
Goldman itself categorizes the data as adaptation, noting that younger workers have adapted to previous waves of technology faster than older workers.
Computer science has seen a cycle before, falling after the dot-com crash before rebounding to record levels. The World Economic Forum predicts that artificial intelligence could create 170 million new jobs by 2030.
The biggest gap may be skill, and it’s not that big. NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang made this point at the Milken Institute.
“Every job will be affected, and immediately… You won’t lose your job to AI, but you will lose your job to someone using AI,” Huang explained.
The pivot that comes to fruition is still unstable. Nursing programs face limits to their capacity, and it takes four to five years to fill engineering pipelines.
Even healthcare is not immune, as AI already handles scheduling, records, and parts of diagnostics. May encounter workers who resist tools Higher layoff odds Of those who embrace them.
Changing the path of students today may reshape the job market before anyone knows whether they have chosen well.
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