GRAND FORKS: Artificial intelligence (AI) degrees are no longer just for the universities that teach tech geniuses.
Only five schools offered AI majors in 2021. Now, universities are setting up programmes so quickly that researchers are struggling to track them. At least 74 AI majors and 89 minors are available on American campuses, according to Northeastern University’s Center for Inclusive Computing.
At least another dozen schools, many of them far from Silicon Valley, are poised to debut majors this year, reflecting the frenzy around the technology and academia’s urgent ambition to be seen as essential in the AI age.
The idea is to keep schools and students alike competitive as AI reshapes the global economy. The new programmes, though, vary widely in the details, with some emphasising the inner workings of AI and many others more focused on how to use it. And it is unclear how students who earn the degrees will fare as companies recalibrate.
“Some call it a bubble. Maybe it is,” said Uzezi Olorunmola, who is seeking his doctorate in AI at the University of North Dakota, the flagship school in a sparsely populated state that will soon have two universities offering degrees in AI.
“But I think it’s pretty much here to stay, and the earlier you not only get with the program but also know how to use AI or use AI applications, I think it’s better.”
Sitting at a conference table with other students in Grand Forks, he acknowledged with a grin, “We’re basically the test subjects.”
Glitz or substance?
Academia’s stampede toward AI programmes is challenging the perception that higher education is plodding. It is also inviting questions about whether colleges are sacrificing quality in a rush for relevance.
“We have to be careful: Is it glitz or is it substance?” said Andrew Armacost, the president at North Dakota, which had eight students enrolled this past academic year in its new AI doctoral program.
The answer varies from school to school and is often discernible by comparing degree requirements. Many colleges’ AI program curriculums overlap substantially with those for computer science. Sometimes, only a handful of new courses distinguish the degrees.
And AI degrees can vary sharply in their goals.
Several universities are steeping their programmes in theory, intending to turn out graduates who can do the under-the-hood work that powers AI. These include places such as Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh, which in 2018 became the first American university to offer an AI degree. Thirty-three courses are now approved for the major.
Reid Simmons, a Carnegie Mellon computer science professor who directs the AI major there, suggested tech companies looking for the next generation of AI experts would focus on elite institutions with track records, just as an elite law firm would hire lawyers.
“The people who are looking for lawyers know the difference between a Harvard law degree and some other law degree,” he said.
Some schools regard the new programmes as boons for students who otherwise would have been computer science majors as graduates struggle to find jobs and universities report plunging or plateauing enrollment in the discipline.
At many schools, the degrees are often meant to appeal to students who want more training in AI, whether or not it is central to their discipline.
They are not carbon copies of computer science programmes.
At North Dakota, for example, AI doctoral students complete fewer dissertation research credit hours than their computer science counterparts. And while the AI curriculum requires classes in subjects such as applied machine learning, the menu of electives includes topics like data science ethics, bioinformatics and quantum and computational chemistry.
Some schools are developing new classes and hiring professors. At others, administrators have told trustees and regents that the programs will barely cost anything because they use current courses and faculty members.
Growing student demand
In a submission to the State Board of Higher Education this year, North Dakota State said that demand for a full-blown AI degree was “strong and growing” and that there was “very limited regional supply.”
It predicted that a bachelor’s program would have 60 students within five years.
In Grand Forks, University of North Dakota leaders and professors believe that the AI fervour is not contained to bachelor’s degrees and that people already in the workforce want – or need – to learn about the technology.
“They contact me, and they say, ‘Listen, in my job, I have to work with all of these data analytics tasks,’ and they have been looking for programs that will give them some more foundational knowledge,” said Emanuel S. Grant, graduate program director for the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.
Administrators said they had admitted another 10 students for the fall semester of 2026.
Will companies trust an AI degree?
Whatever the academic focus, many administrators see AI programmes as ways to show new value as universities face accusations that they too often offer costly, depreciating degrees and are slow to pivot.
“Academia does take its time to think things through,” said Ed Seidel, president of the University of Wyoming, which offers an AI master’s programme.
“But,” he added, “I think everyone is recognising now that we really have got to be preparing our students for this.”
Seidel and others acknowledged that the new degrees could attract prospective students. He also had a warning: Embracing AI, which polling shows stirs unease among Americans, may not help higher education as it tries to win back public trust.
AI, Seidel said, “doesn’t necessarily win an argument that you’re relevant if people are scared of it.”
How employers will judge AI degrees remains an open question. The reputations of long-standing programmes in other disciplines, academic leaders said, could shape how people respond to new ones.
“I’m not worried about people who are rebranding or adding a few courses to what are already quality CS degrees,” said Charles Isbell, a computer scientist and the chancellor of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, which is not offering a stand-alone AI degree. “I would worry about people who are just trying to shift into this space.”
Administrators at schools like North Dakota, which first offered a computer science major in 1971, understand the doubts – in part because they wrestled with them themselves. But they were convinced, they said, that an AI program could mint graduates better prepared for the workforce.
They also suggested that waiting could have been competitively perilous.
“If we’re perceived as out of the game, it’s going to be hard to get our name in the game,” said Ryan Adams, dean of the college that includes the AI program. – ©2026 The New York Times Company
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
