College students know from firsthand experience that the labor landscape is radically changing because of AI. In their classrooms, a vast majority of students are using AI academically, and their professors are adopting AI in their lesson plans and grading. Earlier this year, we found that new graduates in 2025 are facing major employment headwinds. Finding entry level work has also become tougher for new grads – especially those in AI-exposed roles. How are students responding to a world shaped by AI? Increasingly, by choosing degrees in the field. This week, we investigate how university students are responding to the rise of AI.
Global workforce intelligence data reveals that students are increasingly reporting degrees related to AI, using the terms “artificial intelligence” or “machine learning” in the title of their degrees.
Prior to 2019, AI represented a small fraction of in-progress global degrees – only about half a percent – and the vast majority of these were Master's or doctoral degrees. Starting in 2019, however, AI-related degrees have seen explosive growth, with an average annual growth rate of 26.2%. For advanced degrees, including Master's and doctoral degrees, the rising demand for education in AI has a clear explanation. As big tech companies announce million-dollar pay packages in the hopes of attracting top talent in AI, the potential returns for an advanced degree are rising for those considering higher education. In 2025, AI represented more than 5% of advanced degrees, or 1.76% of total degrees. However, this growth rate has been most pronounced in reported bachelor’s degrees: once just a quarter percent of global bachelor’s degrees in 2018, AI now commands 3% of ongoing bachelor’s degrees in 2025, or 1.2% of all reported degrees in 2025. In other words, AI has seen a more than ten-fold increase in global bachelor’s degrees since 2018.
AI-related bachelor’s degrees are also increasingly represented in AI-related jobs. Using terms like “neural network”, “deep learning” and “LLM”, global workforce data can identify positions specifically related to AI, as well as the position holder’s past education. From 2021 to 2025, the percentage of AI jobs filled by graduates with an AI-related bachelor’s degree has been rising steadily.
At the beginning of 2021, people with AI-related bachelor’s degrees represented less than half a percent of the workforce in AI-related roles. Today, these graduates represent more than 2.5% of the AI-related workforce. Most interestingly, these workers appear to have been largely immune to the tech layoffs in 2023 and 2024, with a one percent increase in representation between the end of 2023 and the beginning of 2025. Overall, this data indicates that these graduates are matching with jobs in their field.
Are these graduates earning as much as recent graduates in comparable fields like computer science or engineering? In the United States, this seems to be the case. Looking at recent graduates who found a job in the United States within one year of graduation, we can compare the average salaries of AI bachelor’s holders to those in related degrees from 2021 to 2025.
AI graduates with bachelor's degrees appear to be performing as well or better than their peers with quantitative degrees. Recent graduates from 2021 to 2025 in computer science and engineering still earn, on average, 8.6% and 2.9% more than AI graduates, respectively. However, as entry-level workers in computer science find it increasingly difficult to compete with AI tools, this gap may soon compress. On the other hand, AI degree holders outperform those in Mathematics and Statistics, and earn dramatically more than their peers in business-related degrees like Business and Economics.
In a changing landscape for both students and employers, the evidence is clear. Education specifically related to artificial intelligence is becoming dramatically more popular, especially for undergraduate students. For students interested in artificial intelligence and machine learning, these degrees should be top of mind when choosing their education and career. For employers: undergraduate training in AI, once a novelty, is becoming an increasingly common phenomenon. For employers who cannot compete with the big spenders, there will be an increasing pool of graduates with a formal education in AI in the coming years. Those willing to hire recent undergraduates should have a much easier time finding qualified applicants.