Kari George

Yes, absolutely.

I think this is something that academic departments are contending with right now.

And even in our study, we had nine academic units who recently reported starting AI majors specifically.

And so they see, obviously, a lot of enrollment growth being a new major.

But this is something that computing departments are contending with.

And actually at a recent CRA summit last summer, one of the sessions was about a debate of should academic departments kind of spin up these very specialized majors to kind of be a standalone major where you could get a bachelor's degree in artificial intelligence, for example, or should it be a specialization under the kind of traditional foundational curriculum of computer science?

And so I think this is something that academic leaders are currently grappling with.

I mean, computing is very ubiquitous.

This is still one of the top majors at many universities.

But we do know that computing as a discipline is very dynamic and very adaptable and very responsive to shifts in technology and labor markets because there's a very close relationship there.

And so it's certainly something that we need to monitor as we continue to move forward.

But some of these enrollment changes may have also been intentional.

We heard from several department chairs who said we actively shrunk the size of our kind of admitted students.

You know, they work with their admissions committees to say, hey, we want to kind of pull back a little bit.

And so I think it's something where computing is very ubiquitous.

Students know that they're going to need a fluency in computing and AI to be successful in the labor market moving forward.

And so this is going to continue to be a very popular major choice moving forward, even if we're seeing current fluctuations now.

I mean, I think the broadest implication is the impact on the potential and capacity of the workforce and also our research capacity moving forward.

CRA also looks at computing pathways into graduate school and beyond and who goes into computing research.

And so if you're having fewer undergraduate students and what you're seeing with the clearinghouse data is there's also currently an impact of graduate enrollments, that's going to directly affect the research capacity within our universities and also within industry in the years to come.