Natasha Singer

And even with this learn to code and you'll get a six-figure job at a fancy tech company and change the world, that was always hard for students at lesser-known state schools or kids at historically black universities or other places that don't have reputations for being top computing schools.

So, like, this narrative of we'll magic you into money and power if you can code wasn't true for every college student even before this.

I think what's changed is, as Raya pointed out, even some students at top computer science schools are having trouble.

And first of all, you know, I talked to dozens of students last year about this, and they said things like, you know—

I feel gaslit about my career prospects.

I think it's also different for them than for students who majored in something else that didn't maybe have this narrative.

They feel more disappointed because they feel they were promised something.

In terms of what's happening, tech companies now want employees who are familiar with coding tools because it can make you a more efficient software engineer.

And the students who graduated this year and last year and the year before were not trained to use these tools because they just came up.

And now we see universities scrambling to train kids how to use these AI tools.

And I just did a story last month about how AI has become like the hot new major on many college campuses.

Mm-hmm.

It's interesting because you see schools like MIT, where computer science was the number one major, they began offering a separate major in AI.

It's now the number two major at MIT in the course of a few years.

And like one of the questions is like,

The tech industry is really excited about AI, and they're telling us we're going to have an AI-driven future and an AI-driven economy.

There is a massive interest among students in learning how to use these AI tools, both for themselves and for their potential careers.

But there's also this huge potential for the AI bubble to burst, for some of the valuations of these AI-heavy companies to come down, and also for AI to be a fad.

And that maybe you don't want an AI plus something degree because four years from now, there'll be some other technology that you'll need to know.

I think in public schools, AI is the new coding.