A recent post on X highlights the challenging job market for students graduating this spring with a once “future-proof” degree in computer science. The post references data provided by a CS professor at a mid-tier state university: in the Fall of 2023, 89% of the school’s CS graduates had offers by the time they graduated. That number dropped to 71% in Spring 2024, then to 43% in Fall 2024, and down to 31% in Spring 2025. Starting salaries slid from $94K to an average of $61,000.1
Today, it seems there are no six-figure starting salaries and not enough jobs for a cohort that chose to major in computer science four years ago, confident they could secure placement at Big Tech. Per an article in The New York Times, 170,000 students majored in the field in 2024, double the number of 2014, and now face an unemployment rate of 6.1%.2 Widespread adoption of AI and a wavering economy have created a tight market, and graduates are finding it a struggle to land desirable jobs in tech.
Perhaps as a result, the University of California reports that for the first time since the dot.com crash in 2002, computer science enrollment is dropping. “System-wide, it fell 6% last year [2025] after declining 3% in 2024….”3 At UC, Berkeley, the number of CS graduates is expected to fall from 994 in 2024-2025 to just 851 for the 2025-2026 academic year, and per department chair Jelani Nelson, the CS department will graduate approximately 350 students in 2027.4 Those figures mirror a nationwide trend, while college enrollment on the whole has climbed by 2% nationally, according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center.
To address the changes wrought by AI, UC San Diego has created a dedicated AI major. And the school is not alone. Carnegie Mellon University launched a B.S. in AI as early as 2018; the University of Pennsylvania introduced a BSE in AI in 2024; MIT offers a B.S. in Artificial Intelligence and Decision Making. Other highly ranked programs in AI are at Stanford, the Georgia Institute of Technology, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and the University of Texas at Austin.5
- x.com/TechLayoffLover/status/2031054544071962897
- nytimes.com/2025/08/10/technology/coding-ai-jobs-students.html
- techcrunch.com/2026/02/15/the-great-computer-science-exodus-and-where-students-are-going-instead/
- dailycal.org/news/campus/academics/uc-berkeley-cs-major-enrollment-on-pace-to-drop-by-59-as-part-of-nationwide/article_8ceded3c-d939-4f60-8aa4-110be003c4e3.html
- usnews.com/best-colleges/rankings/computer-science/artificial-intelligence?myCollege=computer-science&_sort=myCollege&_sortDirection=asc