For years, the conventional wisdom for ambitious students and languishing jobseekers alike was “learn to code.” Do that, the ubiquitous advice went, and you’d be able to find yourself a six-figure job anywhere.
But in an age when bosses are hellbent on using powerful AI agents to perform the duties of software engineers, that advice is now looking increasingly obsolete, if not outright backfiring. And the youngsters appear to be getting wise to that new reality.
For the first time in nearly twenty years, computer science enrollment declined during the 2025-26 academic year, according to new research from the Stanford economist Jacob Light reported by Business Insider.
A separate survey from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center found that undergraduate enrollment in another IT degree, computer and information sciences and support services, dropped by a precipitous 8.1 percent in the fall of 2025.
