Key Takeaways:
College students are abandoning computer science and statistics majors at the fastest rate on record, a Goldman Sachs analysis shows, as the threat of AI-driven job displacement reshapes academic choices faster than any previous technological transition.
Enrollment in computer science and computer programming majors each fell more than 10% in the 2025-26 academic year, while healthcare and engineering programs surged roughly 3% on average, according to Goldman Sachs research published Monday. The shift marks the first statistically significant evidence that students are rewiring their academic decisions in response to AI's assault on entry-level white-collar work — and it may be happening faster than any prior technology-driven realignment.
"Historically, such adjustments have taken a few years, reflecting both the time required for students to observe job market outcomes among graduating peers and the difficulty of reversing major choices made in the early college years," Pierfrancesco Mei, an economist at Goldman Sachs, said in the report. "But the current adjustment may be unfolding more quickly, given the heightened salience of AI disruption."
Goldman's methodology is more rigorous than the surveys and anecdotes that have dominated the debate. Rather than asking students how they feel about AI, researchers mapped where recent graduates from more than 180 majors actually ended up working, using American Community Survey data covering 2022 through 2024. They then weighted each occupation's AI automation risk score across more than 300 job categories to produce a major-level displacement risk index grounded in real labor market outcomes.
The rankings are stark. Management and quantitative methods, computer science, and statistics and decision sciences carry the highest displacement risk. Pharmacy, nursing and education-related fields rank among the safest. Majors feeding into professional and business services — consulting, finance, legal — also sit in elevated-risk territory. Prior to the 2024-25 academic year, no correlation existed between AI risk and enrollment patterns in the data.
The data behind the exodus
The broader labor market picture supports the anxiety. The unemployment rate for recent college graduates has diverged sharply upward from the broader workforce average since 2024 — a pattern that historically only emerges during recessions. This time, the culprit is automation rather than a downturn. Goldman estimates AI is now cutting roughly 11,000 U.S. jobs a month, with Gen Z bearing a disproportionate share of the impact.
A Gallup and Lumina Foundation survey cited in Goldman's report found roughly 42% of bachelor's degree students have reconsidered their major because of AI, with about half actively factoring AI's labor market impact into their decisions. A separate April survey showed about 70% of college students now view AI as a threat to their job prospects.
The shift also tracks with a widening "experience gap" in which AI is simultaneously eliminating entry-level jobs and the internships that once served as on-ramps to them, leaving new graduates with fewer opportunities to build the credentials employers demand. Goldman's enrollment data is the behavioral response to that squeeze: students watching their older peers struggle and changing course before they graduate into the same wall.
Where students are going — and what it means for investors
Healthcare and engineering — the two fields gaining the most enrollees — offer lower AI exposure and stronger job growth. But nursing programs are capacity-constrained, and engineering pipelines take four to five years to translate into workforce supply. The AI infrastructure buildout is also generating demand for traditional blue-collar roles — from data center construction to power system installation — creating a jobs growth pole distinct from the white-collar knowledge work being disrupted.
Goldman's conclusion is cautiously hopeful. Consistent with the firm's prior research on past technological transitions — the rise of personal computing, the internet and the offshoring wave — young workers have historically adapted more flexibly than older ones, reorienting toward labor demand before displacement fully materializes. The greater vulnerability, the report implies, lies with workers already locked into high-risk occupations with limited ability to retrain.
For investors, the data signals potential long-term shifts in labor supply. Education-for-profit providers and bootcamp operators focused on coding and tech skills face headwinds as demand for those programs softens. Healthcare education providers and industrial staffing firms could benefit as students and workers pivot toward AI-proof fields. Meanwhile, companies reliant on entry-level tech talent may face a tighter pipeline in coming years as fewer graduates emerge from computer science programs.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.
