Landing an entry-level job is difficult enough. It becomes even harder when you’re competing against technology that can take on an ever-growing range of tasks—without ever drawing a paycheck.
For recent college graduates, the repercussions are already hitting.
Tasks that once helped them get their foot in the door are increasingly being automated by tools such as ChatGPT. Even coding, long treated as a ticket into tech, no longer guarantees a way in.
According to data from the New York Federal Reserve, the unemployment rate for recent graduates has remained higher than the rate for the overall workforce: 5.7% in June versus 4.1%.
As a recent grad myself, I couldn’t help but notice yet another question creeping into job applications and interviews: “How do you integrate AI into your work?”
It can feel like a double-edged sword. Use it too much and you risk seeming lazy; avoid it entirely and you risk seeming out of touch. It’s a toss-up what answer employers are hoping to hear. But one thing seems certain: AI is increasingly difficult to avoid in today’s job market.
And universities are responding.
Beginning in fall 2027, Syracuse University’s School of Information Studies (iSchool) will launch a bachelor’s degree in integrative artificial intelligence, joining a wave of schools that are adding AI-focused areas of study in an effort to prepare students for an increasingly technology-driven workforce.
As of June, Northeastern University’s Center for Inclusive Computing had identified at least 74 AI majors and 89 minors at American colleges, ranging from Ivy League institutions like Columbia and Cornell to regional public universities like North Dakota State.
Jeff Rubin, Syracuse University’s senior vice president and chief digital officer, says the initiative has taken on new urgency as AI raises expectations for workers.
“The eight-hour workday is going to get reset,” he says. Students who graduate without knowing how to apply the technology in their field, Rubin argues, risk being “less valuable to an organization.”
Inside Syracuse’s New AI Degree
According to faculty members, the Syracuse program is meant to go beyond technical proficiency.
Julie Hasenwinkel, Syracuse University’s associate provost for academic programs, says the major focuses on “developing critical thinking skills around AI”—not only how to use it, but “why do you use it, where are its limitations, and where should we not use it?”
That distinction could become especially important as automation takes on more of the work traditionally assigned to junior employees. If some entry-level tasks disappear, Hasenwinkel argues, graduates may need to arrive prepared to operate at what was once the next rung of the ladder.
To bring value to employers, she says, graduates will need an understanding of “systems and technology and the intersection between the two.”
The degree is built around a larger idea: AI education shouldn’t be confined to a single discipline.
Jaime Banks, an iSchool professor who served on the committee that developed the program’s curriculum, describes it as a response both to growing student and faculty interest and to the university’s responsibility to equip students with relevant skills as society evolves.
“The degree really is a manifestation of SU’s commitment to a multidisciplinary approach,” she says, adding that technology “doesn’t exist in a vacuum” and “is not monolithic.”
Instead, the program brings together faculty from different fields, with the expectation that these skills will translate across a wide range of industries and contexts.
That breadth is partly intentional. It also reflects a reality universities cannot easily plan for: a job market changing faster than they can predict.
When Syracuse designed the program, Banks says, the goal was to prepare graduates for roles across a wide range of industries rather than train them for a single occupation.
“[It’s] a four-year experiment in some ways to see who comes into this program and what kinds of jobs there are,” she says. Where graduates ultimately land will also depend on what they choose to pursue, Banks adds.
For universities betting heavily on this kind of education, that may be the central challenge: preparing students for a labor market that could look very different four years from now.
“I don’t think it’s up to [the university] to actually have a crystal ball to say, here are the demands,” says Bei Yu, a professor at iSchool and director of the integrative artificial intelligence program. “I think it’s being collectively invented by all of us.”
Can a 4-Year Degree Keep Up With AI?
A four-year AI curriculum risks aging faster than students can complete it.
Yu sees that race against obsolescence in her own research.
“We are all having this question in the back of our minds,” she says. A paper she publishes could be “outdated in six months or even sooner than that.”
Rubin, the Syracuse senior VP, points to a similar tension inside universities.
“Curriculum governance moves at a slower pace than perhaps corporate innovation,” he says, but argues that the degree was designed with “agility in mind.” Still, he argues that the fundamentals have a longer shelf life than the tools themselves, allowing the degree to adapt without being rebuilt from scratch.
The committee designing the degree wrestled with the same question.
Banks says the issue came up “maybe on a weekly basis.” To account for that, the program will have an expert board regularly reviewing courses for their timeliness and appropriateness, with the expectation that the curriculum will continue changing alongside the technology.
“And so as the field shifts, we will be reviewing the program to ensure that the content stays up to date,” Banks says.
The clock, however, moves quickly. New topics can emerge from one semester to the next, Yu adds.
Some Students Aren’t Entirely Convinced
Having recently graduated from Syracuse, I heard frustration over the new program ripple through conversations with friends and former classmates.
To gauge whether those concerns extended to the broader student body, I conducted an informal survey of 33 current Syracuse students. Several respondents asked not to be identified, expressing discomfort with criticizing a program at their home university. They were granted anonymity to speak candidly.
More than half said they were concerned or somewhat concerned about AI’s impact on their future careers. Not one said they would consider pursuing the university’s new degree.
The responses ranged from uneasy to openly hostile.
“I found it almost comical at first, then quickly felt that this was a negative indicator for my future,” one student wrote.
Another was more blunt: “Physically nauseous, consumed by dystopia. The normalization and encouragement of AI use is dumbing us down.”
That skepticism becomes more pointed when paired with frustration over programs students say have been cut or reduced elsewhere at the university, particularly in the humanities and fine arts, where majors including classics, ceramics, painting, and sculpture are being eliminated or folded into broader programs.
For some, the launch of the degree feels less like preparation for the future than a sign of what Syracuse is choosing to prioritize.
Some respondents questioned whether the skills taught in the program require a full undergraduate degree, arguing that much of the material could be learned independently online. One student went further as to describe the degree as something that could be replaced by “a quick YouTube search.”
“I think it’s just furthering a problem rather than trying to solve it in a way that makes sense,” said Ken, a rising sophomore in the College of Visual and Performing Arts who asked that his last name not be used, referring to what he sees as an overreliance on artificial intelligence, with both environmental costs and creative implications.
The New Degree Arrives Amid a Period of Upheaval
With the university facing enrollment dips and missed undergraduate targets, some students find the timing of the AI degree difficult to ignore.
To them, the overlap does not feel coincidental. They see Syracuse’s push into the field as an attempt to attract prospective students by leaning into a technology already dominating headlines, search results, and social feeds.
One student called it an “obvious attempt to follow a trend and drum up attention.” Another reduced the criticism to two words: “Trend chaser.”
However, Syracuse officials describe the program as the result of a more deliberate process. Banks says the university was actually slower than many of its peers to introduce an AI-focused program.
“We didn’t want to react to the hype,” she says. Instead, she says, university leaders wanted to bring together faculty and administrators to build programs that would be “future proof” and useful beyond the current boom.
Broader concerns about artificial intelligence, Banks says, had already surfaced in student feedback gathered by the university.
“When we surveyed our students, a lot of them were concerned about the role of AI in society,” Banks says. Her hope is not necessarily to turn students into enthusiastic adopters, but to give them more agency over how the technology develops.
“How can they work to shape the integration of AI in society in a way that they feel is appropriate and ethical?” she asks. “They’re the ones who are going to have to live in the next generation of whatever this looks like.”
For some students, skepticism and resignation sit side by side.
Ken sees the shift as increasingly difficult to resist. While he feels uneasy about the technology becoming a standard job requirement, he is coming to see it as inevitable. “I don’t want that to happen,” he says. “But at the same time, I have this feeling that it’s going to.”
“I understand the appeal,” one student says. “I think AI is an emerging field that is worth a lot of money and it makes sense that Syracuse would jump on the bandwagon. It isn’t going anywhere, and if people can’t learn to embrace it they are going to eventually fall behind.”
The debate extends far beyond Syracuse. As universities race to introduce AI degrees, some academics have questioned whether these new proposals represent meaningful investments in students or attempts to repackage existing courses around a more marketable name.
The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, for instance, has chosen not to offer a stand-alone AI degree; its chancellor has questioned whether such programs reflect academic substance rather than a desire to remain competitive.
Administrators at the University of North Dakota say they wrestled with similar doubts before deciding that a curriculum focused on this technology could better prepare graduates for the workforce.
For universities, the trade-off is a hard one to weigh. Waiting could leave them trailing their competitors, while moving too quickly could mean investing in degrees whose long-term value to students remains uncertain.