Are Students Suddenly Losing Interest in Computer Science as AI Coding Takes Off? (nerds.xyz)
- Reference: 0185734984
- News link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/26/09/22/0010234/are-students-suddenly-losing-interest-in-computer-science-as-ai-coding-takes-off
- Source link: https://nerds.xyz/2026/09/students-losing-interest-computer-science-ai-coding/
"The category did not decline uniformly. Students moved away fastest from the pathway most associated with entry-level software work, while the more applied and human-facing subfields held their ground better."
Slashdot reader [2]BrianFagioli writes:
> Nova Learning says the share of surveyed middle and high school students naming Computer Science and AI as their primary academic interest fell from 42.3 percent in 2025 to 27.9 percent in 2026, while Engineering rose from 11.9 percent to 23 percent. The biggest gains came from Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering...
>
> [B]roader enrollment data points in the same direction. The National Student Clearinghouse Research Center reported [3]declines in Computer and Information Science enrollment at four year institutions, even as Engineering grew. AI coding tools are not proven to be the cause, but as software development changes and AI handles more coding tasks, students may be starting to rethink what a future in technology should look like. [Undergraduate enrollment in CS programs at four-year institutions [4]fell 8.1% , to approximately 606,000 students.]
[1] https://www.novalearninggroup.org/blog-posts/student-interest-is-shifting-from-computer-science-to-engineering
[2] https://www.slashdot.org/~BrianFagioli
[3] https://nscresearchcenter.org/final-fall-enrollment-trends/
[4] https://cts.businesswire.com/ct/CT?id=smartlink&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.studentclearinghouse.org%2Fnscblog%2Fchanging-landscape-of-postsecondary-education%2F&esheet=54606940&newsitemid=20260918581112&lan=en-US&anchor=Research+Center's+breakdown&index=4&md5=077eab50c9f677717cbc042913d33988
Another generation gap (Score:2, Interesting)
> ... Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering ...
Children are thinking about machines for space again, like in the 1960s, not about creating a push-button government or massive unemployment.
We just had an article declaring 'the [Palintir] AI did it', and I'm sure the next generation is taking notes. Maybe, children don't literally see it but they recognize a disconnect exists between the 1960s dream of robot maids and the modern reality of humans taking orders from a 'robot' manager.
Re: (Score:2)
> dumb comment of the day right there. What children EVER thing of "creating a push-button government or massive unemployment"? Yeah, those toddlers are really taking notes.
First, not all children are toddlers. I shouldn't have to say that, but whatever.
Second, most kids today have all this information - and disinformation - at their fingertips on the web and in social media. They're also exposed to it via the mainstream "news" outlets that their parents and/or grandparents watch. Many of them also know of family members - and those of their friends - who are (not by choice) under-employed or unemployed.
So why would you think that they aren't thinking of massive unemployment?
Re: Another generation gap (Score:1)
Mechanical engineers build weapons; civil engineers build targets.
Take it from someone in the business. Aerospace ain't exactly a magnet for peaceniks.
School Sucks (Score:2)
Maybe... just maybe, it started before "AI" - maybe, just maybe, it is become what is taught as "computer science" and what they actual day job are absolutely nothing like each other. CS degrees force rote memorization of established algorithms. That's never the day job. 30 years of computer programming, and I've implemented more Mandelbrot renderers than I have inverted b-trees, or sorted link-lists. Schooling and industry are the furthest apart imaginable, and the younger generations have started to pick
Re: (Score:2)
Not to defend computer science coursework, but the real world sucks too. Modern applications are an abomination, those "leetcode skills" are focused on gluing together a mile high stack of shit. AI can do that too.
But yeah, disillusionment with coding started before AI, for me it started with object-oriented programming. Code reuse makes sure everyone's work sucks with time.
Re: (Score:3)
> ...for me it started with object-oriented programming. Code reuse makes sure everyone's work sucks with time.
You demonstrated in a sentence and a half that you don't have the slightest clue how object-oriented programming works.
uh dude (Score:2, Informative)
That probably means you aren't doing very sophisticated work. There are tons of jobs out there where implementing new algorithms is what gives your product an edge in the marketplace. Even something as boring as backup software is going to have a ton of proprietary algorithms which are based on ... you guessed it ... the stuff you learned in school.
I frankly don't see how it's possible that you started your job in the mid-1990s and didn't write algorithms. That was in the days before programming was slappin
Re: uh dude (Score:2)
Every now and then an opportunity arises to apply a better algorithm, and I genuinely value those moments. But most of software engineering is not that. It's understanding the existing system well enough to know where the next part is most easily bolted on. It always was; AI just makes the bolting easier.
?? Memorization of established algorithms ?? (Score:1)
> CS degrees force rote memorization of established algorithms.
Maybe outside western universities, but within there is a review and discussion of different algorithms but no expectation to memorize. Looking the up in reference materials is taught to be a superior approach compared to memorization.
Are you perhaps thinking of one of the many poorly designed "programmer tests'" used during the hiring process? That's a good tell indicating a company you do not want to work for.
> Schooling and industry are the furthest apart imaginable
Which is why schools should teach concept that persist in the long term, not what is fashionab
They're not losing interest. (Score:5, Insightful)
They're not losing interest, they're being TOLD not to go into coding because AI coding is taking off.
Re: (Score:2)
For good reason. I know people who, with zero coding knowledge .. like they can't print "hello world" let alone tell you what a for loop is, 100% vibe coded fully functional (has all the features they wanted it to have -- including a backend API on GCP/AWS) apps/games that are on the App Store (they aren't selling well, but that's due to marketing .. the features are fully implemented).
All they had is a little determination, a week or two to focus on it, and a few basics on prompting such as asking the AI t
Re: (Score:2)
This is what people said about outsourcing in the 2000s. Turns out you have to actually have organizational knowledge about what your code actually does.
And that's not even getting into the legal aspect of what is gonna happen when the AI does something like making a car's computer cheat on emissions tests. At the end of the day, enterprises will need a real person to blame for this stuff.
Nope, its not that (Score:2)
Its the layoffs and uncertainty of the industry as a whole. AI is often blamed but its only a part of the story.
The dabblers are wandering off. (Score:2)
Is this necessarily a bad thing? For quite some time, coding has been pushed as a way to make yourself marketable. For a lot of people who have no particular passion for it—nor for anything else, which is why they're dabbling in everything—but were only in it because they thought it was a good career move, it is smart to look for greener pastures now. The real question is, what adjacent fields are easy to slide into, but AREN'T equally vulnerable to the unblinking gaze of AI once there is the cr
Re: (Score:2)
Completely agree. Computer science is more relevant than ever to how the world works, and thus, being able to recognize and avail yourself of opportunities in the future. These are the same people who think doctors will be useless because of AI too, and they'll be wrong about that as well.
You liked software better in the autistic 80s? (Score:2, Interesting)
> Is this necessarily a bad thing? For quite some time, coding has been pushed as a way to make yourself marketable. For a lot of people who have no particular passion for it—nor for anything else, which is why they're dabbling in everything—but were only in it because they thought it was a good career move, it is smart to look for greener pastures now. The real question is, what adjacent fields are easy to slide into, but AREN'T equally vulnerable to the unblinking gaze of AI once there is the critical mass to justify the effort? Are there any?
Counterpoint, Until the late 90s, programming was the domain of the autistic and severely mathematically inclined. In most areas, the pay sucked, and their output sucked even more. It was a hostile environment everywhere but in the bay area and Seattle...maybe a few others. My (much) older sister was a COBOL programmer...her life sucked. She was grateful to be laid off with severance and start a career elsewhere. Hearing about her experiences made me recosinder a programming job...I was great at writin
Re: You liked software better in the autistic 80s? (Score:2)
Try asking it to make a plan before it starts coding. You can iterate on things like "use this annotation" there where it's easy to fix. If it still does something unexpected, ask it why. It will either point out something you didn't think of, or decide on its own it's being stupid, or at least point out what consideration is driving that so you can tell it not to worry about that thing.
The 80s just had different computers and tools (Score:1)
> Counterpoint, Until the late 90s, programming was the domain of the autistic and severely mathematically inclined. In most areas, the pay sucked, and their output sucked even more. It was a hostile environment everywhere but in the bay area and Seattle...maybe a few others.
That's a long string of very bad guesswork. The top performers tended to be the more "math inclined" but plenty of people with natural talent and liberal arts degrees functioned as decent software developers. Pay and conditions pretty good for all.
> My (much) older sister was a COBOL programmer...her life sucked.
Well she wasn't Computer Science, she was Computer Information Systems. Computer Engineering was also a thing. Now to be fair the names were used a little loosely, but in general a "Computer Science" degree was programming as envisioned by the School of Science at
Re: (Score:2)
> Until the late 90s, programming was the domain of the autistic and severely mathematically inclined. In most areas, the pay sucked, and their output sucked even more.
I gotta call shenanigans on this. I got out of college in 1984. My starting salary in as a programmer was higher than my father's (a chemist working for the same company for 40+ years) had been when he retired 4 years earlier. And was quite well employed during that stretch from 1984 until your "late 90s" cut-off. And since.
I agree that it was mostly math folks going into CS (in fact my college didn't have an undergrad CS degree yet - you majored in math but chose a specific CS track), but the job marke
And this too shall pass (Score:1)
Early computers were purpose built and sometimes hard wired to do the job they needed to do. They were replaced with machines that could easily be reprogrammed with punch cards and writing code in machine language, rendering the skills of a whole generation of computer technicians that did that hand wiring largely obsolete.
Once human friendly programming languages made their debut I am sure there was much and wringing about the decline of machine language skills and dumbing down of coding, not to mention bl
Re: (Score:2)
It's been a long slide downward, but AI will accelerate the need for exohertz computers to render a Mandelbrot set in less than a week.
The Age of Programming (Score:3)
I wonder if the age of manual computer programming begins and ends within the lifespan of longtime Slashdotters.
AI honestly makes this all less interesting. (Score:2)
What is the fun or accomplishment in having AI code for you? I use AI every day professionally and honestly it makes it so any hack coder can maybe do something. But to be a real coder who enjoys losing oneself in code in the age of AI? I can think of almost nothing more pointless at this point.
Hopefully (Score:2)
It will make me more valuable as I grow older.
Sample size and sampling method? (Score:2)
Nova Learning surveyed 463 students in 2025 and 677 students in 2026.
So at a standard 95% confidence level, a sample size of n = 463 carries a margin of error of roughly of + or - 4.55%. A sample size of n = 677 narrows that margin to about + or - 3.77%. While some of the changes are outside of this range, many are not.
I also wonder who they asked " sample consists primarily of middle and high school students from the U.S. West Coast " So Bay Area, LA, Seattle? wealthy kids, middle class? private school, pu
Good riddance (Score:3, Insightful)
Serious students of computer science only need apply. If you want to understand how to make computers do what you want, and how today's existing systems work, then study them, but if you are looking to be a Doctor, Dentist, or Lawyer, then just go be one of those.
Re: Good riddance (Score:2)
Yeah, but we still have to figure out what to do with all those students we graduated without sufficient talent.
Re: (Score:1)
> Yeah, but we still have to figure out what to do with all those students we graduated without sufficient talent.
AI coding assistants require a shift away from an incremental iterative agile approach, a move back towards having some documentation to feed to AI assistants to keep them on track. Too much of an agile approach will too often lead to something resembling "vibe coding slop." The less talented can work on the documentation that help reign in the AI assistants. The AI coding assistants can then be used where appropriate and with greater review by the more talented. Reducing the "slop."
Getting back to an organic level of CS majors (Score:1)
> Serious students of computer science only need apply.
In other words we are returning to "normal", "organic", CS student levels. There have always been two types of CS students.
(1) Those with a genuine interest and curiosity about computers. Those who studied computers in class and on their own for fun.
(2) Those who were told by someone that CS is a good career path. Those who did the minimum to get their "ticket" punched.
(2) was greatly inflated by various events, the internet going commercial, the learn to code movement, etc. If AI coding reduces their