California colleges introduce AI majors to meet rising demand

Top Takeaways

• UC San Diego began offering AI degrees this school year, following Stanford, which was the first in California to do so in 2020.
• UCSD’s AI major requires students to take several computer science courses.
• USC will begin offering AI degrees in the fall with a class of 30 students.

Ever since she was a child, Christine Antonie wanted to follow in her parents’ footsteps and major in computer science in college. With their degrees, both parents went off to successful careers; her mother worked for years as a principal applications developer and her father built a career as a data and technical architect.

Christine Antonie, a freshman at UC San Diego. Courtesy of Christine Antonie

In her junior year of high school, Antonie started thinking about what job fields would interest her in the future. She noticed artificial intelligence (AI) usage growing on online platforms and how it looked like “so many different fields use AI.” For a long time, Antonie debated whether AI would be her path. 

Antonie joined an online program called Inspirit AI, where she learned the basics of AI programming and worked on a three-month project across 10 sessions. The students were put into groups of five and created a video program that would analyze photos of automobile drivers. Drivers’ faces were scanned to evaluate their eyelines and the direction they were facing. The program would notify the students if the driver was deemed distracted.

“We made an AI model that would determine if (automobile) drivers were distracted or focused,” Antonie said. “I feel like seeing how you could use this in the real world really made me interested in AI.”

Today, 18-year-old Antonie is a freshman at UC San Diego and part of the first cohort of undergraduate students pursuing a degree in AI. 

In California, only a few colleges offer bachelor’s degrees in AI. In 2020, Stanford was the first school to offer the degree; UCSD followed last fall and USC is expected to debut in the fall.  

Steven Swanson is chair of the Computer Science Department at UC San Diego.Courtesy of Steven Swanson

In September, the California State University (CSU) system approved new AI degrees to be released in the upcoming years, with San Diego State launching a program in the fall.

A group of AI researchers and department faculty at UCSD began creating the AI major in 2024. When the application process opened in August, candidates began pouring in, creating a cohort of about 125 students. 

Steven Swanson, the chair of the Computer Science Department at UCSD, said the inspiration for the AI curriculum came in part from multiple U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports, including one that found a 7.5% increase in AI-based systems and other computer science-related industries. Swanson said the effort was also done in reaction to computer science students who showed an interest in newer “core technologies.” 

“The major’s goal is to educate the programmers and software engineers of tomorrow,” said Swanson. “Those who will build the next generation of AI systems and to improve the foundations of the AI systems currently in use.”  

Swanson said some current computer science students are interested in switching majors; however, under the current policy, only students admitted to UCSD as AI majors are eligible for the program. This policy is subject to change in the fall, according to the university website. The courses for AI majors are available for computer science students, but AI majors have priority for registration. 

AI vs. computer science

Leena Banga, a freshman studying AI at UC San Diego.Courtesy of Leena Banga

Leena Banga, a freshman studying AI at UCSD, said there is an unspoken tension between students majoring in computer science and those in AI as the field begins to flood into the department. Banga said there have been moments where she has received comments from students like, “That’s not real,” referring to the validity of her major and the skills the program can provide. 

“There is this stigma around computer science students versus AI students,” Banga said. “Their reasoning behind criticizing us is that we’re not going to have any experience with the coding part, but we literally have to take a lot of the same classes that [computer science majors] do.”

Banga blames the university policy banning students from changing majors or transferring into AI classes as a source of the tension. She recalled talking to students who were bad-mouthing the new AI major and realized they were mostly bitter about the policy rather than the AI major being added to the computer science department.

It is not uncommon for a new major to be questioned and doubted when it is being compared to an already established program, Swanson explained. He said AI majors will need to build their reputation within other programs, and he hopes students across the department will take an AI class and realize how much they enjoy it.

“The core lower division and core upper division courses for the computer science major and the AI major overlap in significant and important ways,” Swanson said. “So the two majors share a lot of DNA.”

After Antonie decided to study AI, she was disappointed by the lack of options because so few California colleges offer such an opportunity. Also, she was unsure of what to expect from the brand-new program and professors at UCSD.

“I couldn’t even ask people older than me to ask how it is, so I kind of had to assume and go with the flow,” Antonie said.

To expand the introduction of AI majors to more students and colleges, Mia Minnes, the vice chair of the computer science department, said UCSD has been working with community colleges to develop lower-division AI courses and make it easier to transfer.

“This is ongoing work to make sure that community college courses can articulate to the corresponding classes for our majors,” Minnes said. “So that transfer students have strong pathways.”  

USC is next to offer an AI major

In the fall, USC will be the next college to welcome students majoring in AI, consisting of a class of 30 students. Erik Johnson, vice dean for academic programs at USC’s Viterbi School of Engineering, said the major will start with small enrollments to test the program and address any potential problems in the curriculum. 

Erik Johnson, vice dean for academic programs at USC’s Viterbi School of Engineering.Courtesy of Erik Johnson

USC has been planning for an AI major for three years, Johnson said. Faculty and researchers drew inspiration and expertise from other majors, including computer science, electrical and computer engineering, and industrial and systems engineering, to help develop the AI major.  

Johnson said he believes that schools offering AI degrees will achieve successful outcomes with their students.

The emergence of the AI curriculum will create a new breed of college students, experts say, students who will take AI learning and AI programming to a whole new level.

“When students come into an engineering degree, they may have a parent, uncle, cousin, aunt, or somebody that studies something in engineering,” Johnson said. “But none of them studied a degree in Artificial Intelligence.”

Antonie was unsure whether her parents would be hurt or upset that she had chosen a different path — an AI-fueled path. Fortunately, they had no objection.

“[My parents] were really happy, they obviously at first wanted me to be a computer science major because they were,” she said. “But they realized how much AI is evolving and then really wanted me to be an AI major. I think for the future we’ll be presented with a lot of opportunities since this is such a growing field. 

“AI will definitely not be going away anytime soon because it’s so integrated into society.”

Sapphire Perez is a senior at CSU Dominguez Hills and a member of the EdSource California Student Journalism Corps.

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