Harvard CS professor sees the dip in enrollment as part of an 'ebb and flow' that existed before AI

A leading computer science professor says that AI isn't solely to blame for the broader dip in CS enrollment.

"That was preceded, I think, over the past few years really by the downturn in tech offerings," Harvard computer science professor David J. Malan told podcaster Ryan Petterman during a recent interview, when asked about the current trend.

Malan said that it "absolutely seems to be the case" that AI is hurting interest in CS, but that the current dip began before chatbots like OpenAI's ChatGPT and other generative AI models exploded in popularity.

In addition to student interest, Malan said some tech companies were also less keen to send recruiters to campus since there aren't as many entry-level jobs to fill.

"We were seeing this in the recruiting pipeline on campus, where there were just fewer opportunities, and there was less of an appetite among some of the big tech companies to even bother coming to campus if they just didn't have many entry-level roles for students," he said.