For more than a decade, computer science was considered one of higher education’s safest bets, as tech companies’ appetite for skilled coders drove a surge in student enrollment.
Now, enrollment is falling. Undergraduate enrollment in computer and information sciences at four-year institutions declined 8.4% in spring 2026 from a year earlier, according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. The decline followed a 3.6% drop from a year prior in fall 2025, when graduate enrollment in the field also fell 14% over the same period.
Still, the enrollment declines don’t mean students are losing interest in technology. Instead, they may be looking at increasing their tech knowledge alongside other interests, says one expert.
Colby College, a small liberal arts university in Waterville, Maine, is one example of how universities are responding to the enrollment shift by incorporating AI education outside the computer science department and teaching students to combine technical expertise with other fields they are interested in.
“The vision is really around an interdisciplinary approach to AI,” said David Watts, director of Colby’s Davis Institute for Artificial Intelligence. “A lot of the challenges around AI go a lot further than the AI itself.”
