by Jodie Dello Stritto
Jensen Huang, NVIDIA Founder, President & CEO told the World Governments Summit recently that programming and other complex fields can be handled by AI, leaving no reason for students to study computer science. Watch the clip.
Then, a recent story in the Wall Street Journal declared that while “computer science is hotter than ever at U.S. universities… students graduating this month are discovering their degrees are no longer a surefire ticket to tech-industry riches” and “many are finding it harder than they ever thought it would be to land a job.”
The article points out that once-growing tech companies are not hiring entry-level employees and even cutting jobs, in some cases relying more on AI. Postings for software developer positions on Indeed have dropped 30% compared to pre-Covid listings. Meanwhile, the number of computer and information science majors in the U.S. has increased by 40% in the last five years with more than 600,000 graduates in those majors in 2023. As such, “The pipeline is bursting with comp-sci students who will need jobs in the next few years.”
Mark these events as inflection points in the STEM world.
What do Penn State computer science majors think? We got reactions from three of them.
“Please start using AI”
Let's face it. The competition is real. As the article tells the market is more saturated than ever with comp sci majors and there is not a lot of room for new grads in the field. AI is booming and the skyrocketing stock price of NVIDIA is proof of the same. However, will AI make comp sci obsolete? Will AI replace us? Hardly. AI itself needs monitoring. It will make our lives easier. It might hurt some low-skill workers in the IT field. As the CEO of NVIDIA said in this video, please start using AI. It is not scary. It is just a large database of information that is here to help the human race innovate, thrive, and advance faster and more efficiently. On a side note, the tradesman profession is going to boom. This article gives us a glimpse.
Het Sheth ’26
“We need more innovators and ideators”
In my understanding of the computer science world and AI, I believe no doubt jobs in the computer science department will be affected by AI (for example how GPT 4-o can create webpages now) but the "HOW" people or inventors will always have jobs. It’s scary for students to rely 100% on school, as we need more innovators and ideators in the industry. Inside computer science, many different segments like cyber security and AI will create more jobs while maybe making other sections as obsolete.
As for me, I feel my computer science degree will aid me to help and fill technology-implementation gaps. Understanding the roots and basics of the upcoming technology drift will enable me to harness in the direction I want.
-Kanika Gupta ‘26
“Programmers working directly with AI can make a ton of money”
What I'll say to this is that I believe that the current insanely competitive job market for software developers has more to do with the tech giants realizing that their development staff was bloated (with a lot of unproductive engineers), cutting a large portion of their workforce, and then having revenue data back up this assumption. This, combined with having more computer science students than ever all searching for jobs at the same time, is a far more prominent factor (today at least) than AI replacing programmers (not saying that that's out of the question in the future, but it is absolutely not the case today).
Elon Musk himself set a precedent for other tech companies. He started running the show at Twitter and demanded all remote workers come back to the office, got rid of those who refused and still got rid of a ton of the workforce that was willing to come back. I remember reading all sorts of stuff online from Twitter devs who left as well as devs from other companies who talked about all the problems that Twitter would have because of this...but Twitter is going as strong as ever. This is how the free market works and as long as AI doesn't replace us, it will sort itself out - programmers perhaps just can't expect the insane salaries that they enjoyed throughout the 2010s to be commonplace anymore.
As the article said, programmers working directly with AI can make a ton of money still - but those jobs often require Ph.D.s or lots of experience in the field. As for what I plan to do...I think a lot of that will depend on how the next round of searching for internships goes. I am getting great hands-on fast-paced experience developing applications in my current internship - and getting involved with the whole process from front end to back end with some very marketable technologies, I have a 4.0 GPA and some solid references, so I feel as though I've set myself up pretty nicely for the coming internship season, and if it ends up being the same struggle as this year (minimal responses and companies generally not giving me the time of day) then perhaps I should start pondering other options.
David Lang ’26
What are your thoughts on the rise of AI and its impact on the computer science field? Tell us in the comments.
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