Artificial intelligence is fundamentally reshaping what college students study and how they plan their careers, with a landmark survey of over 94,000 students across California's public university system revealing that nearly half have seriously considered changing their major or field of study because of AI's potential impact on the job market.
The findings, reported by Axios on April 7, 2026, come from a San Diego State University-led study conducted across 22 California State University campuses—described as the largest examination of artificial intelligence in higher education to date. The research captures a critical moment when students are making educational decisions amid rapid technological change, with uncertain implications for their future employment prospects.
Student Concerns About Job Security
According to the SDSU study, nearly every respondent had used AI, and most students feel the technology has positively affected learning. However, a significant concern runs through student responses: while the majority believe AI will be essential to most professions and will play a significant role in their careers, many are worried about its impact on job security.
The data on major-switching decisions reveals the depth of student anxiety. According to recent polling from Lumina Foundation and Gallup cited by Axios, 14% of currently enrolled college students have thought "a great deal" and 33% have thought "a fair amount" about changing their major or field of study because of AI's potential effect on the job market or specific industries. Notably, 16% of students have already changed their major because of concerns about AI's impact.
These decisions are not distributed evenly across student populations. Male students show higher rates of major-switching consideration at 60%, compared with 38% among female students. Students in technology fields report the highest rate at 70%, followed by vocational fields at 71%, compared with business at 54%, humanities at 54%, and engineering at 52%.
Institutional Responses Remain Uneven
In response to AI's growing influence, California's public universities have taken varying approaches. Last fall, San Diego State University added the first AI degree to the California State University system. Additionally, UC San Diego offers an AI major, and the University of San Diego provides an AI master's degree program.
The CSU system itself deployed a custom educational ChatGPT across all campuses last year, providing California college students with free AI training and resources. However, this institutional support faces uncertainty. Axios reports that the CSU's ChatGPT contract expires in July, and an online petition with more than 3,400 signatures calls for the university system to cancel the contract and "invest in humans." This petition reflects concerns that AI tools may be substituting for human instruction and mentorship rather than supplementing them.
The SDSU study found that while colleges' approaches toward AI are uneven—with some institutions hesitant and others fully embracing the technology—students across campuses are broadly adopting AI in their academic work and career planning.
Why This Matters:
The reshaping of college majors driven by AI concerns reflects a fundamental challenge in democratic societies: how educational institutions serve students when technological change outpaces institutional capacity to assess long-term labor market impacts. The data suggests students are making significant educational decisions based on incomplete information about which skills and fields will remain valuable in an AI-integrated economy. This creates a potential equity problem, as students with fewer economic resources may make more risk-averse choices, while wealthier students can afford to explore less immediately "AI-proof" fields. The petition calling for universities to "invest in humans" rather than AI tools raises questions about whether public institutions are adequately protecting the human relationships and mentorship that form the foundation of higher education. The uneven institutional approaches across California's universities also suggest that without coordinated policy guidance, students at different campuses may receive vastly different preparation for an AI-shaped job market, potentially exacerbating existing inequalities in educational access and outcomes.