New college degrees designed to job-proof graduates

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0:06This is The Indicator from Planet Money. I'm Ricky Mulvey. And I'm Waylon Wong. Case Brown is a senior at the University of Texas at San Antonio. He wants to be a doctor, maybe an anesthesiologist, or maybe an orthopedic surgeon because he used to be a baseball player. I would love to work with athletes as well. But at the end of the day, it's open to whatever I fall in love with in med school. Case entered UT San Antonio as a biology major, but he recently switched majors to something called health sciences. It's a brand new degree that the university launched this year. The idea is to make students more competitive in professional programs for medicine, dentistry and other health care careers.

0:45UT San Antonio isn't the only college that's updating its course catalog for a new generation of students. Dozens of schools have introduced artificial intelligence programs. Arizona State University offers a Bachelor's of Arts in content creation, a.k.a. influencing. Huh. Have ring light. We'll learn. I think my teen is going to be all over this program. Today on the show, we look at how colleges and universities are launching new programs they hope will attract students and train them for the jobs of the future. Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors. This message comes from Mattress Firm.

1:23If your partner's tossing and turning keeps you up at night, Mattress Firm can help. Their sleep experts will match you with a bed designed for more uninterrupted sleep, like a Tempur-Pedic made with unique temper material that absorbs motion so you can rest undisturbed. And right now, you can get a$300 instant gift toward a Tempur-Pedic total sleep solution with Mattress Purchase. Visit Mattress Firm and get a truly personalized sleep solution. They make sleep easy. This message comes from LinkedIn. As a small business owner, you wear many hats. You're the owner, the marketer, the seller, the hirer.

1:59With LinkedIn, you have the tools to help you boost your visibility, find prospective customers, and find the best team for your small business, all in one place. So while LinkedIn can't hang up all of your hats, it makes it easier to wear them all. Learn more at linkedin.com slash indicator show. This episode's sponsor is HubSpot, which offers the following message. What if instead of updating your CRM, your CRM updated you? HubSpot's self-updating CRM keeps your customer context current so you can win more deals. Learn more at HubSpot.com. Eddie Hernandez is a professor in human anatomy and physiology at UT San Antonio.

2:40His students call him Dr. H, so we will too. Dr. H said conversations about a new health sciences degree program started a few years ago. We have a fantastic biology degree here at UTSA with very long standing, but it seemed a little broad and it also seemed like it didn't reflect our specific population of students. Students like Case Brown, the senior who switched his major from biology to health sciences. A few months ago, Dr. H told Case, guess what? The college has this new major. It checks off all the prereqs that you need for medical school. Plus, you'll get more tailored courses that will prepare you for an actual career as a doctor.

3:22It was pretty much Dr. H. came to me. He was like, hey, K-Sys is new. This is how I'd benefit you. I was like, cool, sign me up. Dr. H. says the health sciences program offers a clinical anatomy lab course and an advanced physiology class. There's also hands-on training with suturing and putting a cast on someone's arm. The idea is to give these students an edge and make them more competitive when they move on to graduate school. I feel like this was the reason why I approached Case with the possibility of switching to the health sciences degree because of how many new skills he would have under his belt to be able to put on his resume and on his application one day to make him a more competitive applicant.

4:07The health sciences majors get to choose among six specialty tracks, including medicine, dentistry and physical therapy. Dr. H says by his last count, there are around 500 undergraduates in the current cohort. That's roughly 15 percent of the entire department of biology, health and the environment. And he says that if these future doctors and physicians assistants stay in Texas to build the careers, that will be another win for the program. And sustainable careers are the ultimate goal of these new degrees. That puts programs without a clear pathway to a job on the chopping block. In fact, the Trump administration has a new policy that cuts off federal loans for students pursuing degrees with low earnings potential.

4:47Pour one out for the philosophy majors. And the last decade or so has already been hard for the liberal arts in the U.S. The number of bachelor's degrees awarded in humanities is down 30 percent since 2012. That's according to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Jason Fox is the chief academic officer at the Savannah College of Art and Design in Savannah, Georgia. He taught graphic design at SCAD before that. Do you have a favorite font? That's a great question. I do. It's Univer. Some people call it Universe. I don't know that one. I know Papyrus. I don't know Univer. I'm going to look it up.

5:22Jason's college has art right there in its name, and yet it still has to make tough calls about what programs to keep. This year, the college stopped accepting new enrollees in sculpture. Students can still take sculpture classes, but they can't get a degree in it. Jason says the decisions come down to jobs and earnings potential. These aren't economic decisions. As much as they were, either A, we weren't delivering on the promise, or B, there was no promise to deliver on because there was no market out there for it. On the flip side, Jason and other administrators at SCAD realized a few years ago that there would be a huge market for college graduates with training in AI.

5:58This technology was already sweeping through creative disciplines like animation and game design. Jason started talking to people at both SCAD and in industries like film and fashion to brainstorm around AI. And in the spring of 2025, he met with a team from NVIDIA. The light bulb came on in that meeting. You know, we really need to have something in applied AI. That's something Jason realized would have to go beyond just adding AI to the syllabus in a bunch of classes. So in September of 2025, SCAD launched a new major in applied AI. NVIDIA came on board as a corporate partner. It donated graphics cards that otherwise would have cost the college$10 ,000 to$15 ,000 apiece.

6:39Close to 30 students have enrolled in the program. If they've chosen it as a major, they're required to choose a minor in another discipline, like photography or painting. The school says the program should equip students for careers in designing AI products and machines. For example, Jason pointed to a couple alums who are working on technology around digital twins. These are digital versions of real people. You can have a conversation with George Washington or a grandparent who might be at end of life and those types of things. Is there a digital twin of you that currently exists? There is not.

7:15Am I talking to him right now? No, but it's a fascinating concept. It's a fascinating and scary concept. Jason says the number one metric that the college looks at is the employment rate of graduates. And it's hard to justify programs that don't lead to sustainable careers. Parents and students, you know, they're looking for a pathway to what's next. And so when you if you're offering generalized degrees, especially in a specialty university like ours, it begs the question, OK, what am I going to do next? And at the undergraduate level, I don't think education consumers today are comfortable with that.

7:54Education consumers. Now, that's an interesting term. But it makes sense given the escalating cost of higher education. Students and their families want a monetary return on investment. The changes at SCAD have drawn some backlash. Earlier this year, students circulated a petition asking the college to eliminate a new class on using AI in filmmaking. Jason says the concerns he's heard are about environmental impacts and intellectual property. And he emphasizes that no students at SCAD are required to use AI. And SCAD isn't alone in adding AI to its roster of degrees. There are around 80 AI majors being offered in the U.S.

8:30right now, according to a tracker from Northeastern University. There are big state schools like Boise State and small private colleges like Harding University in Arkansas. But all is not lost for the liberal arts. UCLA has a new Department of Digital Humanities. The school says students will use digital tools to explore what it means to be human. That's a big question. I hope they find an answer. This is going to take years of scholarship. That's what the academic process is about, Ricky. On a serious note, I am glad that schools are thinking about how to be human in a digital world with more AI.

9:07This episode was produced by Julia Ritchie and engineered by Anli Huang. It was fact-checked by Leila Doss. Cake and Canon is our show's editor, and The Indicator is a production of NPR. It's not necromancy. It's a digital twin. Oh my gosh. You can't make a necromancy joke on the air. Communicating with the spirits of the dead to protect the future, to discover hidden knowledge. It is necromancy. This is literally necromancy. We are approaching that time of year when the veil between this world and the next gets very thin.

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