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Like many of her fellow college students, Stephanie Park has kept a close eye on how AI might affect her career prospects.
Park, 20, a sophomore at a small liberal arts college in the Northeast, tells CNBC Make It that her ultimate goal is to become a doctor and researcher. But “AI has made me wonder what those careers will look like by the time I finish training,” she says.
She’s particularly interested in patient care and “the human side of medicine,” she says, but with more people confiding in AI chatbots and consulting them for health advice, she worries that “human connection” will become less of a priority in medicine.
Many other students are wondering what their desired professions will look like in several years — or whether there will even be demand for new workers by the time they graduate. Some of them have made significant decisions because of it.
Nearly one third (31%) of students and workers currently enrolled in school have changed or considered changing their target industry due to AI, according to the CNBC and SurveyMonkey Quarterly AI and Jobs Survey published on Aug. 19. That number rises to 39% for students who are not employed.
Some students have also changed or reconsidered which skills they’re developing (45%), which jobs they’re applying for (34%) and which companies they’re hoping to join (35%), according to the survey, which polled 1,686 students and workers across the U.S. from July 22 to 27. The modeled error estimate for the survey is plus or minus 2 percentage points.
It’s natural for students to be concerned about their career prospects as AI promises to disrupt the job market, says Allison Shrivastava, education and labor market economist at Niche, a school ranking and review site.
“They’re hearing a lot of back and forth — it’s going to create jobs, it’s not going to create jobs,” she says.
But Shrivastava says she’s worried that students are “reacting before we have all the information” about how AI will impact certain careers.
Changing majors and career paths
The CNBC survey found that almost 40% of students and workers enrolled in school have considered changing their major, field of study or coursework due to AI, rising to 44% for students who are not employed.
An April report from Gallup and Lumina Foundation, an education-focused private nonprofit, reported similar results: About 42% of bachelor’s degree students and about 56% of associate degree students say that they’ve given at least “a fair amount” of consideration to changing their majors due to AI concerns, based on a survey of 3,801 U.S. students conducted in October 2025.
Many students are worried about whether “the time and the money that they’re investing in getting these degrees is going to pay off” in the job market, Courtney Brown, Ph.D., vice president of impact and planning at Lumina Foundation, told CNBC Make It in April.
Jessica Roffe, a career coach for college students and the founder of coaching company Career Beginnings, says she understands why students are “very hesitant about certain majors” right now. Take computer science, for example: the unemployment rate for computer science graduates rose to 7% as of 2024, and after over-hiring several years ago, “a lot of the big tech companies” have slowed down their on-campus recruiting efforts, she says.
But that doesn’t mean that computer science isn’t a worthwhile major, she says: “Every type of industry needs computer science students, not just the big tech companies, so if you can pivot and be a computer scientist at a bank or a hospital, you can still be really valuable.”
Skills students should focus on
Rather than try to figure out which career field or major will give them the best guarantee of finding a job, students should instead consider “what kind of skills that they should build to make themselves more marketable,” Roffe says.
Critical thinking skills are “huge” in today’s job market, according to Roffe, as well as “problem-solving, curiosity and skepticism.” Those abilities are particularly crucial in roles that heavily involve AI, she says: Employers are looking for workers who can rigorously evaluate AI outputs, rather than “just taking what it says and believing it.”
Shrivastava hopes that students will pursue fields that they’re genuinely excited about — not just the occupations that they think will provide the most job opportunities.
“You don’t have to have it all figured out,” she says. “You should work hard and study what you’re interested in, what you’re good at, and keep those things in consideration.”
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