Should Anyone Still Study Computer Science?

For most people who want a career building software, a four-year computer science degree is now a weak investment: writing code has gone from the hardest part of the job to the easiest, and the industry will look very different by the time a new student graduates. Entry-level hiring has already shifted; Stanford research found employment of 22 to 25 year olds in the two most AI-exposed fifths of occupations fell about 11% between late 2022 and mid-2026. The degree still builds real thinking skills, but the skills that decide careers now are understanding customers, the business, and what is worth building.

If a 17-year-old asked me tomorrow whether to study computer science, I would tell them no.

I know how that sounds from someone who has spent about twenty years in software. So let me be precise about who I mean, and why.

I mean the typical student who wants a career building software and sees a four-year degree as the way in. For that person, I don’t think the degree is worth what it costs anymore, in money or in years.

Here is the core of it. For most of the history of this industry, writing code was the heavy part of the job. It was the hardest thing to learn and the slowest thing to do. A computer science degree was built around that. Now writing code has become the easy part. The hard part moved to understanding the customer, understanding the business, and deciding what is worth building at all.

And the timing is brutal. Four years is a long time right now. A student who starts today will graduate into an industry that will look very different from the one they enrolled in. I don’t know exactly how, and neither does anyone else. That alone makes it hard to argue that four years of preparation for today’s version of the job is the smart bet.

The door into the industry has also gotten narrower. Researchers at Stanford’s Digital Economy Lab found that employment of 22 to 25 year olds in the two most AI-exposed fifths of occupations fell about 11% between November 2022 and June 2026, while for the same age group in the three least-exposed fifths it grew about 10%. The paper names software engineering among the exposed fields. Getting a first job is already harder than it used to be, and the degree doesn’t fix that.

Now, the strongest argument on the other side, because it deserves a fair hearing.

The best case for the degree is that it teaches you to think. Algorithms, data structures, systems, the theory underneath all of it. You learn to break a hard problem into parts, and you build the mental models that let you judge whether code is good. The people making this argument usually add something important: you can’t properly evaluate what an AI produces if you’ve never had to produce it yourself.

I agree that the degree builds real thinking skills. Where I differ is on how long that advantage lasts. My view is that the deep theoretical and architectural understanding the degree protects is a model generation or two away from being covered by the tools as well. I may be wrong on the timing. I don’t think I’m wrong on the direction.

And there is an honest question the industry avoids. How much of their degree do most graduates actually use at work? My gut says about five percent. That is not a study, it is twenty years of watching people join teams. Most of what makes someone good in their first years they learned on the job.

I should say where I’m coming from. I didn’t study computer science. I came into the industry through a different door and built my technical understanding through practice and a lot of self-teaching, mostly next to the people who build the systems. There are gaps in that path, and I know where some of them are. But it taught me early that the job was never really about the code. It was about the problem the code was for.

So what would I tell that 17-year-old to do with the four years? Learn how businesses work. Learn to sit with a customer and figure out what they actually need, which is rarely what they first say. Build real things with AI tools for real people, and learn to judge what comes back. If you are drawn to the deep end, like compilers or research, that is different. Study it properly, because that work still needs the foundations.

One thing to try tomorrow: if you’re deciding right now, don’t decide in the abstract. Build one small, real thing this month for one real person, using AI tools, and ask them what they would pay for it. What you learn about the gap between what you built and what they needed will tell you more about this industry than any course description.

Should anyone still study computer science? The honest answer.

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