The Indicator from Planet Money - New college degrees designed to job-proof graduates

Episode Date: October 1, 2026

What do influencing, AI and health sciences have in common? They’re all degree programs colleges have launched in the last few years to attract students looking for a new career path. On today's show, how colleges are rethinking degrees for a changing job market.Fact checking by Leyla Doss. Your Next Listen — Community colleges are kind of underrated Connect with The Indicator — Sign up for The Indicator’s weekly newsletter! — Buy the Planet Money book — Find our socials, YouTube and more! — For sponsor-free episodes, subscribe to NPR+ Support public media with NPR+ and enjoy perks for over 25 podcasts like this one. This show’s perks include sponsor-free listening. Learn more at plus.npr.org. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

NPR. This 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 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 healthcare careers. UT 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, aka influencing. Huh, have ringlight. 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. Eddie Hernandez is a professor in human anatomy and physiology at UT San Antonio. His 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 longstanding, 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 prerex that you need for medical school. plus you'll get more tailored courses that will prepare you for an actual career as a doctor. It was pretty much Dr. H. Cammy was like, hey, case, this is new. This is how it 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. reason why I approached a 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. The health sciences majors get to choose among six specialty tracks, including medicine, dentistry, and physical therapy. Dr. H. says by his last count, they're around 500 undergraduates in the current cohort.

That's roughly 15% 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. Pour 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% 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 Univir. Some people call it Universe. I don't know that one. I know papyrus. I don't know

Uyver. I'm going to look it up. Jason's college has art right there at 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 are economic decisions. As much as they were, Either A, we weren't delivering all 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. This 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 and 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 a piece. Close to 30 students have enrolled in the program.

If they've chosen it as a major, they're required to choose. 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? And am I talking to him right now? No, no. But it's a fascinating, 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 hours. It begs the question, okay, what am I going to do next? And at the undergraduate level, I don't think education consumers today are comfortable with that. Education 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 SCAT have drawn

some backlash. Earlier this year, students circulated a petition asking the college to eliminate a new class on using AI and filmmaking. Jason says the concerns he's heard are about environmental impacts and intellectual property. Andy 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. right 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 can 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. This episode was produced by Julia Ritchie and engineer by Onli Huang. It was fact-checked by Leila Doss. Cake and Canon is our show's editor and the indicator is a person.

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 necromanic. This is literally necroman. We are approaching that time of year when the veil between this world and the necks gets very thin.