AI Is Changing What High School STEM Students Study

At first In the 2010s, almost every STEM-savvy college student heard the same advice: learn to code. Python was the new Latin. Computing was the key to a stable, well-paid, future-proof life.

But in 2025, the glow has dimmed. “Learning to code” now sounds a bit like “learning shorthand.” Teenagers still want tech jobs, but they no longer see a single path to get there. AI seems poised to take over coding tasks, and there aren’t a plethora of AP classes in ambiance coding. Their teachers are scrambling to keep up.

“We are in the process of moving from as much computer science as possible to as much statistics as possible,” explains Benjamin Rubenstein, deputy director of the Manhattan Village Academy in New York. Rubenstein spent 20 years in New York City classrooms, long enough to see the “STEM pipeline” transform into a network of branching paths instead of a single straight line. For his students, studying statistics seems more practical.

Forty years ago, students inspired by NASA dreamed of becoming physicists or engineers. Twenty years later, the lure of jobs at Google or other tech giants pushed them to turn to computing. Now their ambitions are being shaped by AI, moving them away from what AI can do (coding) and toward what it still struggles with. As the number of children seeking a computer science degree declines, STEM-minded high school students are turning to fields that combine computer science with analysis, interpretation and data.

Rubenstein still requires every student to take computer science courses before graduation, “so they can understand what’s going on behind the scenes.” But his school’s math department now combines data literacy with purpose: an applied math course where students analyze New York Police Department data to propose policy changes, and an ethnomathematics course linking math to culture and identity. “We don’t want math to seem disconnected from real life,” he says.

It’s a small but telling change that Rubenstein says doesn’t happen in isolation. After a long boom, universities are seeing the growth of IT cool off. The number of computer science, computer engineering and information degrees awarded in the 2023-2024 academic year in the United States and Canada decreased by about 5.5% from the previous year, according to a survey by the nonprofit Computing Research Association.

At the secondary level, the appetite for data is visible. AP Statistics recorded 264,262 exam registrations in 2024, making it one of the most in-demand AP tests, per Education Week. AP Computer Science exams still attract large numbers of students: 175,261 students took AP Computer Science Principles and 98,136 took AP Computer Science A in 2024, but the signal is clear: Data literacy now sits next to coding, not beneath it.