Key Takeaways
- USC’s Viterbi School of Engineering is debuting an undergraduate AI major housed in the new Mark and Mary Stevens School of Computing and Artificial Intelligence, focusing on building and applying AI systems.
- UCLA is launching the nation’s first freestanding Department of Digital Humanities, offering a bachelor’s degree that integrates AI and digital tools with fields such as sociology, archaeology, history, and race‑gender studies.
- Both programs require mandatory ethics coursework, reflecting growing concerns about bias, accountability, and the societal impact of AI.
- Educators say the new degrees respond to market demand from students and employers who want graduates who can both create AI technology and critically assess its uses.
- While AI‑focused majors are expanding at schools like UC SB, SDSU, Carnegie Mellon, MIT, and Penn, elite institutions such as Stanford, UC Berkeley, and Caltech are taking more integrated or graduate‑level approaches.
- Digital humanities remain rare; only a few universities offer minors or research centers, making UCLA’s department a notable outlier.
- Alumni anecdotes illustrate how interdisciplinary training can differentiate graduates in the job market, from real‑estate private equity to AI‑driven nonprofit fundraising.
- Experts warn that rapid curriculum development risks obsolescence, urging continual revision to keep pace with evolving technology.
The Surge of AI‑Focused Degrees Across California
As the 2024‑25 academic year gets underway, Los Angeles‑area universities are racing to embed artificial intelligence into their curricula. “They’re meeting market demand,” said Michael Horn, a faculty member at the Harvard Graduate School of Education who studies education trends. Horn noted that universities are receiving “a signal from both students and families” that what students learn must be relevant to future employers. This pressure has prompted USC and UCLA to unveil distinct but complementary pathways: one centered on building AI systems, the other on applying AI to humanistic inquiry.
USC Launches Its First Undergraduate AI Major
At the University of Southern California, the Viterbi School of Engineering is introducing an inaugural undergraduate artificial intelligence degree. The major resides within the newly formed Mark and Mary Stevens School of Computing and Artificial Intelligence, a subdivision of the engineering school. According to the announcement, students will spend four years “learning to build the technology and to apply it to fields as far apart as drug discovery, robotics and agriculture.” Erik Johnson, Viterbi’s vice dean for academic programs, explained that the initiative grew out of a joint program with the business school that began “about six or seven years ago, well before ChatGPT popped on the scene.” The new degree diverges from that earlier effort by teaching students not merely to use AI systems but to “design and build them.” Johnson anticipates an eventual cohort of roughly 50 new students each year, with about 200 enrolled in the major at any given time.
Curriculum and Ethical Training at USC
Ethics is woven throughout USC’s AI curriculum. Johnson stressed that “Teaching the ethics of AI is ‘absolutely essential,’” noting that every student must complete a semester‑long ethics course, which is also integrated into other major classes. The syllabus prompts learners to wrestle with real‑world dilemmas: “Who is responsible when a self‑driving car injures someone or damages property? How does bias enter algorithms used in policing? What is the hidden human labor behind tech systems advertised as automated?” Murali Annavaram, a professor of electrical and computer engineering, likened AI to a calculator: it “frees a student from memorizing all formulas, such as pi to the fourth decimal, but not from knowing whether an answer is right.” He added that employers seek engineers who can “use AI to move faster while also checking what it produces.”
Student Perspective: Duncan Deng’s AI Ambitions
Incoming AI major Duncan Deng, a robotics competitor from Beijing, exemplifies the hands‑on focus of the program. Deng told reporters that he originally planned to study mechanical engineering but “quickly realized that algorithms, not the hardware, decide how robots behave.” He described an experiment in China where he applied image recognition to strawberry pollination, a technique that could theoretically reduce the labor needed for indoor farms lacking bees. “AI software can identify each open blossom and direct a robotic arm—or a worker—to release pollen with the precision needed to avoid deformed fruit,” Deng said. His ultimate goal is to deploy AI on farms and launch his own company, illustrating how the major aims to translate classroom learning into entrepreneurial ventures.
UCLA Pioneers a Freestanding Department of Digital Humanities
While USC concentrates on building AI, UCLA is charting a different course by opening what officials call the nation’s first freestanding Department of Digital Humanities. The department evolves from a longstanding minor that began in 2011 with roughly 25 students per year and has since swelled to over 200 enrollees, making it one of the campus’s most popular minors. Alexandra Minna Stern, dean of the UCLA Humanities Division, said the expansion reflects “growing demand” in Los Angeles, a hub where media, tech, and the arts intersect. She projects the new bachelor’s degree will eventually attract 150 to 300 students. Stern emphasized that the goal is neither to glorify nor to condemn AI, but to foster a nuanced understanding: “It is not ‘woohoo, let’s all learn AI,’ she said. Nor is it ‘oh no … AI is the new dreaded tool.’”
UCLA’s Digital Humanities Curriculum and Faculty Insights
Coursework in the digital humanities major blends technical training with critical reflection. Todd Presner, a professor of European languages and transcultural studies who examines how Holocaust history appears online, plans to show students that “AI has a past students are rarely taught.” He noted, “We didn’t just get large language models in 2022 out of nowhere. There was about seven decades of work that had to happen,” tracing the lineage to late‑1940s language‑statistics studies. One of Presner’s exercises has students employ language models to construct historical narratives, then deliberately manipulate them to reveal “tremendous possibilities for misinformation, disinformation, propaganda, distortion.” Wendy Kurtz, another faculty member, added that students will “work with messy data and think about what we do with gaps,” aiming to prepare them “not just to navigate and use technology ethically, but to critically shape it as they move into the workforce.” Alumni such as Cynthia Gong, a 2023 graduate who applied accessible‑design principles in real‑estate private equity, and Kedaar Sridhar, whose computer science background combined with digital humanities coursework helped him stand out to recruiters at Microsoft, Google, and Uber, illustrate the program’s practical value.
Market Demand and Employer Expectations
Horn’s observation about market signals is echoed by alumni and hiring managers. Sridhar recalled that during job interviews, recruiters asked about the “handful of courses he took in technology and the humanities,” and one hiring manager remarked, “Wow, that’s exactly what we do in our role today.” Horn cautioned, however, that the novelty of these programs carries risk: “the real risk is that any new educational program now will age badly. By the time a course is written and approved through a typically slow academic review, the teaching could be ‘out of date or in a different direction from the field.’” This tension underscores the need for curricula that remain agile, continually revisiting both technical foundations and ethical implications.
Broader National Context and Outlook
The movement extends beyond Los Angeles. UC Santa Barbara is also launching an AI major this fall, while San Diego State began a bachelor’s in artificial intelligence and human responsibility last year—the first of its kind in the California State University system, pairing computer science with AI ethics and technology‑and‑the‑body courses. Elite private institutions such as Carnegie Mellon, MIT, and the University of Pennsylvania already confer undergraduate AI degrees, and Northwestern’s program starts this fall. In contrast, Stanford offers AI as one of ten tracks within its computer science major, UC Berkeley announced a new master’s in AI and machine learning, and Caltech favors an integrated approach, training students to grasp AI fundamentals so they can apply the tools across disciplines. Digital humanities remain scarce; no Ivy League school or flagship public university such as Michigan or Virginia offers a dedicated degree or department, though Penn provides a minor and Princeton and Johns Hopkins host research centers.
Conclusion: Balancing Innovation with Caution
As USC and UCLA roll out their distinctive AI‑centric and digital‑humanities pathways, they embody a broader academic response to a technology that has rapidly shifted from niche chatbots to a pervasive societal force. The programs strive to equip graduates with both the technical prowess to construct AI systems and the critical lens to interrogate their consequences—anchored by mandatory ethics coursework and real‑world projects. Yet, as Horn warns, the speed of innovation threatens to outpace the slower gears of academic approval, potentially leaving curricula outdated before they even reach the classroom. The challenge for educators, therefore, lies in building flexible frameworks that can evolve alongside AI, ensuring that students are not only prepared for today’s jobs but also capable of shaping the responsible development of tomorrow’s technology.
https://www.govtech.com/education/higher-ed/ucla-and-usc-announce-new-ai-focused-degree-programs