Many folks seem to be confused, and think the collapse of the CS major graduation numbers at Berkeley could be linked to the 'AI is taking S…

Many folks seem to be confused, and think the collapse of the CS major graduation numbers at Berkeley could be linked to the "AI is taking SWE jobs" hysteria narrative. Here's the easiest way to see that this is false: the timeline doesn't fit. The graduating class in 2027 (first small CS cohort graduating) has students who arrived on campus as freshmen in Fall 2023, with freshman admission targets set (i.e. shrunk) by the university in Fall 2022. So, the hysteria narrative obviously doesn't match the timeline; ChatGPT didn't even come out until November 2022. Now consider the plot below; orange curve is what % of bachelor's degrees are CS degrees each year at Berkeley, and blue curve is what % of applicants applied to be a part of that graduating year, intending to be a CS major in their application (combining both junior transfer and freshman applicants). In other words: * orange measures CS graduate production * blue measures CS demand (via % of all applications to the university) What do you notice? The collapse in orange (CS grads) isn't because of a collapse in blue (demand). In fact it's the opposite: orange collapsed at a time when blue was going up. 1/

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Source: Yann LeCun (X) | 2026-04-21