What the Ivy League is doing to hire students in the age of AI

Concerns are spreading across university campuses that artificial intelligence will forever change the future career plans of students.

“Higher education needs to do better,” said Joseph Catrino, founding director of Dartmouth’s Center for Career Design. “We need to do better for our students. We need to step up and help prepare our students.”

The Ivy League university recently raised $30 million in endowments to support internship opportunities. Students can now access up to $6,500 in any period to fund unpaid or low-paid internships. “This allows students to explore and engage in areas they wouldn’t normally be able to,” Catrino said.

Many other universities have launched similar efforts to increase student employment in a rapidly changing labor market. These schools say additional internships, externships and on-the-job work can make it easier for students to find jobs after graduation.

Last year, the City University of New York launched a major initiative to improve the career outcomes of its 180,000 undergraduate students by integrating career-related advising, paid internships, apprenticeships, and collaboration with industry experts across all academic disciplines.

“Success depends on our ability to change and adapt,” City University of New York President Felix Matos Rodriguez said in a statement regarding the announcement. “It’s not enough for students to graduate with a degree…they must graduate with direction, preparation, experience, and connections.”

The impact of AI is putting tremendous pressure on schools to address students’ concerns about the labor market at a time when many were already questioning the return on investment of higher education.

“We have to work on it and we have to be nimble and move quickly,” Catrino said. “There are big challenges ahead for higher education.”

According to CNBC and SurveyMonkey’s quarterly AI and Jobs Survey, two-thirds of students are pessimistic about the job market, and four in 10 students have considered changing their field of study because of AI.

The survey found that around 36% are considering changing the industry they target, and 49% are considering changing the skills they focus on developing. In April, the two companies conducted a survey of approximately 3,600 people, including approximately 800 students in the United States.

Eric Greenberg, president of Greenberg Education Group, a New York-based consulting firm, says the percentage of students changing majors is high now, but is likely to rise even higher in the coming years.

“What makes choosing a major especially complicated right now is that we cannot predict which majors will be most or least affected by AI. Of course, AI could dramatically change job prospects,” he said.

Other recent reports have also shown that students are rushing to change their majors, largely due to concerns about the impact of AI on the labor market and employment prospects.

“There’s a lot of noise being made,” Dartmouth’s Catrino said, referring to the recent spate of large-scale layoff announcements and declines in entry-level job openings, which some experts say could be the beginning of an AI-driven employment apocalypse.

However, some industries are more prone to disruption than others. Jobs in technology and finance, for example, are at great risk from generative artificial intelligence that has the potential to replace human analytical skills, according to Indeed’s 2025 report.

Another 2025 Stanford University report found that new employees in jobs that expose them to AI, such as software development and customer support, are already experiencing job losses.

A Dallas Fed analysis of government data in January also found that jobs most exposed to AI, such as technology, have seen the largest declines in employment.

Nevertheless, the overall impact of AI on early career roles remains small, the Fed researchers said.

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