At the beginning In 2010, almost every kid studying STEM heard the same advice: learn to code. Python was the novel Latin. IT was a ticket to a stable, well-paid and future-oriented life.
But in 2025, the shine has faded. “Learn to code” now sounds a bit like “learn shorthand.” Teens still want a job in tech, but they no longer see one path to getting there. AI seems poised to take over coding tasks, and there aren’t many AP classes in Vibration Coding. Their teachers try to keep up.
“There’s a shift away from taking as many computer science classes as possible to trying to take as many statistics courses as possible,” says Benjamin Rubenstein, associate principal of Up-to-date York’s Manhattan Village Academy. Rubenstein spent 20 years in Up-to-date York classrooms, long enough to watch the “STEM pipeline” transform into a network of branching paths instead of one 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 working at Google and other tech giants led them to computer science. Now their ambitions are being shaped by AI, leading them away from things AI can do (coding) and towards things it still struggles with. So does the number of kids pursuing computer science degrees weakensSTEM-oriented high school students are interested in fields that combine computer science with analysis, interpretation, and data.
Rubenstein still requires every student to take computer science before graduating “so they can understand what’s going on behind the scenes.” But his school’s math department now combines data literacy with a specific purpose: an applied math class in which students analyze Up-to-date York City Police Department data to propose policy changes, and an ethnomathematics course that connects math to culture and identity. “We don’t want math to feel disconnected from real life,” he says.
It’s a diminutive but distinct change that Rubenstein says doesn’t happen in isolation. After a long period of boom, universities notice that the development of IT is leisurely. According to a study published in the US and Canada, the number of computer science, computer engineering and information science degrees earned in the 2023-2024 academic year dropped by about 5.5 percent compared to the previous year. questionnaire by the nonprofit Computing Research Association.
Already at the high school level, there is an appetite for data. AP Statistics recorded 264,262 registrations for the 2024 exams, making it one of the most frequently ordered AP tests, according to Education Week. AP computer science exams continue to attract gigantic numbers of students – in 2024, 175,261 students passed the AP computer science exam and 98,136 students passed the AP computer science A-level exam – but the message is clear: data literacy now sits alongside coding, not under it.