IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/crm/wpaper/26293.html

How is AI Affecting College Major and Course Choices? Evidence from Finland

Author

Listed:
  • Ciprian Domnisoru
  • Tuomas P. Heikkinen

Abstract

Have concerns about the potential job displacement effects of artificial intelligence affected the education choices of students? We analyze administrative data on the university applications and course choices of Finnish students. We find, after the launch of ChatGPT 3.5 in November 2022, a persistent drop in applications to fields of study classified as more exposed to AI under several different measures. The drop is particularly large in computer science and other ICT fields. Examining the elective course choices of non-ICT students, we find declining enrollment in programming and algorithms courses, particularly among students who had not taken mathematics as part of their high school exit exam. At the same time, non-ICT students enrolled more in AI/ML courses, and this increase was relatively larger among men.

Suggested Citation

  • Ciprian Domnisoru & Tuomas P. Heikkinen, 2026. "How is AI Affecting College Major and Course Choices? Evidence from Finland," RFBerlin Discussion Paper Series 26293, ROCKWOOL Foundation Berlin (RFBerlin).
    • Handle: RePEc:crm:wpaper:26293
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.rfberlin.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/26293.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • I21 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Analysis of Education
    • J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity
    • J64 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Unemployment: Models, Duration, Incidence, and Job Search
    • O33 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Technological Change: Choices and Consequences; Diffusion Processes

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:crm:wpaper:26293. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Moritz Lubczyk or Matthew Nibloe (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cmucluk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.