[News Today] AI-RELATED MAJORS GAIN POPULARITY

[LEAD]
Finding jobs are becoming difficult and industries are changing day by day. This shift has also affected major preferences among college students. Of natural science majors, practical fields like artificial intelligence and semiconductor studies are now leading, aside from medicine.

[REPORT]
The analysis covers 10 top universities in the capital area including Seoul National University, Yonsei University and Korea University.

It looks into the top-three college majors based on regular admission cut-off scores for the 2024 academic year.

Of 39 natural science majors, excluding medicine, majors related to artificial intelligence and semiconductor engineering topped the ranks.

They were trailed by majors related to computer science and electrical and electronic engineering.

The popularity of AI and semiconductor majors has been on the rise each year since 2021, surpassing electrical and electronic engineering as well as computer science, which used to be highly popular in the past.

Changes in the industrial structure and difficulties in finding jobs upon graduation seems to be influencing students' choices.

The ranking includes many college departments that have early employment contracts with chip giants such as Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, attesting to the fact that students prefer majors that guarantee stability and employment benefits.

The trend is expected to continue for the time being amid a prolonged stagnant job market.

However, the dominant preference for medical colleges and the medical school enrollment quota hike could affect students' choices of major.

Lim Sung-ho / CEO, Jongro Academy
The expanded medical school enrollment quota could hamper efforts to attract top-performing students to AI, semiconductor departments continuously.

The preference for more practical majors is evident in humanities as well.

Business management still remains popular.

Economics, media and statistics majors, which require hands-on skills such as big data analysis, are also drawing more attention these days.

Not a single linguistics major has made it to the ranks this time, prompting calls for humanities colleges to unearth policy-related majors in line with industrial changes.