It’s time for students to start committing to colleges. The age of AI is making it complicated | CNN Business

Mary Akkerman has visited more than 30 college campuses with her children, one now at Stanford and another still in high school. She especially wanted them to get degrees that lead to good jobs – but figuring that out, said the Sioux Falls, South Dakota, parent, was a major challenge, thanks in part to the rapid advance of AI and its effects on the job market. “I constantly grapple with the idea of ‘what is value,’” Akkerman said. Nationally, the deadline for most students to commit to a college is around May 1, College Decision Day. But this year, parents and students are trying to figure out what counts as a “good return” for an education in a shifting labor market. Majors once thought of as golden tickets, like computer science, might not carry the same value as AI reshapes the tech industry. But what majors might instead benefit remains an unanswered question. “There is even more confusion now than there ever was,” said Brianna Angelucci, a parent and a college advisor with the Access to College Experts network, a subscription-based group that provides college preparation services. Average tuition and fees grew by 3.4% for the 2025 to 2026 school year for publ