FT journalist declares 'learn to code' era over as CS enrolment slides

FT data journalist John Burn-Murdoch declared on September 3 that the 'learn to code' era is officially over, citing charts from his newsletter on AI and the labour market showing a sharp reversal in computer science enrolment in the US and UK over the past one to two years. The shift is widely read as AI's impact on programming career prospects beginning to shape students' choices.

Confirmed

• Computer science enrolment in the US and UK, after long-term growth, has fallen sharply over the past two years, per FT data cited by Burn-Murdoch.
• Burn-Murdoch clarified he is not saying no one should learn to code; rather, the golden era of treating programming as a great career bet, with surging CS degrees and bootcamp booms, may be over.

Unconfirmed

• Economist besttrousers countered that if enrolment merely falls back to 2023 levels, that does not mean the field is dead, asking whether he was missing something — showing the magnitude of the decline and the 'era over' framing remain contested among scholars.
• That AI is the main driver of the decline is a widespread interpretation, not a rigorously verified causal conclusion.

Why it matters

• This is a landmark signal of AI's impact on higher education choices and the job market: if the enrolment reversal is indeed driven by AI's hit to programming career prospects, it would ripple through university admissions, training institutions, and the entire tech talent pipeline.

2026-09-03 ~ 2026-09-04 · 5 related posts

• [source] FT data journalist declares the "learn to code" era dead as CS enrollment drops sharply — jburnmurdoch · 2026-09-03
• CS Enrollment in US and UK Has Sharply Reversed After Years of Growth — gleech · 2026-09-03
• Economist pushes back: CS enrollment falling to 2023 levels isn't the era "dead" — besttrousers · 2026-09-04

2 near-duplicate retellings: jburnmurdoch · jburnmurdoch