


The University of Colorado Boulder will soon offer a new master’s of science degree in artificial intelligence, or AI.
The university will begin offering a master’s degree in AI online in the fall and an in-person, residential format in the fall of 2026. Bobby Schnabel, a CU Boulder computer science professor, said the online degree program will be the first AI master’s degree on the Coursera platform and the residential program will be one of the early AI degrees offered at a university in the United States.
Schnabel presented information on the master’s in AI during a CU Board of Regents committee meeting on Jan. 21. The full board approved the degree program at its regular meeting on Thursday.
“Given the prominence of AI it’s quite clear we’re going to have students who want a degree in AI and employers who are looking for that sort of degree,” Schnabel said during the committee meeting.
The degree will help meet workforce and student demand, which are high for this type of degree program. Keith Molenaar, the dean of the College of Engineering and Applied Science, said enrollment is strong in the department.
“We’re somewhat battling to keep up with all the interest in computer science,” Molenaar said during the committee meeting. “But, I think you’ll see with the expertise we have and the incredible demand for AI right now, it truly is a time where we need to step up and deliver a high-quality educational experience.”
Artificial Intelligence, or AI, is the ability of computer systems to complete tasks that require significant human intelligence, like visual perception, speech recognition and planning complex tasks.
Schnabel presented statistics on job growth and average salary in AI including information from Lightcast, which provides labor market data and analytics, projecting AI jobs to grow 23% from 2023 to 2028 and offer an average salary of $123,000.
The degree will be offered by the computer science department with participation from applied math and information science. Schnabel said a lot of the AI courses needed for a master’s degree exist already, and the department has a strong base of faculty that are experts in AI and AI research.
“Our students will certainly appreciate this and I think it will be very good for the university overall,” Schnabel said.
The program will require students to complete an AI ethics course and an interdisciplinary component. CU Boulder’s existing master’s degrees in computer science and data science are successful, each enrolling more than 100 new students each year. The AI master’s degree will complement and expand the programs offered.
“One of the interesting things we’ve seen as we’ve started new programs is they haven’t drawn away from the existing programs,” Schnabel said. “It might be that the AI program draws some from the computer science and data science programs but we certainly expect that the net impact on our enrollment would still be a large increase.”
For more information, visit colorado.edu/cs.