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 public four-year-out-of-state institutions, totaling $31,880 per year, while private nonprofit colleges increased by 4% to reach $45,000 per year, before adjusting for inflation, according to the College Board.

At the same time, rapid advances in artificial intelligence are reshaping expectations for entry-level jobs and for recent graduates to land their first jobs. That makes it harder for families to predict how reliably a degree could translate into stable employment.

“Back in the day, we could go to college and major in what we loved… It was easy for me to find work, but these days, it’s not,” said Kate Hilgenberg, a 50-something New Yorker with one child in college and a high school junior starting applications in the fall.

Questions about which degree makes the most sense helped shape her thoughts on her kids’ future careers.

“I’m very glad my kids are going into STEM fields, because I feel like those are less able to be taken over by AI,” Hilgenberg said. “I wouldn’t let my kid go to school to be an illustrator at this point, because AI is just taking over.”

As a result, in part, of her concerns, Hilgenberg said she set firm limits on what she is willing to contribute to her children’s college expenses, leaving them to decide whether taking on debt is worth it.

Average student loan debt at graduation has increased 41% since 2007, after adjusting for inflation, according to the Education Data Initiative. College students face an average loan debt of $39,457 at graduation.

“You have to be smart about how much student loan debt you’re taking out, especially as repayment plans have become less favorable to borrowers,” said Daniel A. Collier, a professor of adult and higher education at the University of Memphis.

While the long-run impact of AI remains unclear, Collier emphasized that parents should keep the lasting benefits of a degree in mind, like on average higher life-time earnings and employment endurance during recessionary periods. Students with four-year degrees earn about 60% more than high school graduates and are less likely to be unemployed according to the College Board.

But that return can vary widely by major, the College Board said – and how AI plays into that mix will depend on how higher education meets the demands of the workforce.

For many parents, AI uncertainty is influencing how they guide their children towards certain careers and away from others.

“I encourage them to find majors that are focusing on skills that, I hate to say it, but that make money,” said Lucy Hughes, a North Carolina parent of two high school students preparing for college.

College is already “highway robbery,” Hughes said, adding that worries about how AI will impact the job market have made her more reluctant to take on debt to help her children pay for school and pickier about what they study.

“If my students wanted to be teachers, I would say, ‘No, I’m not paying for that,’ and I was a teacher,” she noted.

Alternatives like two-year degrees, trade programs and the military have become “more AI proof,” bets that are less expensive than a traditional degree for many parents, Akkerman noted.

Hughes added that community college paths have become normalized for her North Carolina community, and that the trades can send students into careers faster and with more certainty than an expensive degree in a field with unknown AI exposure.

“With AI in the past few years, it really throws a wrench in the whole process for parents,” Angelucci, the college advisor, said.