AI Skills Aren’t Everything: Companies Look for These Top 10 Degrees When Hiring New Grads |
AI Skills Aren’t Everything: Companies Look for These Top 10 Degrees When Hiring New Grads
New survey data shows most employers prioritize degrees degrees with practical business applications over AI and tech diplomas when they recruit younger people.
BY BRUCE CRUMLEY @BRUCEC_INC
Illustration: Getty Images
Since most companies pared back hiring to the barest minimum over the last year or so, finding work has become agonizingly difficult for many job seekers. And as more employers adopt artificial intelligence (AI) tools to automate an increasing number of basic tasks previously done by entry-level hires, the labor market has become toughest for recent college graduates.
In an apparent contradiction, however, new survey data indicates that businesses that are still hiring younger people are prioritizing holders of recently-earned diplomas unrelated to AI development or other tech specialties. (Pro tip: get good at reading a balance sheet.)
The hype about businesses rushing to automate their workplaces by developing or adopting AI apps can be deafening at times. Yet the Winter 2026 Salary Survey by the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) found companies focused on other priorities when they decided to reinforce staffing. Indeed, only two tech-rooted degrees were among the top 10 academic disciplines that businesses said they looked for while recruiting.
People with degrees in finance topped the list of recruits, followed by recent grads who studied mechanical engineering. Accounting, business administration and management, and electrical engineering were respectively the fourth-, fifth-, and sixth-most sought-after diplomas that employers said they focused on when they hired.
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That left computer science and information sciences and systems grads as the third- and seventh-most sought-after work candidates by companies that said they’re hiring new workers. So ends the reign of the geeks, even in the AI age.
As further proof that neither AI developers nor tech specialists generally continue dominating today’s labor market, degrees in logistics/supply chain management, marketing, and human resources closed out the top 10 most sought-after diplomas.
But the NACE survey also contained some good news for job seekers with degrees that didn’t make the top 10 — so long as they can get hired, that is.Feedback from employers found that companies bucking the current no-hire trend are willing to pay recruits higher salaries than last year. As a result, “nearly all reported categories of majors for Class of 2026 graduates earning bachelor’s degrees are showing healthy increases,” ranging from 3.1 percent to 6.9 percent hikes.