Starting in the 2026-27 academic year, UC Santa Barbara’s Robert Mehrabian College of Engineering will offer a new major in Artificial Intelligence to a select group of incoming computer science students. The college plans to make the major available to all students by the 2027-28 academic year.
The CoE’s new AI major will be interdisciplinary, consisting of CS courses, six AI-centric courses and various electives. Jaesa Verdaguer / Daily Nexus
The proposal for the new major was developed by a group of computer science (CS) professors to meet the demands of the Artificial Intelligence (AI) industry, which has experienced exponential growth and impact over the last few years. The major’s developers hope it can prepare future generations of UCSB students for a world where AI will be integral to various facets of life.
The major will be interdisciplinary, consisting of CS courses, six AI-centric courses and various electives. Students in the major will be able to build AI programs and Large Language Models (LLMs) to prepare them for the industry upon graduation.
Over 193 American universities currently offer AI bachelor’s programs, with UCSB and UC San Diego (UCSD) being the first UCs to offer it. First-year computer engineering (CE) major Mordecai Araya said he sees the new major as beneficial in terms of expanding program options.
“I would say the College of Engineering is pretty small,” Araya said. “We have like five majors, so it is interesting to see that they’re adding [a sixth].”
Araya said that he views the new major’s interdisciplinary curriculum as a “cool option” for students interested in studying CS, CE, data science and statistics. He said that he believes the new major will be similar to the current CS and CE curriculum.
“There’s sort of a skills gap, but I think a lot of the main concepts that you would be getting from an artificial intelligence degree are just more niche forms of computer science or computer engineering,” Araya said.
According to second-year CS major Neal Jain, the College of Engineering (CoE) currently offers only a few CS courses related to AI and machine learning (ML). Jain said he hopes the new AI-centric courses will be available to other engineering students, allowing them to diversify their skill sets.
“Currently, we only have [CMPSC] 165A and [CMPSC] 165B, which are artificial intelligence and machine learning courses,” Jain said. “The other courses are offered very infrequently, like natural language processing and deep learning. Deep learning is [CMPSC] 190I, and it’s a special subjects course. I don’t think the entire time that I’ve been here that it’s been offered yet.”
Current CS majors must take various upper-division courses to fulfill an unofficial elective track of their choosing, one of which is AI and ML, which Jain aims to pursue. While this track for CS students was an option prior to the new major, Jain sees the new major as necessary, considering how quickly developments in AI occur.
“There’s new research that’s getting posted every single day, and so in a year or two from now — which I think is when they’re planning on rolling [the AI major] out — it’s gonna be completely different from what everything looks like now,” Jain said.
Currently, AI technology developed by companies like OpenAI, Google, Meta and Anthropic relies on data centers — large facilities used to house computer systems and data — to train and run LLMs. These facilities require significant amounts of water to cool the extensive computing systems and prevent processing chips from overheating. Data centers have seen increased energy usage since the AI boom, requiring more water to keep their networks running efficiently.
First-year computer science major Brielle McBarron said that she’s concerned by the negative environmental impacts associated with AI technology, but views the new major as a potential solution.
“I think the College of Engineering introducing the new AI major could be really beneficial,” McBarron said. “Specifically allowing students to focus on that might allow there to be more research into how to make it more efficient and not as bad for the environment. I think the new major could be really good for the future of AI.”
The goal of many companies currently working on AI research and development is to create Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), an AI system that can learn and reason on the same level as a human — essentially recreating the human brain’s cognitive abilities. The feasibility of AGI is uncertain due to limitations in the processing and computing capabilities of current technology.
Due to this, the extent of AI’s potential is also unknown, but Jain said that this uncertainty shouldn’t prevent the development of the new major because of how “useful” the technology is.
“AI has become such an integral part of how [companies] do what they do,” Jain said. “I think that even though the current structure of large language models may not lead to Artificial General Intelligence, I don’t think that that would prevent [AI] from having a really big impact on the world.”
According to an email sent by CS undergraduate advising to undergraduate CS students, the change of major requirements for the AI major will be published by Fall 2028, and change of major applications will begin to be accepted for the 2028-29 academic year.
The email listed mandatory requirements for eligibility to switch into the major, including that an applicant must have been admitted as a first-year to UCSB and completed 30 UC units. Additionally, they must have completed up to six academic quarters at UCSB or any other academic institution and never been on academic review.
Due to these requirements, only current first-years and students who have not yet matriculated as admitted freshmen would be eligible to switch into the AI major in the future.
While Jain is ineligible to transfer into the major as a current second-year, he doesn’t object because he believes the major may limit a student’s work opportunities upon graduation.
“I’m interested in a lot of other fields in computer science as well, and I don’t know how the artificial intelligence major would work, but if it does limit you to just exploring AI, then from what I’ve understood with the artificial intelligence major, I would want to remain as a CS major,” Jain said.
According to McBarron, the email sent from CS undergraduate advising highlighted that many CoE students are interested in transferring into the new major.
“I’ve been thinking about it, but I’m not too decided on it yet. I think I still would have gone with my major, but I think it would have been a good option to have,” McBarron said. “It’s definitely in high demand, like in that email I was talking about, they mention that there’s a lot of people thinking about doing it.”
A version of this article appeared on p. 4 of the March 5, 2026 edition of the Daily Nexus.
I am so very proud to see that UCSB is at the very forefront of AI learning and innovation. Isn’t it but small wonder that it has so many Noble laureates on its faculty and research teams to date? I can hardly wait five to seven years from now when quantum computing begins to hit its evolutionary stride in its full exponential force! Imagine the unique coding perspectives that will be developed in this field–AI learning will definitely be radically modified when we hit this milestone. I have been closely following Rigetti Computing on the stock market exchange and it… Read more »