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Students observe during the final presentation of their project during a class on artificial intelligence at University of Texas at Dallas on Wednesday, May 6, 2026.<\/p>\n
Shafkat Anowar\/The Dallas Morning News<\/p>\n
\u201cWho wants to go first?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
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During the last week of the spring semester a few dozen graduate students, in a mix of sweatshirts and business attire, chatted softly around tables as they awaited the start of their Agentic AI class, a new course in the University of Texas at Dallas\u2019 M.S. in Business Analytics and Artificial Intelligence program. They were led by an affable Brazilian professor named Antonio Paes, who briefly scanned the classroom and selected one group to present their final project.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cYes, you go. I saw you debating about it,\u201d Paes announced, provoking laughs.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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The three soft-spoken young men took the front of the classroom and\u00a0\u2014 after some brief technical difficulties\u00a0\u2014 began running the sophisticated AI modeling system they had created over the past week. As AI-generated code scrolled on a large projector, they explained that their program, called Chain pilot, was designed to help businesses adjust to real-world supply chain shocks by continuously monitoring inventory and pricing. It was designed to sometimes automatically implement solutions, saving human managers critical time; in a more unique twist, it also incorporates multiple AI agents, including a \u201cskeptic\u201d agent and an \u201cadvocate\u201d agent, that are intentionally pitted against each other to help humans select the optimum solution to bigger problems. Later, another small group presented their customizable AI-powered travel planner. Another, the final group, explained how its AI model crawled the internet to identify competitors\u2019 pricing history and offer detailed recommendations.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cReally good. I think all of the applications have real use,\u201d Paes told the class. \u201cFor this last project,\u201d he added, \u201cyou can take this to any small or midsize company and try to sell that, because that can totally be used right now.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
But the burgeoning AI whizzes will still likely be entering a tough job market\u00a0\u2014 particularly for new graduates\u00a0\u2014 as many companies slow new hiring in part because of uncertainty over AI. Texas universities, including D-FW\u2019s major institutions, are trying to stay a step ahead by offering what would have been a head scratcher only a few years ago: AI bachelor\u2019s and master\u2019s degree programs, which are often paired with more traditional disciplines such as business or engineering and are designed to provide graduates with not only a basic AI fluency but a level of expertise that\u2019s intended to benefit a wide range of workplaces.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThink about it this way,\u201d said Gaurav Shekhar, an associate dean and associate professor at UT Dallas\u2019 Naveen Jindal School of Management who helped implement UTD\u2019s AI programs. \u201cFinance is a domain. Marketing is a domain. But AI is not really a domain.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
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\u2018AI is here to stay\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n
The country\u2019s first undergraduate AI degree launched in 2018\u00a0\u2014 about four years before the public launch of ChatGPT would kick off a global AI frenzy\u00a0\u2014 at Carnegie Mellon University, the Pittsburgh research university that decades earlier had also played a key role in developing the technology.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe want to be the first to offer an AI undergraduate degree program,\u201d Reid Simmons, the new program\u2019s director, said in a statement at the time. \u201cI\u2019m sure we won\u2019t be the last. AI is here to stay.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Simmons was right. As of last year, according to one higher education company\u2019s count<\/a>, more than 300 universities across the U.S. offered bachelor\u2019s or master\u2019s AI programs. More keep coming. Over just the past few months, the University of Tulsa, Southern Illinois University Carbondale and Michigan Tech have all announced new bachelor\u2019s in AI or applied AI. Syracuse announced a new bachelor\u2019s in Integrative AI, and the University of Mary Washington debuted what it called Virginia\u2019s first master\u2019s in AI in Business.\u00a0<\/p>\n Texas now counts more than 20 AI master\u2019s and bachelor\u2019s degree programs, the most of any state, according to the count by Degree Prospects, including a bachelor\u2019s at UTEP and, beginning this fall, a bachelor\u2019s through the University of North Texas\u2019\u00a0College of Engineering. That program was unveiled even as the Denton university decided to cut 12 degree programs<\/a> in fields including linguistics and gender studies because of a $45 million budget deficit.\u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n The new AI program is meant \u201cto prepare students to thrive in a ridiculously evolving world,\u201d UNT economics professor and then provost Michael McPherson, who proposed the program, said during a February board meeting<\/a>. \u201cIt sort of makes all of our heads spin, but it also addresses, I think, a growing and critical need in our society.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Other Texas universities, including Texas A&M, offer AI minors and certificate programs but not full degree programs. That could change, said \u2018Jon Jasperson, an associate dean at Texas A&M\u2019s Mays Business School, which last fall counted nearly 1,500 students across its AI in Business programs.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWhether it\u2019s, \u2018We take one of our existing degrees and reimagine it and refocus it,\u201d Jasperson said. \u201cOr whether we say, \u2018Let\u2019s create a completely new program.\u2019 \u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Through its Naveen Jindal School of Management, UTD launched a business analytics master\u2019s program in 2014 and an undergraduate program in 2022. In 2024, it renamed both programs to include AI. But the tech-heavy university had already been teaching AI-related courses for years\u00a0\u2014 the rebrand, Shekhar said, was more about updating the name to reflect the programs\u2019 offerings than tapping into a buzzy academic trend. \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThey started renaming a lot of programs around the country\u00a0\u2014 they just started calling them AI or something,\u201d Shekhar added. \u201cIt was more of a marketing need for a lot of people, but for us at UT Dallas\u00a0\u2014 literally the only thing that changed was the name.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n The four-year undergraduate program offers various concentrations, such as Marketing Analytics and AI or Finance and Risk Analytics, and requires AI-related coursework as well as core business classes. The two-year master\u2019s program offers data science and accounting analytics tracks and more niche courses such as Applied Machine Learning and Robotic Process Automation. This spring, the undergraduate program counted 50 graduates, and the master\u2019s program counted 289.<\/p>\n Antonio Paes, professor in the Business department at The University of Texas at Dallas, greets his students ahead of an AI class, on Wednesday, May 6, 2026.<\/p>\n Shafkat Anowar\/The Dallas Morning News<\/p>\n One of the biggest hits was Paes\u2019 new Agentic AI class, where 50 students\u00a0\u2014 a full enrollment\u00a0\u2014 used their advanced skills with AI tools like Claude and ChatGPT to develop projects that aimed to solve problems ranging from UTD parking issues to the scourge of medical billing errors in the American healthcare industry.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe built an agent that tracks it, which tells you line by line in a layman\u2019s language what is wrong in the bill, and it creates a PDF, which you can send to the hospital and you can dispute a charge,\u201d explained Radhey Mutha, a student in her late 20s. A financial analyst, Mutha added, would charge hundreds to get the same process started. \u201cAnd our agent does it for free.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n A knock on the door\u00a0\u2014 but not an invitation to the party \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Texas AI students\u00a0\u2014 whether they just graduated with a master\u2019s or are still a couple years from a bachelor\u2019s\u00a0\u2014 will most likely encounter a highly uncertain, rapidly changing job market. That\u2019s largely because even as the U.S. and Texas economies have maintained relatively low unemployment, both have also been stuck for years now in a \u201clow-hire, low-fire\u201d trend<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 a phenomenon driven in part by companies\u2019 decisions to pause hiring amid so much AI upheaval.\u00a0<\/p>\n Meanwhile some of the largest tech firms, including Meta, have implemented widespread layoffs<\/a> as they spend billions on AI. In Texas, where job growth was nearly flat last year and will likely remain at least slightly below the state\u2019s traditional pace this year, one recent survey showed that 10% of companies already say AI is decreasing their need for human workers<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n