William Melhado and Mariana Sanchez
October 5, 2026
California State University is betting that artificial intelligence will transform the workplace — and that its 470,000 students need to learn how to use it before they graduate.
Last year, CSU became the nation’s first public university system to pay for students’ access to ChatGPT Edu. It has awarded over $3 million in grants for faculty to experiment with how to use AI in classrooms. Several campuses now train students in how to responsibly use the technology.
Those measures are all pieces of CSU’s strategy to prepare students for a future labor market reshaped by AI. But the investment in AI has come under criticism from some CSU faculty, and some students remain skeptical of the value of knowing how to use AI even as most are concerned the developing technology will threaten their chances of landing a job and keeping it.
The success of CSU’s AI strategy will depend on the extent to which AI affects the workforce that today’s college students will soon enter.
Hiring is frozen in many sectors right now as employers wait to see the true extent artificial intelligence will change the labor market, said Eric Bettinger, a leading education economist with Stanford Graduate School of Education. But it’s not clear if the slowdown in the labor market can be attributed to AI.