AI Disrupts Graduate Jobs as Coding Roles Decline

LONDON: (News Desk) – The rapid adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) appears to be reshaping the graduate job market in the UK, with coding and software development emerging as the occupations that recorded the sharpest decline among graduates last year.

Data compiled for the 2027 University Guide, published on Saturday, also showed weaker employer demand for graduates seeking well-paid positions in financial fields, including economics and management consultancy.

Experts said graduates entering these professions could be among the first to feel the direct impact of AI as increasingly capable systems and AI agents become able to produce software, analysis and other professional work more quickly and efficiently.

Matt Hiely-Rayner, director of Intelligent Metrix, which compiles the Guardian’s university guide, said the share of computer science graduates securing professional jobs as coders or programmers had dropped from around 40% previously to just 28% last year.

The proportion of computer science graduates moving into any graduate-level occupation also fell from more than 60% two years ago to around 50%.

“With AI providing such responsive and cheap grunt work in this field, it’s hard not to conclude that this is behind the trend,” Hiely-Rayner said.

The Graduate Outcomes Survey, conducted by the Higher Education Statistics Agency, collected responses from more than 350,000 former students 15 months after they completed their courses in 2024, examining their employment and career paths.

Charlie Ball, head of labour market intelligence at Jisc, said computer science graduates appeared to be moving towards other related fields, including cybersecurity and network engineering.

“It is clear that something did happen to the software developer labour market last year,” Ball said, while cautioning that there was limited evidence to definitively attribute the change to AI. He added that AI had likely played a role in reshaping the sector.

Ball said the software industry had not collapsed, but graduates were bearing the brunt of the changes because they represent the largest group of new entrants to the workforce. He noted that pure coding positions appeared to have been particularly limited in 2025.

Economics graduates, who have traditionally benefited from strong employer demand, have also experienced changes in their employment prospects.

Ball said discussions with finance-sector employers suggested that most were not planning to replace workers with AI but were instead changing the nature of existing jobs. Employers increasingly expect new recruits to have a working knowledge of AI.

Oxford, Cambridge and LSE lead university rankings

The annual undergraduate university rankings placed the universities of Oxford and Cambridge and the London School of Economics in the top three overall. The rankings assess individual subjects using measures including academic progression, staff-to-student ratios, spending per student and graduate employment.

The 2027 tables also saw the University of Birmingham rise to its highest-ever position of 14th overall, helped by improvements in student satisfaction.

Birmingham Vice-Chancellor Adam Tickell said the university was preparing students for a changing labour market by incorporating employer-demanded skills into its courses. The university also offers undergraduates the option of taking an “intercalated year” in subjects such as AI and data science without requiring the usual prerequisites.