Northeastern State University announced Thursday it would offer a new Bachelor of Science in Artificial Intelligence and Data Analytics for the coming fall semester.
The degree is a modification of existing curriculum for business students.
NSU joins just over a dozen other universities in the United States to offer degrees with specific focus on AI.
“[Companies] do look toward business graduates to bring those new skillsets into their organization to help them spread it among their employees,” said Dr. Janet Buzzard, dean of NSU’s College of Business and Technology.
Buzzard said the new program has created a lot of talk among faculty, with one computer science professor intending to earn the degree.
The ubiquity of artificial intelligence has not come without concerns, particularly around ethics. AI data centers have also been scrutinized for their heavy environmental impact.
Buzzard said using AI responsibly is built into the coursework.
“For all of our graduates, we have an ethical component,” Buzzard said. “We try to incorporate that into, say, our business law course, our business communication course, lots of different courses in the core.”
The announcement of the new degree program came the same day that artificial intelligence company OpenAI unveiled its new model, GPT-5.
