Computer science was the ticket to a stable, well-paid, future-proof life. AI seems poised to snatch up coding jobs, and there aren’t a plethora of AP classes in vibe coding. Twenty years after that, the allure of jobs at Google or other tech giants sent them into computer science. The number of computer science, computer engineering, and information degrees awarded in the 2023–2024 academic year in the US and Canada fell by about 5.5 percent from the previous year, according to a survey by the nonprofit Computing Research Association. AP computer-science exams still draw big numbers—175,261 students took AP Computer Science Principles, and 98,136 took AP Computer Science A in 2024—but the signal is clear: Data literacy now sits alongside coding, not beneath it.