The world was changing faster than Jeffrey Scott Shapiro could keep up, so the Boca Raton attorney, former White House official and investigative journalist enrolled in a graduate course on the fundamentals of AI, chasing an edge in a job market where AI-literate postings exploded 1,300% between 2024 and 2025.
“[Taking the class] was a pretty amazing experience for me, because it was an opportunity to step outside my knowledge base, and learn something totally new that is revolutionizing the world,” said Shapiro, noting that none of these tools were on his radar around this time last year. “After four months of classes, I literally felt like I somehow adopted superpowers.”
Coursework once confined to computer science departments is being rebuilt around applied AI, aimed not just at engineers but at lawyers, journalists, nurses and business majors. Shapiro — who took the course at Florida Atlantic University last spring — is one of thousands of South Florida students and professionals turning to AI classes, as local colleges and universities work to keep up with demand.
He said it taught him how to put the technology to use across every part of his life — researching and analyzing cases as a lawyer, fact-checking as a journalist and developing campaign ideas as a human rights activist.
“I considered returning to law school to get a master’s in law, but I couldn’t justify how that would actually expand my knowledge these days. When I found out about this program and thought about all the ways that understanding artificial intelligence could help me as a lawyer, as a journalist and as a human rights activist, I knew it was the right move,” said Shapiro, 53.
Nationally, the number of colleges offering dedicated AI degrees has grown from just five in 2021 to more than 70 today, according to Northeastern University’s Center for Inclusive Computing.
FAU has built out its own AI footprint, including two master’s degrees and seven interdisciplinary/crossover AI programs spanning criminal justice, economics, education, linguistics and philosophy.
“Having that knowledge on both sides allows you to be better informed and better prepared,” Hari Kalva, FAU professor and department chair of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, said of the crossover degrees.
FAU was the first university in the state to launch a Master of Science in AI program in 2019 — the same program Shapiro plans to enter once he finishes the required prerequisite classes.
“Companies expect graduates to have these skills,” Kalva said. “Our faculty has been working on AI research for more than 30 years.”
Similar to Shapiro, Elivira Pichugina spent four years building a product management career before deciding to learn AI.
The international student from Russia is finishing up her Associate in Science degree in Applied Artificial Intelligence and will transition into a Bachelor of Science in the same field at Miami Dade college, where AI course enrollment has soared 150% annually over five years.
“AI is implemented everywhere,” Pichugina said. “The last company I worked in, we were working with machine learning and apps for smartphones, and machine learning was very popular … As a product manager, I was not required to have any coding skills, but I was like ‘I need to understand this.’”
Miami Dade’s AI course enrollment jumped from about 100 students in 2021 to nearly 1,700 in the 2025-2026 school year. The college added AI faculty across its eight campuses to keep pace with demand, a media spokesperson told the South Florida Sun Sentinel.
“[AI is] one of those things that’s transforming every sector as we know it,” said Manny Perez, the school’s dean of Engineering, Technology and Design. “[Employers] are looking for graduates or individuals to come with that skill set.”
Miami Dade launched its bachelor’s program in 2024, becoming one of the first among the state’s 28 community colleges to do so — timing that lined up with ChatGPT’s surge in popularity. Perez credited the popular chatbot’s rise with fueling student interest.
“When we launched the AI program, we said we were going to have like 60 students in the year. At the end of the first semester, we were above 120,” he said. “We knew it would grow over time, we just didn’t think that it would explode from the beginning.”
Enrollment hit 700 by the second semester’s end.
“The last thing we want is for a student to walk out saying ‘I’m walking into this new job, and I’m not familiar with anything you’re using,’” Perez said.
AI moves fast, and the college rewrites its curriculum to keep up.
An industry advisory board that has representatives from Microsoft, Intel and other tech brands meets twice a year to steer those revisions, keeping the coursework tied to what employers actually need, Perez said. AI classes typically teach students how to work with data, understand how AI learns patterns and use AI tools in everyday jobs.
“When AI first launched, you had … these positions that never existed started to pop up,” Perez said.
The university’s AI course enrollment grew from nearly 2,000 students in 2021 to about 5,000 this past school year.
Also among South Florida’s institutions is Nova Southeastern University, whose AI-related course enrollment climbed from 142 last fall to 1,623 this fall, a media spokesperson told the South Florida Sun Sentinel. Students pursuing AI minors and majors grew from eight five years ago to 167 today.
Other South Florida schools are charting their own paths. Palm Beach State College’s small AI program doubled in size within a year, Florida International University reported a 30% enrollment increase over two years, and Broward College is just getting its AI program off the ground.
“Everybody needs a chief AI officer 1787756350,” Perez said.