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.<\/p>\n
\u201c[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,\u201d said Shapiro, noting that none of these tools were on his radar around this time last year. \u201cAfter four months of classes, I literally felt like I somehow adopted superpowers.\u201d<\/p>\n
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 \u2014 who took the course at Florida Atlantic University last spring \u2014 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.<\/p>\n
He said it taught him how to put the technology to use across every part of his life \u2014 researching and analyzing cases as a lawyer, fact-checking as a journalist and developing campaign ideas as a human rights activist.<\/p>\n
\u201cI considered returning to law school to get a master\u2019s in law, but I couldn\u2019t 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,\u201d said Shapiro, 53.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s Center for Inclusive Computing.<\/p>\n
FAU has built out its own AI footprint, including two master\u2019s degrees and seven interdisciplinary\/crossover AI programs spanning criminal justice, economics, education, linguistics and philosophy.<\/p>\n
\u201cHaving that knowledge on both sides allows you to be better informed and better prepared,\u201d Hari Kalva, FAU professor and department chair of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, said of the crossover degrees.<\/p>\n
FAU was the first university in the state to launch a Master of Science in AI program in 2019 \u2014 the same program Shapiro plans to enter once he finishes the required prerequisite classes.<\/p>\n
\u201cCompanies expect graduates to have these skills,\u201d Kalva said. \u201cOur faculty has been working on AI research for more than 30 years.\u201d<\/p>\n
Similar to Shapiro, Elivira Pichugina spent four years building a product management career before deciding to learn AI.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cAI is implemented everywhere,\u201d Pichugina said. \u201cThe last company I worked in, we were working with machine learning and apps for smartphones, and machine learning was very popular \u2026 As a product manager, I was not required to have any coding skills, but I was like \u2018I need to understand this.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Miami Dade\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
\u201c[AI is] one of those things that\u2019s transforming every sector as we know it,\u201d said Manny Perez, the school\u2019s dean of Engineering, Technology and Design. \u201c[Employers] are looking for graduates or individuals to come with that skill set.\u201d<\/p>\n
Miami Dade launched its bachelor\u2019s program in 2024, becoming one of the first among the state\u2019s 28 community colleges to do so \u2014 timing that lined up with ChatGPT\u2019s surge in popularity. Perez credited the popular chatbot\u2019s rise with fueling student interest.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen 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,\u201d he said. \u201cWe knew it would grow over time, we just didn\u2019t think that it would explode from the beginning.\u201d<\/p>\n
Enrollment hit 700 by the second semester\u2019s end.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe last thing we want is for a student to walk out saying \u2018I\u2019m walking into this new job, and I\u2019m not familiar with anything you\u2019re using,\u2019\u201d Perez said.<\/p>\n
AI moves fast, and the college rewrites its curriculum to keep up.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen AI first launched, you had \u2026 these positions that never existed started to pop up,\u201d Perez said.<\/p>\n
The university\u2019s AI course enrollment grew from nearly 2,000 students in 2021 to about 5,000 this past school year.<\/p>\n
Also among South Florida\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
Other South Florida schools are charting their own paths. Palm Beach State College\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cEverybody needs a chief AI officer 1787756350,\u201d Perez said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The world was changing faster than Jeffrey Scott Shapiro could keep up, so the Boca Raton attorney, former…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":152032,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[24,25,45309,76,1183,22298,2853,25496,66,2837,160,2365],"class_list":["post-152031","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ai","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-broward-county","tag-education","tag-florida","tag-florida-news","tag-latest-headlines","tag-miami-dade-county","tag-news","tag-palm-beach-county","tag-science","tag-social"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152031","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=152031"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152031\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/152032"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=152031"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=152031"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=152031"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}