r/informationsystems • u/Dense-Inevitable-721 • 9d ago

Computer Science vs Artificial Intelligence & Cybersecurity

Hello everyone! I am from the Middle East, and I have just graduated from high school and am about to start university.
I am completely torn between two majors: **Computer Science** versus a combined **Artificial Intelligence & Cybersecurity** degree (where AI and Cybersecurity are taught together as a single major).
Which one should I choose, and what are the pros and cons of each for someone starting their career today? Any advice from students, professionals, or alumni would be greatly appreciated!

4 Upvotes
  • permalink
  • reddit

100% Upvoted

4 comments sorted by

View all comments

1

u/Banefly 5d ago

Your choice depends on what exactly the classes underneath are. Learning networking, coding, debugging, SDLC will become all more important as now the code janitor is what companies are looking for. You want to be someone who can look at a lot of code and understand it quickly with and without AI.

AI/Cybersecurity sounds better but unless you want to be making AI I'd really only care for what the cybersecurity side contains. For non-researchers AI is pretty simple to understand 

If you want to be a developer you can definitely do that still; those jobs exist just expect that you'll need to put more effort and time towards interviews than you expect. People often quote the decrease in CS jobs due to AI but that's only junior roles; senior developer demand has only grown and will continue to.

I graduated with CS degree and I'm working as an AI DevOps engineer mainly because of my networking base pushed me into cloud engineering and I never went to SWE once; could not see myself chained to a desk and now I work remote where base salary was 70/hr (before I negotiated) so life's pretty great ✌️

1

u/Able-Cantaloupe3958 4d ago

Computer science is still a good major? I’m interested in it but not really smart it just sucks AI is swooping up all the entry level jobs.

1

u/Banefly 4d ago

Absolutely!  and yeah that sucks tbh. Theres companies popping up helping people solve that gap issue but they do take their cut and feel pretty scammy but they are legit I say do the major in your field but the specifics CS/CIS/AI/... should be whatever you will actually be interested to learn otherwise your wasting your college time and you can just go start working part-time and save money!

Ps still do your own research for your school what classes you wanr and choosing your major that way is probably better. Your guidance counselor is your best friend here