Reddit Discussion · Apr 2026

Generalized or AI-Based Bachelor Degree? What is better for my career?

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Hi everyone I am a somewhat experienced Dev (5ish years in enterprise non public facing software), but I'm going to school to get my bachelor's degree finally, and I'm debating whether I should change

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Hi everyone I am a somewhat experienced Dev (5ish years in enterprise non public facing software), but I'm going to school to get my bachelor's degree finally, and I'm debating whether I should change majors as I'm not sure which would be best for my career. I have mainly worked on CRUD based web apps and I do enjoy it. Currently I'm on year 2 of a 3 year program. My current program is based around SWE and AI. I'm debating changing from this because I'm not sure if I really want to be in AI because I enjoy development, and I've read typically people in ML engineer roles aren't doing much development, and instead fine tune model's created by data scientists (which I'm not even sure what that includes). I also feel like typically people are more inclined to use already established AI tools rather than develop new things, such as existing LLMs. Also I’m pretty sure most ML related roles require graduate degrees which isn’t an option for me at this time. I also see that the general IT degree includes courses that I think would benefit me no matter what I do such as: Operating Systems, Cloud Architecture, Secure by Design. My remaining classes if I stay in the AI program would be: Applications of Artificial Intelligence Classification & Regression Machine Learning Principles Data Mining & Visualization 300 level elective Natural Language Processing Deep Learning Advanced Technology If I switch my remaining classes will be: Computer Architecture and Operating Systems Secure by Design Cloud Architecture Enterprise Computing Systems Smart Industry Applications Advanced Technology Work Integrated Learning Introduction to Cloud Computing IT Professional Practices I'm looking for any opinions and advice. Thanks in advance!

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