AI literacy is no longer an elective at Pepperdine University. Starting fall 2026, every undergraduate at Seaver College can take a new AI skills course as part of the university’s core curriculum — not as a niche offering for computer science majors, but as a fundamental requirement alongside writing, quantitative reasoning, and ethics.
The course is open to students of all majors and minors, from business to public relations to biology. It’s designed to teach critical thinking with AI, hands-on use of tools beyond chatbots, ethical considerations, and career preparation for a workforce where AI proficiency is rapidly becoming non-negotiable.
Not Just ChatGPT 101
Ben Postlethwaite, a professor of organizational behavior and management at Seaver College who leads the new course, is clear about what it isn’t. It won’t revolve solely around large language models like ChatGPT, Gemini, or Claude. Students will engage with a variety of AI tools across the curriculum — learning to adapt across interfaces, discern quality outputs from less authoritative ones, and understand when and how AI is actually useful versus when it’s a distraction.
“The goal of this course is to get our students thinking critically about AI,” Postlethwaite said. “We want to help our undergraduates enhance their skills as AI practitioners, while also leading them to understand the societal implications of the new technology.”
The course was designed to address a gap that’s becoming impossible to ignore. In many industries, the ability to successfully use AI tools is shifting from a differentiator to a baseline expectation. Students who graduate without that fluency risk entering a job market that’s already leaving them behind.
Built for the Moment
The course didn’t emerge from a multi-year curriculum review. Pepperdine’s Core curriculum was specifically designed with a “Skills” section that could incubate new classes to meet emerging needs — financial literacy, career readiness, and now AI.
Paul Begin, Seaver College’s interim senior associate dean and one of the chief architects of the core curriculum, explained the thinking: “When designing the Seaver Core curriculum, we recognized a gap between traditional academic disciplines and the skills students may need beyond graduation — financial literacy, career readiness, relationship cultivation, and more. The Skills portion was purpose-built for incubating classes that would be truly meaningful: a space to experiment, meet the moment, and respond to emerging needs.”
That structural flexibility matters. Most university curricula aren’t built to move this fast. Pepperdine’s approach — carving out a space for courses that respond to emerging needs rather than waiting for accreditation cycles — could be a model for other institutions struggling to keep pace with AI’s velocity.
The Student Perspective
Thomas Brunt, a Seaver College student majoring in public relations, put it plainly: “AI is going to play a huge role in everyone’s lives going forward. To have a class that will help me understand how to use this new technology properly will be an incredible addition to my education. I want a trusted mentor who can help me sharpen that tool.”
That framing — a trusted mentor for a powerful tool — captures something important about how AI education differs from traditional technical training. Students don’t just need to know which buttons to press. They need guidance on when AI is appropriate, where it fails, and how to evaluate its outputs with appropriate skepticism.
A Growing Movement
Pepperdine isn’t alone in this shift, but its approach is notably broad. Rather than creating an AI concentration within a single department, the university is positioning AI fluency as a general education requirement — the same tier as composition or statistics.
The move follows a pattern we’ve been tracking: earlier this year, Mississippi’s only law school added AI to its curriculum, and universities across the country are experimenting with AI requirements. But Pepperdine’s implementation stands out because it targets all undergraduates, not just students in technical or professional programs.
Postlethwaite acknowledged the anxiety driving the demand: “For recent college graduates, there is an ongoing cultural discussion about the types of entry-level jobs that will be replaced by AI. Many of the jobs that will have staying power will ask potential candidates to actively use AI. At Seaver College, we’re equipping our students — of all majors and disciplines — with an AI toolkit they can use.”
The Bigger Question
Making AI literacy a graduation requirement raises a question that Pepperdine’s course doesn’t fully answer yet: what does AI fluency actually look like in 2028? Or 2030? The tools will change. The capabilities will expand. The ethical considerations will evolve.
Courses like this one will need to iterate as fast as the technology they teach. The university’s modular “Skills” structure gives it room to do that — but whether institutions can move quickly enough to keep their AI curricula relevant remains an open question.
For now, Pepperdine is making a clear statement: AI fluency is not optional. It’s a core competency, and every graduate should have it. Whether other universities follow — and whether employers actually reward that fluency — will determine whether this is the start of a genuine shift or just another well-intentioned experiment.
