When prospective students evaluate a graduate program, they often begin with the curriculum, faculty, flexibility, and cost. Those are critically important considerations. But for working professionals, another element shapes the experience: the people you learn alongside.
Across Boston University’s online AI graduate programs, students learn in cohorts designed to bring together experienced professionals from different industries, disciplines, and organizational environments. They are not simply completing coursework together—they are contributing perspectives informed by the challenges they are solving in their own workplaces.
The Online Master of Science in Enterprise AI provides a powerful example of this approach. Students in the program are experienced professionals who are already leading, building, and implementing AI across organizations. They bring different expertise, different challenges, and different perspectives—all of which become part of the educational experience.
Every discussion, team project, and live class session is enriched by professionals whose work spans financial services, healthcare, manufacturing, consulting, technology, government, retail, defense, and entrepreneurial ventures. One student may be leading AI governance for a global financial institution, while another is deploying machine learning solutions inside a manufacturing company. Others are architects modernizing enterprise systems, consultants advising organizations on AI strategy, or engineers bringing generative AI into production.
“Our students represent different industries, disciplines, and career stages, bringing unique challenges and expertise into every conversation. That diversity isn’t just part of the learning—it helps define the educational experience.”
— Wendy Colby, Vice President and Associate Provost for BU Virtual and Institute for Excellence in Teaching & Learning
Learning from Professionals Who Are Building AI Today
Every industry is adapting AI to its own business challenges, regulatory environment, customers, and operating models. That means there is rarely a single “correct” answer to how AI should be implemented.
This is where the professional cohort becomes one of the program’s greatest strengths.
An enterprise architect may explain the realities of integrating AI into decades-old systems. A healthcare professional may raise questions about privacy, patient safety, and regulation. Someone working in financial services approaches every discussion through governance, accountability, and risk management. A startup founder brings an entirely different perspective, balancing speed, experimentation, and limited resources.
Those perspectives create richer conversations because they reflect the complexity of enterprise AI itself.
The Company You Keep Matters
Students are often interested in who else is enrolled in the program. Boston University’s online graduate program cohorts include professionals from organizations ranging from Fortune 500 companies and global financial institutions to healthcare systems, government agencies, consulting firms, manufacturers, technology companies, and rapidly growing startups.
Our students in the Online Master of Science in Enterprise AI, for example, come from leading companies including AWS, Accenture, American Express, Boeing, Charles Schwab, Cummins, Intel, Intuit, Kroger, Lockheed Martin, and others.
Those organizations are recognizable, but the company names are only part of the story.
Every student is navigating different organizational challenges, and brings expertise that benefits the entire cohort.
Enterprise AI Demands Multiple Perspectives
Across Boston University’s online AI master’s programs, students explore AI through multiple lenses—including computing, data science, software engineering, business, and education.
This reflects a fundamental reality of AI today: meaningful innovation rarely happens within a single discipline. Organizations need professionals who can understand technology deeply while also navigating strategy, implementation, governance, and the human implications of these powerful tools.
Faculty from multiple disciplines contribute to the curriculum, connecting technical foundations with enterprise leadership, responsible AI, and real-world implementation. Students learn from experts across Boston University who bring research, scholarship, and industry experience into the classroom.
That interdisciplinary approach extends beyond the faculty.
The students themselves represent different professional disciplines. Engineers learn alongside product managers. Data scientists collaborate with business leaders. Technology architects work with governance specialists. Each approaches AI from a different starting point, but together they develop a shared understanding of how enterprise AI succeeds.
More Than a Professional Network
People often describe one of the benefits of graduate school as the professional network students build. That certainly happens here.
However, the added value is that the people around you improve your education while it is happening.
A classmate identifies a risk you had not considered. Someone from another industry offers an implementation strategy you can adapt. A teammate challenges your assumptions because they have already faced a similar problem in their own organization.
Students collaborate on enterprise AI challenges that require technical expertise, strategic thinking, ethical judgment, and organizational leadership. They learn not only from distinguished faculty, but from accomplished professionals who are shaping AI inside their own organizations every day.
In an online graduate program designed for working professionals, who you learn with is as important as what you learn.
Learn more about the Online MS in Enterprise AI at Boston University →
Or explore Boston University’s interdisciplinary online AI master’s programs.