EU’s AI Literacy Mandate Spurs 866% Surge in AI Course Enrollments
As the EU AI Act is implemented, its mandate for AI literacy has prompted a significant surge in AI upskilling across European organizations. Recent data from Coursera’s Job Skills Report 2025 reveals an astounding 866% year-on-year increase in AI course enrollment among enterprise learners, with overall employee enrollment rising by 1,100%.
The demand for AI education is accelerating as businesses strive to comply with the EU AI Act’s requirements, which aim to ensure a foundational understanding of AI’s benefits and risks. This legislation supports the safe deployment of AI across industries while fostering awareness of its potential societal impacts.
Insights drawn from over five million learners using the platform through universities, businesses, and government partnerships highlight a global shift in workforce training. Organizations are increasingly embedding AI learning into their Learning and Development (L&D) frameworks to meet compliance standards and prepare for the evolving digital landscape.
AI Courses See “Unprecedented” Uptake
AI security has become a key focus for organizations, with Coursera reporting that its course titled “Generative AI Cybersecurity & Privacy for Leaders” is the most popular among businesses. Coursera users are seeking a variety of AI skills, including artificial neural networks, reinforcement learning, supervised learning, and PyTorch, an open-source machine learning library.
Some of the highest-ranking courses for employees, students, and job seekers include ‘Generative AI for Everyone’ from DeepLearning, ‘AI and Generative AI with Large Language Models’ from AWS, and ‘Google AI Essentials’ from Google Cloud. Coursera’s data shows an average of seven individuals per minute are enrolling in GenAI-related content — a sharp increase from just one enrollment per minute in 2023, and one every ten seconds in 2024.
Gender Disparity in AI Skilling
Despite the notable growth in AI education, Coursera’s findings highlight a significant gender gap in the development of AI skills. Currently, only 22% of AI professionals are women, and just 32% of AI course enrollments on Coursera come from women.
Nikolaz Foucaud, managing director of EMEA at Coursera, remarked: “With 22% of recruiting professionals updating job descriptions to reflect GenAI usage, it’s unsurprising that employees, students, and job seekers are pursuing AI skilling in record numbers.”
AI literacy is expected to become critical to corporate L&D strategies. Coursera predicts that AI and big data will rank as the third-highest priority for corporate training by 2027, alongside cybersecurity and cloud computing.
“With the AI literacy mandate through the EU AI Act’s implementation, it’s vital that businesses set out clear policy on AI learning and development,” said Foucaud. “In the same way we’ve seen cybersecurity talent gaps, we could encounter similar issues for AI. This is why investing in internal resources and skilling drives will help mitigate any future talent dearths.”
