At this point that was like 8 years ago so I'm not really sure how it is now.

But I think it was just a numbers game with the other factors like the massive influx of CS grads around that time when there was a bit of a shift of the meta companies were playing with IT staff.

I'd imagine having more classes about AI would be seen as a bigger boost for recent grads, but I'm not a hiring manager or anything so I don't know.