India, June 2 -- REXBURG, IDAHO, a college town of 40,000 near Yellowstone National Park, is an unlikely place for a computer-science boom. Home to Brigham Young University-Idaho, a sister institution to the flagship BYU campus in Utah, the town has few technology jobs, scarcely any venture-backed startups and little patent activity. Yet in 2024 BYU-Idaho awarded students more than 2,000 computer and information-science degrees, placing it 16th in the country ahead of powerhouses such as Carnegie Mellon, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stanford. Its ascent has been swift. In 2022 the university, which accepts 96% of applicants and teaches more than half its students online, awarded just 639 such degrees.

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