Illustration: Allie Carl/Axios
High schools and colleges are stuck in limbo: Use of generative AI to cut corners and cheat is rampant, but there’s no clear consensus on how to fight back.
Why it matters: AI is here to stay, forcing educators to adapt.
- That means sussing out when students are using it — and avoiding the temptation of overusing it themselves.
"I have to be a teacher and an AI detector at the same time," says Stephen Cicirelli, an English professor at St. Peter’s University in Jersey City, New Jersey. Any assignment "that you take home and have time to play around with, there's going to be doubt hanging over it."
- Cicirelli captured the zeitgeist with a viral post on X about how one of his students got caught submitting an AI-written paper — and apologized with an email that also appeared to be written by ChatGPT.
- "You're coming to me after to apologize and do the human thing and ask for grace," he says. "You're not even doing that yourself?"
By the numbers: Use is ubiquitous in college. A survey of college students taken in January 2023, just two months after ChatGPT's launch, found that some 90% had already used it on assignments, New York Magazine reports.
- 1 in 4 13- to 17-year-olds say they use ChatGPT for help with schoolwork, per a recent Pew survey. That’s double what it was in 2023.
Driving the news: The proliferation of AI-assisted schoolwork is worrying academic leaders.
- 66% think generative AI will cut into students’ attention spans, according to a survey of university presidents, chancellors, deans and more from the American Association of Colleges & Universities (AAC&U) and Elon University's Imagining the Digital Future Center.
- 59% say cheating has increased on campus.
- 56% say their schools aren't ready to prepare students for the AI era.
"It's an undeniable and unavoidable disruption," says Lee Rainie, director of Elon's center. "You can't avert your eyes."
One big snag: Teachers can't agree on what’s acceptable in this new world.
- For example, 51% of higher education leaders say it’s fine for a student to write a paper off a detailed outline generated by AI, while the rest say it’s not or they don’t know, per the AAC&U and Elon survey.
- Policies vary from classroom to classroom within the same school.
Plus, the rise of AI is causing unforeseen headaches.
- Teachers run assignments through detectors, which often don't get it right, either missing AI-generated work or mistakenly flagging original work as written by AI. Students who didn't use AI have had to appeal to their schools or submit proof of their process to avoid getting zeroes, the New York Times reports.
- Instructors are getting caught leaning on ChatGPT too. One Northeastern senior demanded tuition reimbursement after discovering her professor had used AI to prep lecture notes and slides, according to the New York Times.
The other side: As much as they're struggling to wrangle AI use, many educators believe it has the potential to help students — and that schools should be teaching them how to use it.
- American University's business school is launching an AI institute for just that purpose. "When 18-year-olds show up here as first-years, we ask them, 'How many of your high school teachers told you not to use AI?' And most of them raise their hand," David Marchick, the dean of American University's Kogod School of Business, told Axios' Megan Morrone. "We say, 'Here, you're using AI, starting today.'"
ChatGPT can be a real-time editor and refine students' writing or speed up research so they can focus on organizing big ideas instead of information gathering, Jeanne Beatrix Law, an English professor at Kennesaw State University, writes in The Conversation.
- "Don't block AI. ... Instead, let's put in place some of the same safety and wellness protocols that it took us a decade to build for social media and web 1.0," says Tammy Wincup, CEO of Securly, a software company that builds safety tools for K-12 schools.
What to watch: "There is a gigantic question across academic institutions right now," Rainie tells Axios. "How do you assess mastery?"
- Cicirelli says he's asking students to draft their work in Google Docs so he can see the brainstorming and writing process.
- In-class assessments, like oral exams or essays written in old-fashioned Blue Books, are already becoming more common.