AI in college should aid not replace academic skills

I’ve sat in the back of the class during nearly every pop quiz I’ve taken as an undergraduate at UNC Chapel Hill. Without fail, I glance across the room and notice the same pattern: Students click open their quiz then open a second tab for ChatGPT.

ChatGPT and other large language models are remarkable innovations, offering students instant access to explanations, summaries, and writing assistance. But when students rely on AI instead of learning with it, they hollow out the very purpose of higher education.

Instead of reading or studying the material they are paying to learn, many now turn to AI-generated summaries or paste quiz questions directly into ChatGPT. What looks like a shortcut to success is a detour from real learning. It leaves students unprepared for their careers and discourages those who put in honest effort to master the material.

Recent surveys display how widespread this problem has become. According to a 2024 study by the Digital Education Council, 86% of nearly 4,000 higher-education students reported using AI, with about one in four using it daily. The survey found the most popular tool is ChatGPT, followed by Grammarly and Microsoft’s CoPilot.

Not all students are using these AI tools to cheat, but studies show that far too many are. Inside Higher Ed reported that almost half of four-year undergraduates use AI to write, edit, or check their work. Over 40% of students use it to generate summaries, and 28% admit they use it to complete assignments.

In my experience as a college student, these statistics grossly underestimate the extent to which students use AI tools like ChatGPT. Whether it is writing an essay, taking a quiz, or completing math homework, “just Chat it” has become a common solution. This behavior not only damages students’ educational experiences but also prevents them from developing one of the most important skills of adulthood: the ability to learn.

When assigned a long reading or a challenging analysis, many students’ first reaction is to put it into ChatGPT and ask for a bullet point summary. While this might seem quick and convenient, it raises serious, long-term questions. What happens when those same students go into higher education or enter their professional careers?

When you sign a contract that prohibits uploading private work into ChatGPT, how will you complete the reading and writing you never learned to do yourself? When you are called on in a law school class about a complex case that ChatGPT summarized too simply, how will you give a thoughtful answer?

The rampant use of ChatGPT encourages students to disengage from the very content they are claiming to master. It prevents them from building skills in writing, reading comprehension, and communication that are essential to success in both creative and professional fields. In the end, this is a waste of time, opportunity, and often, money.

College is not only a time to earn a degree. College is an opportunity to develop discipline, work ethic, and intellectual curiosity that form the foundation of a successful career. Students who rely on AI to do their work rob themselves of that growth.

The misuse of systems like ChatGPT also discourages honest students who see their peers succeed through shortcuts.

It’s essentially like running a marathon against someone riding an electric scooter. You put in 10x the effort, build endurance, and you commit to finishing the right way. The result? The other person reaches the finish line hours before you, and they receive the trophy.

One of my classmates once admitted they had used ChatGPT to write their entire essay. We wrote on the same topic, but I did mine the hard way. In the end, we earned nearly identical grades.

For students who follow the rules, moments like that are discouraging. It makes you wonder why you should spend hours reading, outlining, and drafting when others can copy, paste, and walk away with the same, or a better, result.

Writer Hua Hsu captured this dilemma in a New Yorker article about AI use among college students. She interviewed students at New York University who overwhelmingly admitted to using ChatGPT for nearly every reading, paper, and assignment.

Hsu wrote that while K-12 education teaches the basics of living and following rules, college educations are meant to serve a different purpose.

“You’re being taught how to do something difficult, and maybe, along the way, you come to appreciate the process of learning,” she wrote. “But the arrival of A.I. means that you can now bypass the process, and the difficulty, altogether.”

Not every use of AI should be discouraged. Tools like ChatGPT can help students create practice tests, explain difficult concepts, or provide study questions. Those uses enhance learning rather than replace it. The problem arises when students use AI to write papers or complete exams, which eliminates the need to learn in the first place.

If you fear that AI will eventually replace you in the workforce, why would you allow it to replace you in the classroom? If you rely on ChatGPT to do your work in college, do not be surprised when employers rely on ChatGPT to do your dream job too. 

ChatGPT is not the enemy of education; complacency is. College is a rare chance to struggle, to think critically, and to build the habits that define a career. If we hand that process over to AI, we are not just cheating the system. We are cheating ourselves.

“AI in college should aid not replace academic skills” was originally published on www.carolinajournal.com.