The number of UK undergraduate students using artificial intelligence to help them complete their studies has surged over the past 12 months, raising questions about how universities assess their work.
More than nine out of 10 students are now using AI in some form, compared with two-thirds a year ago, according to a survey published by the Higher Education Policy Institute think-tank on Wednesday.
Experts warned that the sheer speed of take-up of AI among undergraduates required universities to rapidly develop policies to give students clarity on acceptable uses of the technology.
Josh Freeman, policy manager at Hepi, said it was “almost unheard of” to see such rapid changes in student behaviour and that it would force a radical change of approach in the way universities assessed students.
“There are urgent lessons here for institutions. Every assessment must be reviewed in case it can be completed easily using AI. That will require bold retraining initiatives for staff in the power and potential of generative AI,” he added.
The findings come a month after science secretary Peter Kyle provoked controversy by saying that it was acceptable for schoolchildren to use AI to complete their homework “with supervision and [when] used in the right way”.
The findings on the use of generative AI tools were based on polling of a representative sample of 1,041 full-time undergraduate students in the UK by Savanta.
It found that 88 per cent of students said they had used generative AI such as ChatGPT for assessments, up from 53 per cent in 2024, with students studying science subjects more likely to use the technology than their peers studying social sciences and humanities.
Only 29 per cent of humanities students felt that AI generated content “would get a good grade in my subject”, compared with 45 per cent of students studying for science, engineering or medical-related degrees.
The biggest two reasons students gave for using AI were “saving time” and “improving the quality of my work”, with half citing this as the reason they were most likely to make use of AI tools.
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The proportion of students that considered it acceptable to include AI text in assignments after editing had grown from 17 per cent to 25 per cent over the past year, but only 6 per cent thought using AI-generated content without editing was acceptable.
The report also identified what it called “persistent digital divides” in AI competency, with men more likely than women to be frequent users, alongside students from wealthier backgrounds. Nearly half of students said they had already used AI at school.
Although the proportion of students saying staff at universities were “well equipped” to support their use of AI had doubled over the year, from 18 to 42 per cent, many students still said they lacked clarity about rules for AI usage.
“It’s still all very vague and up in the air if/when it can be used and why,” one student said. “They dance around the subject. It’s not banned but not advised, it’s academic misconduct if you use it but lecturers tell us they use it. Very mixed messages,” added another.
Janice Kay, director of Higher Futures, a higher education consultancy, who wrote the foreword to the Hepi report, said that while it was a “positive sign overall” that students were learning to use AI, it also pointed to coming challenges.
“There is little evidence here that AI tools are being misused to cheat and play the system. [But] there are quite a lot of signs that will pose serious challenges for learners, teachers and institutions and these will need to be addressed as higher education transforms,” she added.
