At this point, telling college students not to use AI feels a little like telling them not to use Google.
Whether you are asking ChatGPT to explain a reading you don’t understand, making practice questions before an exam or helping organize your ideas, AI has already become part of being a college student.
But there is still something about opening ChatGPT in the library that can make you feel like you’re doing something wrong.
With new technology rapidly evolving, colleges should spend less time fighting AI and more time teaching students how to use it and embrace it without letting it replace their own work.
The Higher Education Policy Institute’s 2026 Student Generative AI Survey found that 95% of students surveyed had used AI in at least one way, while 94% reported using generative AI to help with work.
Almost half said AI had improved their college experience by saving time, helping them understand material and providing immediate support. At the same time, students expressed concerns about losing skills and becoming too dependent on it.
When ChatGPT becomes the first place you go for every question, reading and assignment, it stops being a tool and starts doing the thinking for you.
Dr. Nina Huang, a University of Miami professor and department chair of business technology believes AI is changing how students learn in ways that go beyond what the internet did.
“The Internet made information easier to find, but students still had to search, evaluate and synthesize information and knowledge themselves, and that effort is an important part of learning,” Huang said. “AI tools can now do much of that work, which can let students skip some of the learning process.”
The biggest argument against AI in college is pretty obvious: it makes cheating easier.
Research reported by the Cornell Chronicle surveyed more than 95,000 students at 20 public universities. About one-third said they regularly used AI to complete assignments, while 9% admitted to using it to cheat.
This study relied on self-reported data, so the numbers may be higher.
At UM, crossing that line of cheating rather than helping can also have serious consequences.
The UnM’s Undergraduate Honor Code prohibits academic dishonesty, including cheating and plagiarism. It also lists “any use of digital technologies prohibited by the instructor” as a Class I violation. Punishment can range from an F on the assignment to an F in the course, while more serious violations can lead to dismissal.
Right now, individual professors carry much of that responsibility. UM’s Honor Code says students are responsible for completing each course’s academic requirements “in the manner indicated by the faculty.”
Students shouldn’t have to guess whether asking ChatGPT to make a study guide is okay, whether using it to brainstorm is okay, or whether using it to help edit a paragraph crosses the line.
Huang believes the distinction depends on what students are supposed to learn from an assignment.
“If the goal is to work through a problem, then having AI directly give an answer or solution, would hurt learning,” Huang said. “If the assignment is meant to improve understanding concepts, AI can be a reasonable aid for checking, deepening or expanding comprehension.”
Completely removing AI from college also doesn’t seem realistic.
UM itself is preparing students to work with it. The University now offers undergraduate programs in Data Science and Artificial Intelligence, including ethics courses about how AI should be used in modern society. One of the program’s stated learning outcomes is for students to be able to “use DS and AI in an ethical way.”
If we teach students to create and use AI ethically, why shouldn’t we also teach the rest of the student body to use it responsibly? Because once we graduate, AI won’t disappear.
Lawyers, journalists, business professionals and researchers will all have to decide when AI is useful and when relying on it goes too far. Knowing how to use AI responsibly is becoming a skill itself, and college should be one of the places where we learn it.
“I think universities have an important role in helping students learn to use them well,” Huang said. “That includes understanding the benefits and risks of AI.”
Students have a responsibility too. Before using AI for an assignment, ask yourself one question: Is this helping me learn, or is it helping me avoid learning?
If ChatGPT explained something and you walked away understanding it better, it helped you. If you pasted in your assignment, copied the answer and submitted it without understanding it, it replaced you.
AI is already in our classrooms, our libraries and our workplaces. Pretending students aren’t using it won’t make it disappear.
If universities want students to be prepared for the world they are graduating into, they need to teach us where that line is before expecting us not to cross it.