5 minSociety
Universities Struggle to Set AI Rules as Employers Demand AI Skills
Colleges across the U.S. are split between banning AI tools and teaching them, as employers increasingly require AI skills and students question whether outright bans prepare them for the workforce.
American universities are still searching for a coherent answer to artificial intelligence in the classroom, caught between professors who ban the technology outright and employers who increasingly expect graduates to use it fluently. The result is a patchwork of course-by-course policies that leaves many students unsure what will be expected of them after graduation.
At North Carolina State University, first-year student Amanda Cullen expects to enter the workforce in 2030, but most of her classes have taken a firm line against AI. Many professors note on their syllabi that the technology is off limits unless it is properly cited, she said. Cullen described her own feelings about AI as mixed and said she uses it only occasionally, but she questioned whether an outright ban is realistic. «If it’s such a mainstream thing in careers, we should know how to do it in school,» she said.
NC State does not impose a single AI policy across the university. Instead, faculty members are given the freedom to decide when the technology can and cannot be used. A spokesperson said instructors receive resources to set clear, course-specific expectations that may permit, limit or prohibit AI use, while students are responsible for following those expectations and upholding academic integrity.
The stakes are rising quickly. A McKinsey study from late last year found that 88% of companies are using AI, and a PwC study published in June found an average wage premium of 62% for workers with AI skills. Those figures suggest that familiarity with AI tools is becoming a hiring advantage rather than an optional extra.
At the same time, AI has made cheating on assignments far easier, a perennial problem in higher education. Some experts warn that leaning on AI models for coursework can prevent students from mastering the foundational skills they need in a future profession. That tension is what makes the debate so difficult to resolve.
Lauren Callen, a second-year mechanical engineering student at NC State, said she understands the cheating concerns that lead professors to ban the technology, but she prefers when instructors set guidelines for responsible use instead. «I get teachers not wanting to use AI for anything, but, I mean, the world’s changing, people are using AI everywhere,» she said. One of her introductory Python courses incorporated AI into the curriculum rather than fighting it. Students could use AI models for help on assignments, but they had to upload transcripts of their prompts and the AI’s responses.
Faculty attitudes are shifting as the technology becomes more present in daily life and at work. Sabrina Habib, an associate professor of visual communications at the University of South Carolina, dealt with the question as the inaugural AI coordinator for the College of Information and Communications. In the earlier days of AI, she said, many colleagues objected to student use because they believed it would take away from learning fundamentals that are important for later advanced study.
Those concerns have not disappeared, but Habib said faculty have increasingly accepted that AI is a workforce skill. Some of her assignments remain off limits for AI, while in many cases she allows students to use it as long as they disclose how they used it and provide evidence, or sometimes write a short reflection on their use. «We don’t want to eliminate it because then we’re missing the opportunity of teaching how to use it in a way that’s ethical and critical,» she said.
Some students are setting limits of their own, even when professors do not ask them to. Cullen said she believes people should be able to develop their own ideas rather than rely on a computer that has been programmed what to think. Her caution reflects a broader unease about how much of students’ thinking should be handed over to machines.
The debate is unfolding faster than a typical four-year degree can be completed. AI has improved radically in less time than it takes to finish college, leaving universities to write rules for a technology that keeps changing. For now, the balance between banning AI and allowing students to become overreliant on it remains unresolved on campuses nationwide.
