Editor’s note: Due to the nature of the questions asked in our survey, many sources chose to remain anonymous. Some responses have been slightly edited for brevity and clarity. All responses represent student experiences and opinions. City on a Hill Press acknowledges the tendency of AI to produce incorrect information and does not endorse any practices described in this article.
Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) is drastically changing the landscape of higher education. Upon the November 2022 release of ChatGPT, a large language model built by OpenAI, university administrators grew concerned about AI’s possibilities. Fundamental skills students learn while completing course work could now be circumvented with AI-generated products submitted with minimal engagement.
Students caught on fast: A survey by Study.com published shortly after ChatGPT was released found that, out of 1,000 college students, nearly 90 percent had used GenAI to help with homework.
City on a Hill Press conducted a survey of our own on GenAI usage at UC Santa Cruz and garnered responses from 70 students, a portion of which were interviewed about their answers. Some survey respondents were blunt, stating that they use GenAI “to do my homework for me.” Yet, while it’s clear that many students employ the technology, the explanations we received revealed a more complex picture than outright acceptance.
How do you use GenAI?
In City on a Hill Press’ survey, 81 percent of respondents said they’ve used GenAI to help with schoolwork. Last year, according to the University of California Undergraduate Experience Survey (UCUES), UCSC students most commonly used GenAI to brainstorm for a writing project or presentation (64 percent), followed by research (60 percent), then studying for exams (47 percent).
Anonymous Respondent 1
“Cheating and doing assignments.”
Anonymous Respondent 2
“Summarizing pretty much anything. Slides, notes, videos. If there’s a passage I’m supposed to read I’ll put a few key words in and ask ChatGPT to tell me where to find the answer.”
Anonymous Interviewee 1
“[I use AI for] checking and proofreading essays. If I’m stuck on a math problem, then I’ll put it in. Simple stuff like that. I don’t use it as much as I could. I know there are a lot of ways you could take advantage of it, but I don’t really know a lot of ways to do that.”
Anonymous Respondent 3
“I use AI to help me debug code and for probability theory questions.”
Anonymous Respondent 4
“I couldn’t afford the textbook and had to wade through paywalled scientific papers for answers to the homework, so I asked ChatGPT.”
Anonymous Respondent 5
“I once passed a jazz history class solely using AI to complete the Canvas quizzes.”
Why do you use GenAI?
In the UCUES, 78 percent of students agreed to some extent that they understood how using AI technology could enhance their learning.
According to City on a Hill Press’ survey respondents, GenAI can summarize information, formulate study plans and explain concepts when a professor or teaching assistant (TA) is inaccessible. Many students, juggling jobs and other responsibilities, fall back on it when short on time.
Anonymous Respondent 6
“It helps with efficiency in a really packed schedule.”
Anonymous Respondent 7
“I think I continue to excuse my AI use because there’s an idea that everyone else does it anyway, and by me not using it to polish up my work, I might fall behind.”
Anonymous Respondent 8
“As much as I hate it because I know it’s getting smarter, it has honestly become a habit [to use it] since it’s so accessible. I try and limit my usage because I feel guilty knowing the climate effects it has.”
Anonymous Interviewee 1
“For math purposes, it can just show you how to do [the problem] and it’s way easier than just scrolling through lectures and stuff like that. Then once you do it once, it’s so easy to just want to do it again and again and again.”
Grady Charpiot, third-year global and community health major
“For physics, I’ve been using A.I. because I don’t really feel like it’s very applicable to what I want to do in the future. I’m learning about electrical circuits right now, and I plan on going into healthcare. So like, why?”
Why do you not use GenAI?
While only 19 percent of City on a Hill Press’ survey respondents said they haven’t used GenAI for schoolwork, 82 percent of respondents in the UCUES agreed to some extent that they understood how using GenAI could be detrimental to their learning.
Additionally, some students are concerned about the fact that AI data centers use massive amounts of water and energy, polluting nearby communities and worsening the climate crisis. These problems, as well as the feeling that it contradicts the purpose of higher education, have pushed some students to avoid GenAI.
Ysa Dodson, third-year politics and Latin American and Latino studies major
“I’m paying UC prices to learn how to think critically and hone my skills to be an effective writer and communicator. Why the fuck would I ask a piece of ‘technology’ that is frequently factually incorrect and morally dubious when I can do that on my own? I can understand the reasons why people use it: It’s easy, especially for B.S. assignments or busy work, but offloading your ability to think to a service you pay for really worries me for the future.”
Bransen Tong, second-year technology and information management major
He has used GenAI frequently in the past, but is trying to decrease his reliance.
“We learned about a lot of the laws and practices that [AI companies] don’t follow, how much energy usage they use, and I realized that I was using a pretty unethical system to just do homework.”
Isaac Belloso, first-year legal studies major
“I can’t use AI to write assignments because it feels like I’m taking away my voice. It’s like cheating, a little bit. If I ask an AI to write something, it’s more work for me trying to get it to sound like me than to actually write it. I’d rather, when it comes to deadlines, take the hit on my grade and turn it in late rather than using AI to create something that’s not mine.”
How has GenAI affected the student learning experience?
Anonymous Interviewee 2
“I have AI as a safety net, so it’s there for me if I don’t really know what to do, or if I’m just so lost that I can’t really solve a problem on my own. It’s there if I’m in a time crunch. So I’m maybe a little less accountable for my own learning because I know it’s a tool that’s easy and works.”
Bransen Tong, second-year technology and information management major
“It feels less serious in a way …. We pay a lot of money to learn the stuff from these professors specifically, and at the same time, we’re also devaluing that. Instead of using that material, we’re using AI.”
How is GenAI changing the classroom?
With the rise of AI, many professors are concerned about cheating. Some have begun using applications like ZeroGPT, itself an AI-powered tool, to scan for and identify AI-generated student work.
Other professors, seeing how the technology will impact their fields of study, are embracing AI and using it to assist their work. At UCSC, professors have used AI to generate models of lecture concepts in real-time, create historical role-playing games and even replace a textbook with a ChatGPT subscription.
Luke Devon, second-year global and community health major and East Asian studies minor.
They have used ZeroGPT to assess work as a TA for a Japanese history course.
“I think students face an immense, real pressure. Insane penalties for wanting a break from that is unrealistic to me. But I think it’s invaluable to engage with material and learning yourself, especially in this course about historically marginalized peoples. In all cases [that students were caught using GenAI] for that class, students stopped completely when confronted. The work these students put out skyrocketed in quality in ways that demonstrated real engagement. It genuinely made me happy to see the work they submitted after.”
Michael Tassio, assistant vice provost for educational innovation
“Things shift because of generative artificial intelligence. If an instructor is particularly worried about students using generative AI, we might work with them to explore alternative approaches. Some classes have resorted to using a very old technology, a blue book, for writing papers. It’s not a direction that we love going in, but it’s one alternative approach.”
Zac Zimmer, professor in the literature department
Teaches a course called Artificial Intelligence and Human Imagination.
“[AI] is going to challenge us to change how we teach writing. We’ve spent a generation trying to teach students algorithmic procedures for writing. We give students templates for how to write an essay. If we have an established algorithmic procedure already for how students produce a college essay, yeah, these systems are going to produce something that meets that quality.
