Convenience, efficiency and productivity are killing higher education.
Where students once sought degrees to become masters in their fields, they now use artificial intelligence to write their papers and summarize readings. Where professors used to spend time crafting lessons and leaving thoughtful feedback on assignments, they now turn to AI — but only students are being punished for it.
Utah Tech University is one of many universities that have policies around the use of AI in the classroom. Students are expected to read the syllabus of each class for guidelines, contact professors and be extremely clear with how and when they use AI. Failure to follow guidelines can result in academic misconduct charges and removal from the university.
Professors, however, face no such punishments. In fact, there’s encouragement for the use of AI to create quizzes, assignments and even syllabuses. Some professors even go so far as to use AI to grade coursework.
Not only is this double standard unfair, but its very existence defeats the purpose of education. Students and professors shouldn’t be using AI.
From the perspective of a student, I cannot reasonably see why a professor — someone dedicated to teaching the next generation of experts in their field — would pass up the opportunity to engage with and shape their students. Your students aren’t paying to learn from a computer; we’re paying to learn from you.
AI can’t understand the nuances of a subject the way a professor can, especially when it comes to creating assignments and lesson plans. It can’t understand where the disconnect is between a student and a subject as a professor can. It doesn’t care about the human behind the project; it just spits out feedback without care. It can’t grade fairly, no matter how much it’s been programmed.
This issue has already damaged higher education in ways I don’t know that it’ll ever come back from. Professors are forcing students to use analogue methods or recordings to prove their work is entirely theirs, while professors can feed our work to AI without punishment. Professors don’t trust students to create assignments without AI and students no longer trust professors to value their education. Trust is dying.
No one should be using AI, but there’s a lot to be said for the way policy is being enforced on campuses. Universities like ours are pushing students and professors further and further into stressful, overworked situations. We’re advised to work harder, challenge ourselves more and become more efficient, all while time constraints remain the same.
We’re like overworked cattle (students) plowing an ever-extending field. The farmers (university and society) demand more output of the farmhands (professors) driving the cattle, but punish the cattle when they try to find relief (shortcuts like AI) during the process. Farmhands are allowed extra machinery (AI) to get the job done, but it pollutes the field that cattle plow.
The issue isn’t in the work itself; it’s in the double-standard and never-ending field. Students shouldn’t have to smuggle assistance into their work, especially when that assistance might hurt them, and professors shouldn’t be using the machinery at the expense of their student’s education. The real issue is the farmers.
There will always be a newer, more efficient way to do things, but that doesn’t make it the right way. I don’t want classes and professional relationships to become tainted by distrust and impersonal connections. I want professors to understand their students and be held to the same standards we are. I want trust back in the classroom.
AI shouldn’t be allowed to create or grade assignments, nor to brainstorm and complete them. There’s no learning in that. But policies surrounding them should be fair.
As it stands, students can be punished by removal from campus at any point when AI is detected in their work. These detectors aren’t reliable, and the process isn’t always fair. I don’t want that for my professors, nor my fellow students. Every person accused of undisclosed AI reliance should be granted the opportunity to prove their work was human-made before punishment is enacted.
Universities could enact a strike-based system to allow members of higher education the chance to grow and change before facing probations, hearings or administrative meetings.
Whatever the answer, something has to give. One of the best ways we can bring trust back to higher education is to remedy this issue together. Hold people accountable for unethical AI use in higher education while allowing growth and change. Hold professors to the same standards as their students so we can trust in the fairness of our programs.
Value our education over convenience, efficiency and productivity. Bring back what university once claimed to be about: a fair, real, human education.
