College students say they use AI mostly for learning and don’t use it to cut corners but think that their peers do, according to the inaugural Dartmouth AI Survey, a new multi-year survey on how AI is shaping students’ learning and career readiness.
The findings were announced Oct. 30 at Dartmouth’s AI at 70: What Must Remain Human? conference marking the 70th anniversary of the 1956 Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence that launched the field of AI.
Bruce Sacerdote ’90, the Richard S. Braddock 1963 Professor in Economics, who is leading the survey research, and Peter Chin, a professor of engineering at Thayer School of Engineering and AI at 70 conference chair, discussed the results at a panel session at the conference.
More than 1,500 Dartmouth students and 1,000 college students across the United States were surveyed between June and September.
Quote
Students have told us they want to use AI to learn and prepare for their future careers, but at the same time, they assume the people around them are cutting corners.
Overall, college students report that they use AI to learn but the survey found an interesting gap: students think their peers are using it much more than themselves. For example, 11% reported AI use to solve problem sets while 49% think their peers are doing so, and 8% reported copying and pasting text with little editing while they think that 50% of their peers do that.
The results also reveal how AI is impacting homework, learning, and how prepared students feel to use AI when they arrive at college. It also sheds light into students’ views that AI skills will be critical for them to enter the job market when they graduate:
- 70% of the college students in the survey indicate that take-home work has become unfair due to AI, with 39% feeling pressured to use it because their peers do.
- While students see AI’s potential harm to learning, they believe it has benefits—61% of U.S. college students use it to explain difficult concepts, and 52% report that back-and-forth use of AI produces better work than on their own.
- 84% of U.S. college students say using AI for writing can hurt the development of writing skills
- Students are entering college with AI skills that have been largely self-taught, with little guidance from high school. Nationally, 79% of college students report that they mostly taught themselves their AI skills.
Dartmouth students differed a little in some of the responses compared with students nationally. Approximately 17% of Dartmouth undergraduates report that they use AI to draft essays while they think that 63% of their peers do. And nearly all students recognize the risks AI poses to learning, with 92% of Dartmouth students saying that AI can hurt writing skills as compared to 84% of students nationally.
Among Dartmouth students, 74% believe AI skills will be critical to their careers as compared to 55% nationally.
And the survey also found that differences by field of study were two times larger than differences by class year. Seventy percent of Dartmouth students in sciences say AI deepens understanding, compared with 67% in social sciences and 48% in arts and humanities.
They also believe AI skills to be critical for their future careers, but they don’t believe in a “jobpocalypse,” with 84% of students at Dartmouth saying AI is changing jobs in their field but not necessarily eliminating them.
“Students have told us they want to use AI to learn and prepare for their future careers, but at the same time, they assume the people around them are cutting corners. This shapes how they feel about fairness and how they work to keep up. The good news is that we can do something about this. Universities can help students think critically and contribute meaningfully even in the age of AI,” Sacerdote says.
“These findings give us a clearer picture of how our students are experiencing AI, including where they see its value and where they see real risks,” says Dartmouth President Sian Leah Beilock. “We’re working to meet those needs by providing clear expectations and guidelines, opportunities to build with AI, and the critical thinking skills to use it well.”
That includes making premium AI tools available for free to students through a partnership with Anthropic and AWS; providing students hands-on experience in AI through programs such as the student-driven Digital Applied Learning and Innovation Lab (DALI Lab) and the Design Initiative at Dartmouth (DIAD), and courses and programming in AI offered by discipline; creating custom AI-powered tools at the Dartmouth Center for Career Design to provide students with personalized guidance as they explore their career options.
Dartmouth has also appointed an AI Fellow to lead a university-wide academic approach to AI-enabled teaching and research, and the Faculty Leadership Group on AI will soon release a report on pedagogy on research recommendations.
At the heart of this work is the belief that a Dartmouth education must continue to emphasize the development of foundational skills in critical reading, writing, and analysis, even as the institution prepares students to live and lead in a technologically sophisticated world.
“I think that Dartmouth AI Survey data enables us to obtain a deeper understanding of students’ views on AI while providing valuable context for our community to continue talking about what agency we give AI and what things we think must remain human,” says Chin, who also serves as the co-chair of the Faculty Leadership Group on Artificial Intelligence.
The next student survey will be conducted in August 2027.
Dartmouth is currently surveying employers to gather information about whether entry-level jobs for college students at their firms and in their industries are growing or shrinking and whether they are changing in responsibilities and skills required because of AI.