AI reshapes workforce faster than colleges adapt
Amanda Cullen is only a few years away from entering a workforce where AI is increasingly unavoidable. Yet at North Carolina State University, she said, the rule in most of her classes has been a straight ban on the technology.
“Most of my classes have been no AI,” said Cullen, a first-year who expects to graduate in 2030. Many of her professors, she added, explicitly note on the syllabus that AI is off limits unless it is properly cited.
Cullen said her own feelings about AI are mixed and that she uses it only occasionally, but she questioned whether outright bans are realistic.
“If it’s such a mainstream thing in careers, we should know how to do it in school,” she told Fortune.
Universities nationwide are grappling with where to draw the line between prohibiting AI and teaching students to use it responsibly. The challenge is amplified because the technology has advanced far more quickly than the typical four-year degree.
AI is becoming harder to avoid in the workplace: a McKinsey study from late last year found 88% of companies are using AI, and a PwC study published in June this year reported a 62% average wage premium for workers with AI skills.
At the same time, AI has made cheating on assignments easier, and some experts worry that reliance on models for coursework can prevent students from learning essential skills for their future professions.
Lauren Callen, a second-year mechanical engineering student at NC State, said she understands why professors worry about cheating and ban the technology, but she prefers professors who set clear rules for responsible use.
“I get teachers not wanting to use AI for anything, but, I mean, the world’s changing, people are using AI everywhere,” Callen told Fortune. She described one introductory Python course that integrated AI rather than banning it: students may use AI on assignments but must upload transcripts of their prompts and the AI’s responses.
NC State does not maintain a single, university-wide AI policy; instead, it allows faculty to determine when the technology can and cannot be used.
“Faculty are provided with resources to establish clear, course-specific expectations that may permit, limit or prohibit AI use; students are responsible for following those expectations and upholding academic integrity,” a spokesperson for NC State said in a statement to Fortune.
Across the country, professors are still debating where to set boundaries around AI. Sabrina Habib, an associate professor of visual communications at the University of South Carolina and the inaugural AI coordinator for the College of Information and Communications, said many faculty initially opposed student use of the technology because they feared it would undermine learning core fundamentals.
Those concerns persist for some instructors, Habib said, but faculty attitudes have shifted as AI has become more common in everyday and professional life.
“Almost everyone has understood and accepted that it is a skill for the workforce,” Habib said.
Habib said she bans AI for some assignments but allows it in other cases when students disclose how they used it and provide evidence—or write a short reflection on their use. That approach, she said, creates an opportunity to teach ethical and critical 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.
Meanwhile, some students like Cullen are choosing to limit their own use of AI even when professors do not require it.
“I feel like people should be able to have their own ideas and not rely on a computer that’s been programmed what to think,” she said.
By Marco Quiroz-Gutierrez. This story was originally featured on Fortune.com.
Source: fortune.com
