College students display a conflicted attitude toward AI. When former Google CEO Eric Schmidt told graduates at the University of Arizona that AI is an inevitable part of the future, students jeered. \”It’s not a question of whether AI will change the world — it will,\” he said. \”The question is how you will build it.\”
At the University of Central Florida commencement, a real estate executive called AI \”the next industrial revolution,\” only to have someone in the audience shout, \”AI is trash.\”
Those visible displays of hostility, however, don’t capture the Class of 2026’s full relationship with AI. Many in that cohort are rapidly adopting the technology. A recent Lumina Foundation–Gallup study on higher education in 2026 found that 57% of U.S. college students use AI tools at least once a week, and 20% use them daily.
Some students even use AI to cheat. Jacob Shelly, an associate professor of health law at Western University, said he is convinced a large number of students used AI to cheat on a final exam in one of his classes.
Shelly told Fortune, \”The results were abnormal. In the multiple-choice section, 8% of students earned perfect scores, while many struggled with the essay questions or included answers on material we never covered in class. In 20 years of teaching, I’ve never seen anything like it.\”
Last week, Princeton faculty voted to end a 133-year-old honor rule and to staff proctors for all in-person exams to curb AI-assisted cheating. In a New York Times op-ed, Stanford senior Theo Baker wrote that cheating is rampant at his school.
Some view this as contradictory, but experts say it reveals what younger graduates really think. They are the first generation to spend four years of college with tools like ChatGPT — introduced at the end of 2022 — at their disposal.
Maitreyi Das, a computer science professor at Northeastern University, studies Gen Z’s attitudes toward AI. Her report last year found that most college students use AI, but many do not disclose it.
She describes the phenomenon as a form of cognitive dissonance: when behaviors conflict with beliefs, prompting people to change either their attitudes or their actions.
Das found that students fear AI will erode their critical-thinking skills and learning goals. At the same time, they feel they cannot afford not to use AI because doing so would leave them behind peers who continue to rely on it.
\”Because the job market already looks unstable, even students who admit that using AI for homework might diminish critical thinking keep using it,\” Das said. \”They feel the cost of not using it is higher.\”
Warnings from tech leaders about large-scale job displacement by AI have recently alarmed graduates. In March, Anthropic released a report asserting that AI could theoretically replace most tasks in business and finance, management, computer science, mathematics, law, and office administration — including 94% of work in computer and math occupations.
Anecdotal evidence that AI is replacing specific jobs has begun to appear, even though broad proof of a dramatic labor-market shift remains limited. In the first five months of this year alone, tech-sector layoffs exceeded 110,000, and companies like Snap announced plans to cut roughly 1,000 jobs — about 16% of their workforce — as they pivot toward AI.
Das said students see AI as a threat but feel justified using it — even covertly or to cheat — as the technology spreads both at work and in schools (about 30% of teachers said last year they use AI at least weekly).
\”Students think, ‘Others are using AI too. Why should I be held to a different standard? Why can’t I use AI?’\” Das said. \”So instead of openly declaring or restricting AI use, they reshape the social context to make stealthy AI use feel more acceptable.\”
Das argues that upbeat AI messages delivered at commencements — often from stakeholders with a vested interest — have only fueled Gen Z’s pushback. The soaring valuations of tech stocks and the rise of the \”Magnificent Seven\” have produced a K-shaped polarization about who benefits from AI’s growth.
\”Students feel there’s a corporate-spokesperson narrative,\” Das said. \”Facing real fears about unemployment, they feel alienated when tech CEOs take the podium to praise AI.\”
Shelly agreed that students’ AI-assisted cheating looks less like support for the technology and more like a survival tactic — one they may even resent. \”AI will replace many of them, and students know it, but we are pretending otherwise. Students see through that. So they bear responsibility, but I can’t fully condemn them,\” he said.
Shelly also placed some responsibility on educational institutions that encouraged AI use. Two years ago, Arizona State University began partnering with OpenAI to develop AI tools for higher education. Yet overall public support for colleges is lower than it was 15 years ago, forcing some students to work part time. Time-pressed students, Shelly said, feel AI is the only way to finish assignments.
Das criticized policymakers and higher-education leaders for failing to identify what new jobs AI will create and for not promoting adequate upskilling. Experts warn this leaves students feeling robbed of a future, dependent on shortcuts, and at risk of entering the world without the tools or values needed to thrive.
\”The worst thing we can do here is blame students,\” Shelly said. \”Our job is to teach, nurture, inspire and guide them. Educating them is our duty, and as a society we must examine why this is happening.\”
/ Tristan Bove & Darin Kim, reporters quill@fortunekorea.co.kr
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