Students ‘worry they learn nothing’ from AI but want it anyway

Surveyed Australians expect their universities to supply AI support despite concerns about its ‘veneer of learning’

六月 11, 2025
Young adult students sitting in groups in modern library and studying.
Source: iStock/Cebas

One in four students are concerned that they learn little or nothing when they use generative artificial intelligence for study, but?11 in 20 expect their universities to provide them with AI tools anyway, according to new data.?

A of more than 1,200 Australian students has revealed contradictory views about AI, with people determined to use it despite questioning its value.

The poll, commissioned by study support company Studiosity, found that seven in 10 worry about mistakes or accusations of cheating or plagiarism, while academically struggling students aged under 26 were particularly sceptical that AI tools enhanced their learning or skills.

Yet 75 per cent of international students, 60 per cent of male students and 55 per cent of students overall expected their institutions to provide AI support tools. Business, STEM and medicine students were particularly adamant – even though only 40 per cent expressed strong conviction that AI improved their learning.

The study was part of a broader survey of more than 10,000 people in eight countries, conducted for Studiosity’s annual student well-being survey. It found that students’ top reason for wanting university-supplied AI tools was so that they could have “confidence” that their assignments were “on the right track”.

Studiosity founder Jack Goodman said students were in an “uncomfortable” position where they felt “pressured to use the technology because they see all of their peers using the technology” – but worried that it was merely creating a “veneer of learning”.

“They are looking for guidance from their universities,” Goodman said. “They do not…feel comfortable being left to what is effectively the Wild West of unconstrained and unregulated generative AI tools for academic and learning purposes.

“The vast majority of students come to university wanting to learn. These tools are just not fit for purpose. They will generate text. They will give answers. But they…certainly aren’t a reflection of students’ intellectual effort. It’s incredible technology [but] there’s nothing constraining [it] from bypassing learning entirely.”

He said universities had an obligation to equip students with “ethical learning-only generative AI” so that “students don’t have anxiety about using something inappropriately, and both the institutions and the students know that learning is taking place”.

Studiosity helps universities meet that obligation through its “” service, which provides students with “help not answers” feedback and teachers with “evidence of learning”. Goodman insisted that his views had not been biased by his company’s products.

“The single most important thing…every student who goes to university learns is how to think,” he said. “It’s an enormous mistake to assume that…generative AI is suitable for use in an educational setting. It has not been built to help people learn. It’s been built to give answers to questions. Simply answering questions is not a learning experience.”

The survey also found that students were under massive workload pressure, with 26 per cent of surveyed Australian students working full-time – up from just 4 per cent in 2018 – and 17 per cent combining full-time jobs with full-time study loads.

“That’s really unsustainable,” Goodman said. “It’s almost impossible…to be a full-time student and a full-time employee. We don’t necessarily know what jobs they’re doing. They may be doing 35, 38, 40 hours a week…in a ride share company or a retail establishment or café. The workload of study in the evenings and on the weekends just makes that exhausting.”

john.ross@timeshighereducation.com

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Reader's comments (4)

Our students will demand more support for everything. It's the old paradox that they demand more teaching and more teaching hours but half of them don't attend the hours alert provided. I suppose it's a bit like my gym membership. I expect the gym to be open, the trainers working hard etc etc, even if I never actually go to the damn place myself and sit on the sofa watching TV and stuffing my face with crisps all night.
I totally agree. My guess is that this 'demand' culture has arisen as a result of the high fees that students pay. I was fortunate to benefit from free University education. We were acutely aware of the privilege and as a result never complained or even dared to request anything. To stretch the analogy, if you weren't paying for the gym membership you would be happy just to be allowed in.
None of us like the 'students as customers' mindset, but with what we now need to charge to be sustainable it's not surprising that they're asking for more...
From my experience working with students in the Australian HE sector, the biggest issues in Australia are: * Cost of living (like the last few paragraphs state, students are having to work more and more hours just to support themselves, meaning they have less time to engage with uni support services but at the same time feel like they need more and more support due to the added stress) * The rise and inconsistency of AI adoption (Universities are both very gung ho about pushing for AI usage on a governance and business level, however on an academic level there is a huge range of conflicting feelings and approaches, making it very difficult for students to grasp whether they should be using it and to what extent) * Staff shortages and brain drain (More and more academics, graduates and tutors are moving away from the university sector, as its shown itself to be incredibly unstable and unreliable in terms of a career with a healthy work-life balance). A lot of academics are moving to institutions for the reputations/salary packages, meaning that smaller/lesser known institutions lose a lot of their top talent despite potentially having consistent or rising student counts. If we actually want to address these issues, we need to: - Reject the notion of students as customers as much as we can, as a lot of problems can be traced back to this root. - Have a very clear, very strict policy on student AI usage (They should only be taught to use it in specific use cases where AI is developed for niche tasks, such as medical diagnoses. Generative AI should be banned on campus networks and assessments should be structured around real time in person problem solving and assignment creation) - Invest less in expansion and growth efforts and more in maintenance and refurbishing efforts for campus infrastructure, both physical and digital, and also in securing long term fixed and continuing contracts for staff to encourage institutional retention.
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