Key points:
- Now is the time to educate students in proper AI application
- AI is reshaping entry-level work and the talent pipeline
- Aligning AI with pedagogy, privacy, and outcomes
- For more news on how students use AI, visit eCN’s AI in Education hub
Colleges and universities nurture student development by offering thousands of learning opportunities, and for most, the experience makes it possible to pursue meaningful careers. Whether preparing for a career in business, finance, healthcare, science, technology, or even the arts, stepping into the workforce today requires knowledge of AI–its benefits, its blind spots, and the ethics with which it must be applied.
But could schools be doing more to equip students with the knowledge they need to apply AI academically and employ it strategically in their future profession?
Even as students are incorporating AI tools into coursework, institutional practices for teaching AI literacy remain limited and uneven, at best. At the same time, employers are increasingly signaling that AI proficiency is an expected skill for workers of the future.
The question confronting higher education is no longer whether students will use AI, but whether schools are equipping them to use AI thoughtfully and professionally, and by doing so, help students prepare for their next chapter.
Employers need AI-skilled talent
The impact of AI on business is undeniably changing how companies hire talent at all levels, but the impact is most significant at entry levels. A recent report by the World Economic Forum found that AI proficiency is in high demand, across industries.
The World Economic Forum report also shows that AI is now ingrained in daily business functions. As generative AI tools integrate further into daily work, employers need graduates who already understand how to use the tools productively and responsibly.
What I am hearing from the workforce also reaffirms the need for AI proficiency. According to the Society for Human Resource Management, many U.S. workers (especially younger professionals) perceive AI skills as vital to their job security and career progression.
A new reality for students and institutions
As AI is adopted across a wide spectrum of careers, higher education is currently navigating a paradigm shift as significant as the dawn of the internet. Just like critical thinking, communication skills, and basic digital literacy, schools are tasked with preparing students for the reality of the workplace.
Many students use commonly available AI tools to complete coursework, applying AI for research, summarization, and writing support, among other applications.
But schools are still navigating how to respond to this new world, and the introduction of policies or instructional assistance has been uneven. While proctoring and scaffolded assignments can play a key role in guiding AI usage, it is just one part of protecting academic integrity. Without guardrails on the use of AI tools, students are left to find their own way and make their own decisions for using the technology, which may not align with existing institutional policies or the application of AI in the “real world.”
Many institutions have some forms of AI regulations and usage guidelines in place for coursework, but not all of them are institution-wide. According to a survey of campus technology leaders, only about 12 percent of institutions have introduced a comprehensive AI policy, and more than half of the institutions that participated in the survey have yet to adopt institution-wide parameters.
Let’s look at what this means for students. A recent national survey of college students commissioned by Honorlock explored AI use, training needs, and expectations for AI knowledge in their future careers. More than half of students polled (63 percent) use AI for at least some of their coursework. But, surprisingly, more than one-third (38 percent) report that they rarely use AI tools or don’t use them at all. While this gap might indicate a difference in comfort level with AI technology, it also highlights a lack of preparedness for the workplace where AI proficiency will be expected.
This is where colleges and universities have an opportunity to step up. Students looking to their institution’s curriculum or extra-curricular offerings for training in the use of AI are discovering a concerning gap. According to the survey findings, only 31 percent of students report that their school offers classes in AI to prepare them for its use in a professional context, and of those, fewer than one in five have actually taken the class. Just under half (43 percent) report that no AI training classes are available. And the remaining 26 percent of students are unsure whether their college or program offers any AI training at all.
Leaders and administrators who oversee AI policies and guidance should be concerned by these findings. The institutions that do offer learning opportunities or formal classes in the professional use of AI aren’t doing enough to make those offerings known, and those that don’t offer anything may leave future graduates at a disadvantage. The survey found that more than half (55 percent) of students believe that AI will be more relevant to their careers than even their college degree. While this highlights a gap in perception, it also underscores a massive opportunity for institutions to integrate AI into the core value proposition of the degree, ensuring the credential remains the gold standard for career readiness.
Help students be future-ready
Already, companies and individuals have been fined or reprimanded for improper use of AI in business. One only needs to Google “lawyers who have been fined for improper AI use” to discover the many attorneys who have presented incorrect or hallucinated briefs and evidence during court proceedings, often costing them thousands of dollars and a huge impact on their reputation.
By teaching proper use of AI in an academic environment, institutions provide a safety net for students to fail safely before they reach the high-stakes world of professional practice. AI has firmly taken hold, and now is the time to educate students in the proper application, ethics, and best practices of AI.
Change need not happen all at once. Get started with these recommendations:
- Consider adding an “Introduction to AI in the Workplace” class for all incoming students. Invite alumni to be part of a panel discussion on how AI is used in the workplace compared to how it is used in college.
- Develop a course on AI Ethics that discusses how AI can and cannot be used in the workplace, the importance of AI transparency and accuracy, and the ramifications of misuse.
- Build the use of workplace-focused AI into coursework, with defined parameters, to show how AI may be used in a real job. For example, ask accounting students to manually summarize and prepare data, then use AI to do the same. By showing their work and how they used AI and any differences in the output, they can start to understand the value and real-world application.
- Offer courses on how to build AI Agents, using commonly available AI platforms. Ensure that students can go beyond searching and summarizing to think strategically about how to apply AI in their chosen field.
- Incorporate AI training into your institution’s career office. Ensure that your staff can advise students on AI in professional settings.
- Provide AI development opportunities for faculty, ensuring that the counsel they provide to students addresses AI use in coursework, but also addresses how it applies in the job environment.
- Finally, but importantly, if your school does not have a broad policy for ethical use and standards around AI, that is an immediate action to take with the development of practical milestone check-ins to ensure you don’t lose momentum.
The way business is conducted in the age of AI and how we prepare our future workforce has changed. Higher education has an opportunity to lead by establishing curriculum, assignments, and policies that give students the best opportunity to enter the workforce with the in-demand AI skills that are now expected.
Jordan Adair is Vice President of Honorlock.