{"id":1163047,"date":"2026-08-22T13:05:16","date_gmt":"2026-08-22T13:05:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1163047\/"},"modified":"2026-08-22T13:05:16","modified_gmt":"2026-08-22T13:05:16","slug":"if-i-dont-cheat-im-going-to-be-behind-what-its-like-to-be-at-uni-in-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1163047\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018If I don\u2019t cheat, I\u2019m going to be behind\u2019: What it’s like to be at uni in 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

The university experience<\/a> has profoundly changed since the proliferation of AI. Students use it to answer exam questions, do their coursework and even write their dissertation \u2013 and detection programs are struggling to catch up.<\/p>\n

A 2026 survey by the Higher Education Policy Institute, interviewing 1,100 students, found that 95 per cent used an AI tool in their university<\/a> studies.<\/p>\n

Now, as youth unemployment<\/a> reaches its highest level since 2013, academics and recent graduates worry that students\u2019 AI use leaves them ill-equipped to find and keep a job.<\/p>\n

\u2018AI has affected knowledge of my degree\u2019<\/p>\n

A student, who <\/strong>asked not to be named, described how ingrained AI use had become at their university, and how they feared that their reliance on it would affect their future job opportunities.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s annoying to admit, but AI has affected my knowledge of my degree, especially the maths part,\u201d said the student, who is preparing to start a master\u2019s degree in aerospace engineering this autumn. They are on course to obtain a 1:1 in their bachelor\u2019s degree in the same subject, with the final results coming at the end of the master\u2019s.<\/p>\n

\u201cMaths was a very important part of my degree and that standard, because of AI, has dropped incredibly, including for myself. I wouldn\u2019t feel confident going back to a lot of A-level<\/a> and even GCSE<\/a> principles now because AI could just do it for me.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen it comes to applying for jobs, if there is any induction tests, I am worried that I won\u2019t be able to pass them because of that reliance on AI.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"Universities are facing an ever-growing problem with AI (Photo: Getty)<\/p>\n

This concern appears to be increasingly widespread. A 2025 survey conducted by Jisc, an educational charity, found that students worried that AI was reducing their ability to think critically, develop original ideas and communicate in professional settings.<\/p>\n

Teachers are also increasingly using AI, said David Andersen, an associate professor in US politics at Durham University. <\/p>\n

Some of his colleagues \u201care using AI in the classroom and are telling their students to have a debate with AI where it counteracts all their arguments,\u201d he said. \u201cIt is becoming an extension of the teacher and a tool for the students<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018If I don\u2019t cheat, I\u2019m going to be behind\u2019<\/p>\n

The student told The i Paper they tried to use AI in a \u201cresponsible\u201d way, defining it as using it for research, checking answers and fleshing out their own ideas.<\/p>\n

However, they said that because so many other students were using AI \u201cirresponsibly\u201d \u2013 including answering questions or coursework \u2013 there is \u201ca level where not using it irresponsibly is just setting you back because there\u2019s no way to regulate it\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t want to go through my degree not having put any effort into it, but if I don\u2019t cheat, I\u2019m going to be behind a lot of other people who rely on AI,\u201d they added.<\/p>\n

The student also admitted using it in exams.<\/p>\n

\u201cI use it particularly with time-limited exams. If I\u2019m behind on a few questions, my choice is either: don\u2019t put anything in those boxes, or use AI and get an instant answer that will at least pick me up a couple of marks.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith my dissertation, I wrote it myself, but then got AI to write its own dissertation to check it against mine and see if I missed anything out.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt would\u2019ve been easy to just use what AI wrote \u2013 it took half an hour.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ofqual\u2019s chief regulator recently told The i Paper it was getting harder to detect AI use in A-level exams, and that subjects with the most written coursework were the most vulnerable to cheating<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Universities not adapting to AI fast enough<\/p>\n

With AI, many test questions can now be answered with a simple prompt. The student said exams have not been adapted to counter this.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019ve still got the same recycled mock papers, and the majority of people I know with the use of AI are answering 70, 80, 90 per cent of those papers incredibly easily,\u201d they said.<\/p>\n

A Policy Exchange report this week found that universities have not adapted their assessment methods sufficiently to combat students using AI. It found that 78 per cent of UK universities use online, remote exams \u2013 of whom 70 per cent plan to carry on with this method, and only 10 per cent use online invigilation.<\/p>\n

\u201cAI has made most of our assessments irrelevant,\u201d said Andersen. \u201cWhen Covid hit, we closed our exams halls\u2026 and threw everything online.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to innovate and change in a system that has resisted rapid change for a millennia. We are not moving fast enough and honestly, I struggle to envision how we can.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The university experience has profoundly changed since the proliferation of AI. Students use it to answer exam questions,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1163048,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3163],"tags":[323,1942,83856,897,53,16,15,5178],"class_list":["post-1163047","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-graduates","tag-jobs","tag-technology","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-university"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/117139312319407060","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1163047","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1163047"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1163047\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1163048"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1163047"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1163047"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1163047"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}