The share of business school students relying on artificial intelligence as a routine part of their academic experience has surged over the past few years, according to a new survey – even as grads have heckled pro-AI speakers in high-profile incidents at spring graduation ceremonies, highlighting anxiety around the tech.
The share of business students regularly using AI jumped from 6% to 29% over the past three years, according research from American University’s Kogod School of Business.
More than 80% of college students have used AI for academic purposes in the past six months, according to the survey, and nearly a third now use it 11 or more times a week for school or work-related tasks.
The survey, first reported by Axios, was conducted in from 2024 to 2026 and received responses from 483 business students.
About three in four students surveyed said they use AI to help them brainstorm ideas, while just over half said they use the tech to help them find sources of information and 62% said they use it as a summarization tool.
Nearly nine in 10 students said they used AI from Perplexity, 79% reported ChatGPT was their preferred model, and 39% cited Anthropic’s Claude.
Meanwhile, employers are increasingly seeking applicants with AI skills. The share of job interviews that included AI-related questions rose to 43% from 12% over the same three-year period – even as some instructors impose outright bans on the technology’s use in coursework.
“We haven’t encountered a lot of resistance,” Casey Evans, interim dean at Kogod, told Axios, adding that the school hasn’t forced students to use AI without guidance.
Other research points to similar trends.
An Inside Higher Ed flash survey of 1,038 second- and fourth-year students found 85% had fired up AI models to help them with coursework in the past year. An April Gallup poll said 57% of US college students use AI at least weekly, with one in five saying they rely on it daily.
Still, students are have some apprehensions about AI. Forty percent of students in the Inside Higher Ed survey said they’re concerned AI is hindering their and their peers’ ability to think independently. More than half of Kogod students said they are concerned about issues of academic honesty tied to AI use.
That animosity has flared up at graduation ceremonies. In May, for instance, a real estate bigwig faced mockery and boos for declaring that “artificial intelligence is the next Industrial Revolution” during her commencement address at the University of Central Florida.