Students Who Use AI Get Lower Grades

College students who were told they could use AI did worse in their final grades than their peers without access to the technology, research by the University of Maryland has found.The study followed 2,379 undergraduate students and 30 instructors across courses in subjects including biology, computer science, English, education, public policy, and mathematics. Instructors were randomly assigned either to make an AI study assistant available to students or to continue without it.The AI tutor was built using GPT-4o and connected directly to course materials selected by each instructor. Students could use it to ask for explanations, information about the course, and help with assignments.Students in some classes were given access to the course-specific AI tutor, while students in other classes were not. Only about 15 percent of students given permission to use the AI tutor actually used it. Researchers said the lower grades across the whole class given permission to use AI may have been because students used other tools like ChatGPT and Gemini. Students in the AI-tutor classes who never used the tutor also earned lower grades.The effects were particularly large for first-generation college students. Researchers estimated that access to the AI tutor lowered final grades by 5.1 percentage points among first-generation students, more than twice the 2.23-percentage-point decline among students whose parents had attended college.When students did turn to the AI tutor, nearly 74 percent of their requests were for information, explanations or solutions, while only 11 percent involved practice or test preparation and less than 1 percent asked for feedback on their own work. Researchers said that pattern suggests students mostly used the system for “passive, on-demand assistance” on-demand assistance rather than to work through problems themselves.The researchers said simply connecting an AI tutor to course materials and making it easy to access may not be enough to improve learning. They wrote that convenient access “does not ensure productive use.”The findings come as AI has become commonly used on college campuses. A 2026 survey found that 57 percent of college students in America use AI for coursework at least once a week including about one in five who use it daily.The Maryland researchers said schools may need to think not only about whether students have access to AI, but also about how the tools are built into classes and how students are encouraged to use them. They said future research should examine how AI can be a “complement to, rather than a substitute for” existing opportunities for practice, feedback, and human interaction.

Students Who Use AI Get Lower Grades

Students Who Use AI Get Lower Grades

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