‘I received a first but it felt tainted and undeserved’: inside the university AI cheating crisis

More than half of students are now using generative AI, casting a shadow over campuses as tutors and students turn on each other and hardworking learners are caught in the flak. Will Coldwell reports on a broken system

The email arrived out of the blue: it was the university code of conduct team. Albert, a 19-year-old undergraduate English student, scanned the content, stunned. He had been accused of using artificial intelligence to complete a piece of assessed work. If he did not attend a hearing to address the claims made by his professor, or respond to the email, he would receive an automatic fail on the module. The problem was, he hadn’t cheated.

Albert, who asked to remain anonymous, was distraught. It might not have been his best effort, but he’d worked hard on the essay. He certainly didn’t use AI to write it: “And to be accused of it because of ‘signpost phrases’, such as ‘in addition to’ and ‘in contrast’, felt very demeaning.” The consequences of the accusation rattled around his mind – if he failed this module, he might have to retake the entire year – but having to defend himself cut deep. “It felt like a slap in the face of my hard work for the entire module over one poorly written essay,” he says. “I had studied hard and was generally a straight-A student – one bad essay suddenly meant I used AI?”