EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Generative AI in Higher Education: Evidence from an Elite College

Zara Contractor and Germán Reyes ()
Additional contact information
Zara Contractor: Middlebury College
Germán Reyes: Middlebury College

No 18055, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Generative AI is transforming higher education, yet systematic evidence on student adoption remains limited. Using novel survey data from a selective U.S. college, we document over 80 percent of students using AI academically within two years of ChatGPT's release. Adoption varies across disciplines, demographics, and achievement levels, highlighting AI's potential to reshape educational inequalities. Students predominantly use AI for augmenting learning (e.g., explanations, feedback), but also to automate tasks (e.g., essay generation). Positive perceptions of AI's educational benefits strongly predict adoption. Institutional policies can influence usage patterns but risk creating unintended disparate impacts across student groups due to uneven compliance.

Keywords: technology adoption; higher education; Generative AI; ChatGPT; student learning (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D83 I21 I23 J24 O33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ain
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp18055.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18055

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().

 
Page updated 2025-09-02
Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18055