A three-year study of 483 business students at American University's Kogod School of Business found that more than 80% now use AI for academic work, with ChatGPT and Perplexity as the top platforms. The share of students using AI 8+ times per week rose from 13% to 39%, while those not using it at all fell to 4.3%. Brainstorming (75.8%), studying for exams (66.2%), and summarizing (62.3%) topped the use cases.
Employer demand surged
The percentage of students reporting that employers asked about AI skills during interviews climbed from 11.6% in 2024 to 42.6% in 2026—a 285% increase. Student demand for coding and technical development skills jumped 450% from 2025 to 2026. Prompt engineering is now the top skill students want to learn, signaling a shift from casual use to job-readiness pressure.
The anxiety remains
Despite widespread adoption, 43.5% of students admitted using AI as a shortcut rather than a real learning aid, with "cognitive devaluation" being their top concern. Nearly half worry about academic integrity. The trend is real but messy: students want structured guidance on using AI responsibly, yet many schools still swing between blanket bans and uncritical green lights. As one faculty member put it, they've moved from making assignments "AI-proof" to teaching students why ChatGPT's output is a C and how to get to an A.