IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/arx/papers/2508.00717.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Generative AI in Higher Education: Evidence from an Elite College

Author

Listed:
  • Zara Contractor
  • Germ'an Reyes

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.

Suggested Citation

  • Zara Contractor & Germ'an Reyes, 2025. "Generative AI in Higher Education: Evidence from an Elite College," Papers 2508.00717, arXiv.org.
    • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2508.00717
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://arxiv.org/pdf/2508.00717
    File Function: Latest version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2508.00717. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: arXiv administrators (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://arxiv.org/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.