学生与人工智能：态度担忧以及大学需要了解的内容

+1-877-967-5329workday.com 6110 Stoneridge Mall RoadPleasanton, CA94588 Dear Higher Education Leader, As AI moves from experimentation to everyday infrastructure, the mostimportant question for colleges is not what the technology can do, buthow students actually experience it. The Chronicle’s report,Students andAI: Attitudes, Concerns, and What Colleges Need to Know, makes clear thatstudent views are nuanced: curiosity and creativity sit alongside anxietyabout environmental impact, learning quality, and an AI-disrupted labormarket. Students are already using AI ahead of institutional guidance, buttheir enthusiasm is neither uniform nor unconditional. At Workday, we see the same complexity in our own research. Students tell us they trust AI tosynthesize their data and explain tradeoffs, yet they draw a firm line at irreversible actions,particularly financial ones. They want AI that can clarify the impact of dropping a course on aid andprogress, not a black box that quietly submits transactions on their behalf. They welcome tools thatsimplify high-friction tasks like schedule building and add/drop, but only when AI is transparent,context-aware, and clearly distinguished from a simple chatbot. This is a preview of the future of work. Tomorrow’s graduates will expect intelligent systems that arecollaborative partners—systems that explain, recommend, and help them make decisions, ratherthan automate that decision-making process away. Institutions that succeed will pair AI fluency withhuman guidance, close gaps in access and literacy, and design agentic boundaries where studentsretain control over the decisions that shape their education and financial lives. I invite you to use this Chronicle report as a catalyst for campus-wide dialogue on what responsible,student-centered AI should look like—and how higher education can prepare learners for a worldwhere working well with AI is a core career skill. Sincerely, Michael HofherrSenior Vice President, SLED Industry ProductWorkday Students and AI: Attitudes,Concerns, and WhatColleges Need to Know By David Wheeler CONCLUSIONCOPING WITH CAREER FEARWHEN AI ENTERS THE CLASSROOMTAKING STUDENTS’ AI TEMPERATURESINTRODUCTION18151064 Contact CI@chronicle.com with questions or comments. Students and AI: Attitudes, Concerns, and What Colleges Need to Knowwas written by David Wheeler and underwritten by Workday.The Chronicleis fully responsible for the report'seditorial content. ©2026 by The Chronicle of Higher Education, Inc. This material may not be reproduced without prior written permission ofThe Chronicle. For permissionrequests, contact us atcopyright@chronicle.com. Cover image:iStock INTRODUCTION When Jeremy Van Hof, director of theCenter for Teaching and LearningInnovation at Michigan StateUniversity, starts tutoring sessions to helpprofessors adapt to using artificial intelligence ina class, he asks a question that might not seemrelated: “Why does this course exist?” their voice, written or spoken, to own a room,to feel confident in an interview, and to get theirviewpoint across in a business meeting. In short,he believes the course needs to lean into thehuman part of communicating. At Appalachian State University, in Boone, N.C.,Quinn A. Morris, an associate professor of math,is having similar reflections. He is thinking, hesays, not about how to police AI use but how tocreate assessments that are better than the oneshe and his colleagues were using before. As agraduate-program director, he is responsible forteaching future math teachers at both the col-lege and the secondary-school level and has beeninvited to speak about AI and teaching at Mathe-matical Association of America's meetings. That question, he says, spurs faculty membersto think carefully about what they expect stu-dents to learn and to consider if those learningoutcomes are still relevant in the AI age. He hasasked that question himself for a business-com-munication class he teaches. “Does it exist tocreate copywriters?” he asks. The course mayhave focused more on that in the past, he con-tinues, but now he believes it should concentrateon creating human communicators who can use “Math isn't about computation; it is really aboutcritical thinking,” Morris says. As AI tools stripaway the computation involved in solving prob-lems, critical thinking is more strongly revealed,he says. is rising among those from 14 to 29 years old,known as Generation Z. Eighty percent of thoseyoung people worry, the survey found, that usingAI will “make it more difficult for them to learnin the future.” Carnegie Mellon University, in Pittsburgh, isbest known as a technology-forward institution,with a strong computer-science department. Buteven there, faculty members report encounter-ing strong AI skeptics among students. And theyreport a shift in faculty attitudes from worryingabout cheating to seeing an opportunity to im-prove teaching. A Gallup poll conducted inMarch found that enthusiasmfor AI is decli