Using AI in Higher Education: Universities and Their Policies

Studies suggest that over half of undergraduates are using AI to assist them with their university work. What’s more, it has been recently reported that markers were unable to detect its presence, and have scored AI-generated assessments higher than those where AI wasn’t used.

This begs the question, do universities have official guidance for faculty and students when it comes to AI usage?

We examined the official websites of the 160 universities in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland to see which institutions are or are not clear on their stance. 

Universities and AI Guidance by Region

Methodology

This analysis was conducted by creating a list of all 160 universities in the UK with assistance from the Times Higher Education Rankings. Information, including the number of full-time educated students, the official website, and the region was collated.

A website-wide search of each university’s official website was carried out which looked specifically for publicly available guidelines on the use of AI for students and/or faculty. Private intranets, secondary sites, or internal-only communications were not examined or included in the results of the study.  

Google search parameters were used to perform the site search (site:[official website] AI guidance). This revealed a complete listing of any web pages containing those words. If pages surfaced from the initial site search, then they were reviewed to see whether they were intended to be used as guidelines for staff or students to follow (and if they could realistically be used to do so). Factors we used to determine this included:

• If the page clearly stated if AI use was acceptable 
• If the page clearly stated how to use AI ethically (including how to cite it)
• If the page clearly stated how to detect the presence of AI

If a page was labelled as an AI policy, but the content within didn’t match the above guidelines, then we marked the official university website as providing no guidance within our study. For example, policy pages which simply offered a statement on AI, explained what AI is, or stated they had guidance without supplying it were marked as ‘no guidance’.

The percentage of universities in each region with and without clear guidelines for faculty and/or students was also calculated to demonstrate the differences in regional stance.

Table 1: Percentage of universities without AI usage guidelines by region 

Which Universities Have AI Usage Guidance?

East Midlands

The universities of East Midlands are found in Nottingham, Leicester, Derby, Loughborough, Lincoln, and Northampton. The majority of the nine universities in the East Midlands have guidance on AI usage for staff or students. It’s the best on our list of regions across the UK. However, that still leaves more than a fifth (22%) without any form of guidance on their websites.

Table 2: East Midlands universities with/without AI usage guidance and their FTE student numbers

 Yorkshire

There are 13 universities in Yorkshire, spanning Leeds, Sheffield, York, Middlesbrough, Hull, Huddersfield and Bradford. Eight of those have guidance on AI usage for staff and/or students. Five universities do not (38%). That’s over a third, despite it being second on the list of regions with 62% of all universities having set out guidelines.

Table 3: Yorkshire universities with/without AI usage guidance and their FTE student numbers

East Anglia

There are seven universities in East Anglia across Cambridge, Hatfield, Essex, Suffolk and Norwich. Of those, almost half (43%) have no guidelines for the usage of AI for staff and/or students on their websites. This includes the third largest in the region for full-time enrolled student numbers - the ARU in Cambridge.

Table 4: East Anglia universities with/without AI usage guidance and their FTE student numbers

London

While London is technically in the South East of England, it has received its own category due to the quantity of universities found there. With 37, it certainly tops the list for number of universities. However, 16 of those have no guidance for AI usage on their sites (43%).

Table 5: London universities with/without AI usage guidance and their FTE student numbers

Scotland 

Scotland has 18 universities in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Dundee, St Andrews, Aberdeen, Strathclyde, Paisley and Stirling. Half provided AI-usage guidance on their website, while the others didn’t. This includes the University of Strathclyde - the third largest university in Scotland by full-time enrolled student numbers.

Table 7: Scotland universities with/without AI usage guidance and their FTE student numbers

West Midlands

The West Midlands is another region where the percentage of universities with and without AI usage guidance is equal at 50%. Universities span Birmingham, Warwick, Wolverhampton, Coventry, Aston, Stoke-on-Trent, Keele and Worcester. However, Coventry is the only university in the top 10 by number of full-time enrolled students to not have any on their site. It’s also the largest in the region for full-time enrolled student numbers.

Table 8: West Midland universities with/without AI usage guidance and their FTE student numbers

South West

The South West has universities in Bristol, Exeter, Plymouth, Bath, Bournemouth, Cheltenham, Falmouth, Hartpury, and Cirencester. Over half of the 15 (53%) have no guidance for AI usage on their sites. Unlike other regions, it’s also noticeable that in the South West it’s the smallest universities by student numbers that have no guidance. ​​For example, the University of Gloucestershire with 6,880 full-time enrolled. 

Table 9: South West universities with/without AI usage guidance and their FTE student numbers

North West

The North West is home to one of the largest universities in England, Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland. With 40,725 full-time enrolled students, the University of Manchester is second in size only to UCL. Other universities in the North West include those in Lancaster, Chester, Bolton, Cumbria, Liverpool, Ormskirk, Preston and Salford. 

Of the 15, over half (53%) have no guidance for students and/or staff members on their websites around the usage of AI. Furthermore, the University of Liverpool, Liverpool John Moore University and the University of Central Lancashire are three of six in the top 20% of UK universities by full-time enrolled student numbers to not provide guidance.

Table 10: North West universities with/without AI usage guidance and their FTE student numbers

South East

With 20 universities, the South East has the most of any area in England, Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland. Excluding London, it includes universities in Portsmouth, Oxford, Sussex, Kent, Reading, Winchester, Wycombe, Southampton, Surrey, Brighton, Luton, Canterbury, Farnham, Chichester, Cranfield, Sidcup, and Beaconsfield. 

It may surprise some to know that 12 (60%) of those have no guidelines for AI usage on their websites. This includes the third largest in the region by full-time enrolled students - the University of Southampton.

Table 11: South East universities with/without AI usage guidance and their FTE student numbers

Northern Ireland

Northern Ireland has three universities. All of which - Queen’s University, Stanmillis University College, and St Mary’s University College - are located in Belfast. However, only Queen’s University has AI usage guidance for staff and/or students.

Table 12: Northern Ireland universities with/without AI usage guidance and their FTE student numbers

Wales

There are nine universities across Wales, in Swansea, Pontypridd, Bangor, Cardiff, Lampeter, Aberystwyth, Wrexham and Newport. The majority (67%) have no guidance on the usage of AI for staff and/or students on their websites. This includes Cardiff University - the largest in Wales by full-time enrolled student numbers. It’s also one of just six in the top 20% across the UK to not.

Table 13: Wales universities with/without AI usage guidance and their FTE student numbers

North East

The North East has just four universities. These are found in Newcastle, Durham and Sunderland. It’s only Newcastle University that has AI usage guidance for staff and/or students. It’s also the largest in the region by full-time enrolled students. The other three in the region (75%) don’t offer guidance, making it the lowest-performing region in our analysis of all 160 universities across the UK.

Table 14: North East universities with/without AI usage guidance and their FTE student numbers

Conclusion

ChatGPT, one of the first LLM models to reach mainstream popularity, was launched in 2022. Within five days, it was reported to have a million users. Now, it boasts almost 200 million.

Years later, the trend seems to be showing no signs of slowing. In fact, AI usage is becoming more common.

Despite this, according to our findings, half of all universities in the UK have no visible, useable AI usage guidelines on their official websites. There’s much work still to do to assist faculty with detecting it more accurately, and guiding students in using it ethically.