How Many People in Higher Education Use AI? | Skillwell

The adoption curve tells the story better than any single statistic.

Three years ago, AI in higher education was a pilot program.

Today it's the default.

How many people in higher education use AI depends on where you look — global surveys report near-saturation among students, while faculty adoption is climbing fast from a lower base, and institutional strategies have shifted from experimental to strategic.

Below, we break down the verified adoption data by role, use case, and the tools people open every day.

How many people in higher education use AI?

Student adoption is near-universal

Ask how many people in higher education use AI, and the latest global surveys point toward near-saturation among students.

The Digital Education Council's 2024 Global AI Student Survey found that 86% of students use AI tools in their studies, with 54% relying on them weekly.

In the United States, Tyton Partners' Time for Class 2024 reported a more conservative 59% of students using generative AI — up sharply from roughly 27% a year earlier.

Faculty adoption is climbing fast from a lower base

Faculty adoption lags but is climbing fast: the same Tyton research found about 40% of instructors using generative AI in 2024, roughly double the prior year.

Administrators sit in between; EDUCAUSE's 2024 AI Landscape Study reported that most institutions had adopted or were piloting AI for administrative and student-support functions.

Across the past three years the trend line is unmistakable: student generative-AI use has roughly doubled since 2023 — from about a quarter of U.S. students in 2023 to a clear majority in 2024 — while faculty uptake has accelerated from a lower base, nearly doubling year over year, and institutional adoption has shifted from isolated pilots to campus-wide strategy.

What are some of the most common ways that students and faculty are using AI in their daily academic work?

What students do with AI

Beyond raw counts, the more revealing question is what people do with these tools.

For students, the Digital Education Council survey ranks information search, summarizing documents, and drafting or checking writing as the top activities.

Studying and tutoring follow closely, as learners use conversational AI to explain concepts and quiz themselves — an informal cousin of adaptive learning powered by AI, which sequences content to each learner's demonstrated progress.

What faculty do with AI

Faculty gravitate toward different tasks. EDUCAUSE and Tyton data show instructors using AI most often to:

• generate lesson materials and draft assessments

• streamline grading automation and personalized feedback

• support research assistance and literature review

• strengthen academic integrity monitoring

A growing minority also experiment with immersive simulation training to give students realistic, low-stakes practice.

Students lean on AI to produce and study, while faculty use it to create, evaluate, and safeguard. For deeper institutional and regional differences — from community colleges to research universities and across national contexts — see our AI in Higher Education Statistics sub-pillar.

What are the most common ways that students and faculty in higher education are using AI tools in their academic work?

ChatGPT and adaptive platforms dominate tool choice

The activities above run on a recognizable set of platforms, and this section names the software behind them — the same behaviors viewed through the tools people open.

On the student side, generative AI for writing, led by ChatGPT, dominates, followed by AI-powered adaptive learning platforms and plagiarism-and-AI-detection tools.

In professional and vocational programs, business simulation software and skills training software let learners rehearse decisions and build skills mastery.

So how many students use AI to write essays?

Tyton Partners' 2024 data indicate that roughly half of student generative-AI users apply it to writing tasks, while the Digital Education Council found 53% use AI to help complete assignments and prepare coursework.

Pearson's 2024 research similarly showed a majority turning to AI for drafting and revision, though far fewer admit to submitting AI-written work outright.

Where the previous section grouped behaviors by purpose, this one maps them to the platforms students and faculty open every day — the tool layer that determines how much of this usage becomes measurable, defensible practice rather than invisible shortcut.

Skillwell Turns Adoption Data Into Design Decisions

Taken together, the data tell a consistent story: AI has moved from the margins to the mainstream of academic life in barely three years.

Governance policy will never move as fast as the technology it's trying to regulate. That's exactly why course design has to do the work policy alone can't.

For leaders weighing where to invest next, the opportunity is to move from ad hoc usage to intentional design.

See how AI personalizes learning for students for examples of how institutions are translating adoption into learning outcomes, or start with the full guide to AI in Higher Education.

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Frequently Asked Questions

How many students in higher education use AI?

• Global surveys point to near-saturation, with the Digital Education Council finding 86% of students use AI tools, while U.S.-focused Tyton Partners data lands lower at 59% for generative AI specifically.

• 54% of students report relying on AI weekly

• U.S. generative-AI use has more than doubled since 2023

• Definitional differences explain most of the gap between surveys

• "Ever used" surveys always report higher than "weekly use" surveys

How many faculty members are using AI in their teaching?

• About 40% of instructors reported using generative AI in 2024, roughly double the prior year's rate, with adoption still accelerating from a lower base than student use.

• Faculty adoption trails student adoption but is closing the gap

• Most institutions have adopted or piloted AI for administrative functions too

• Lesson planning, grading, and research support are the top faculty use cases

• A growing minority are experimenting with simulation-based teaching tools

What do students genuinely use AI for in their coursework?

• Information search, summarizing documents, and drafting or checking writing are the top student activities, followed closely by studying and self-quizzing.

• Roughly half of student generative-AI users apply it to writing tasks

• ChatGPT leads the platforms students choose for writing help

• Adaptive learning platforms and AI-detection tools round out common use

• Fewer students admit to submitting AI-written work outright than to using AI for drafting

What do faculty use AI for most often?

• Faculty most commonly use AI to generate lesson materials, streamline grading, support research and literature review, and strengthen academic integrity monitoring.

• Faculty use skews toward creating, evaluating, and safeguarding

• Students use skews toward producing and studying

• A growing minority of faculty experiment with simulation-based practice tools

• The split reflects different roles, not different comfort with the technology

Why do AI adoption statistics vary so much between surveys?

• The numbers diverge mainly for methodological reasons — global versus U.S.-only samples, "any AI use" versus generative-AI-specific questions, and "ever used" versus "weekly use" framing.

• An 86% global figure and a 59% U.S. figure aren't genuinely contradictory

• Regional and institutional breakdowns explain much of the remaining spread

• The three-year trend line is consistent even when single-year numbers vary

• Reading the methodology matters as much as reading the headline number