When it comes to planning the future of education, few things matter more than figuring out what to do with artificial intelligence.
In 2025, College Board found that 84% of high school students admitted to using AI tools to some extent in their schoolwork. The same year, Education Week found that 61% of teachers admitted they did the same.
And at universities such as Oregon State, institutions are faced with trying to address the academic concerns that come with AI, all while staying on the cutting edge of modern technology.
At the end of the day, does AI benefit our education?
YES
By Orion Glover and the LBCC Civil Discourse Program
Imagine a student sitting in a math class, right on the edge of understanding a concept. They ask a question, but the explanation doesn’t quite click. Embarrassed to ask again, they stay silent and fall behind.
What that student needs is a tutor that is free from social pressures. Yes, students do use AI to cheat, but this casts a shadow on its real potential. While it should never be used to bypass coursework, AI is an incredible tool during the initial stages of learning.
I, Orion, am a first-year engineering student at Linn-Benton Community College, and I spend a lot of time just trying to understand difficult concepts from dense textbooks and lectures. Using AI, I can ask the same question in different ways. I can ask for diagrams, overviews, and step-by-step explanations, immediately testing my understanding with practice problems.
This one-on-one experience can help students learn with less stress. According to a 2026 study from Frontiers in Psychology, this low-pressure dynamic has been found especially helpful for students who are struggling the most to learn certain topics. Instead of checking out when it feels like there is no way forward, AI offers a path for students to stay engaged and find more meaning in their education.
AI also promises to enhance one of the most important parts of the college experience: large projects and research. Students with good ideas are often held up by technical skills they might not have, such as coding, or by impossible roadblocks such as analyzing millions of data points.
Facing this exact data issue, a student at the University of Southampton built an AI tool to scan millions of aerial images for ancient ruins, discovering 120 new historic sites across Scotland. Not only did she learn more herself, but AI unlocked a vision that had a positive impact on society.
When integrated well, AI can also help students achieve more in the classroom. Recently in Engineering 102 at LBCC, my teacher said AI could be used to elevate our Excel projects, on the condition that we could explain any part of the project during a graded presentation to the class.
The result? Students used their creativity to the fullest, taking their ideas and using AI to help learn how to achieve them. AI is uniquely helpful for this. Instead of searching 20 minutes for an outdated Excel video on a different operating system, you can upload a screenshot and get advice on how to move forward that is specific to your goals and situation.
With guidance on advanced functions, students were able to create Excel workbooks that looked more like a website than a spreadsheet, all while learning the advanced methods they were using because of how the teacher set up the project.
AI is a tool that can make it easier for anyone to learn in their own way and at their own speed. There have never been enough teachers to go around – until now.
NO
By Lili Daniel and the LBCC Civil Discourse Program
As a full-time student with multiple part-time jobs, I, Lili, often wish that there was some easy system or magic tool that I could use to make learning easier. AI tools are sold as that magic bullet. They make things easier on the surface level. But what are they doing to us long term?
AI models mathematically determine what words are most likely to be found together in order to generate human-like output. Because of this guesswork, they can produce inaccurate or misleading information. They can be biased, too, based on the data they are trained on – in one study, ChatGPT analogized “terrorist” with “Muslim” 23% of the time and “money” with “Jewish” 5% of the time. Why would we use these tools that we know can produce such problematic, inaccurate work?
Using tools can get work done faster with poorer learning outcomes. This is known as cognitive offloading – essentially, making something else do the tough thinking for you. This can be harmless, but if you become reliant on tools, you’ll be unable to perform the same tasks without them.
For example, I have used citation generators for years to avoid the tedious task of manually writing works cited pages. Now, despite having turned in countless “correct” works cited pages, I still wouldn’t be able to write a good one on my own.
The same thing appears to be happening with AI, but when it comes to even more tasks: writing emails, reading articles, making art. Though the output may appear acceptable, what’s going on in the brain is different.
AI is cognitive offloading to the max: a cheap and easy way to complete big tasks that should require skill building and learning.
Let’s use writing essays as an example. A recent study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that using AI while writing essays resulted in lower recall of essay contents, lower sense of ownership, and, scariest of all, lower brain connectivity. The study found that “AI tools, while valuable for supporting performance, may unintentionally hinder deep cognitive processing.”
Though the output might look the same, what’s going on in the brain is different. It worries me to imagine the long-term effects of chronic AI usage on the brain.
I understand that, from an academic perspective, many of us are focused on grades – and for good reason. But while an AI model can output something that looks like an essay, and may be graded as an essay, the student prompting AI misses out on the cognitive work and the learning.
If you want to really learn something, you need to struggle a little bit.
When I first got into art, I was really bad at it and I gave up many times. But I kept going back to it, practicing, and learning from experts. Now, I love most of the paintings that I make. But if I had asked someone else to make the art for me, I would have the paintings but would have lost out on what made them meaningful.
Learning is an art and an invaluable lifelong skill. I encourage students to embrace the hard parts of struggling, thinking for themselves, and creating their own work.
