California State University has renewed its contract with OpenAI, agreeing to pay $13 million annually for the next three years, even as a university-wide survey found that most students and faculty doubt artificial intelligence is benefiting education.
The original $17 million deal, signed last year, gave CSU's more than 500,000 students and faculty access to ChatGPT Edu, an education-focused version of OpenAI's flagship chatbot. It was the largest partnership between OpenAI and a public university system in the country.
The renewal follows a survey of over 94,000 respondents that revealed deep skepticism on campus. About 65 percent of students and 59 percent of faculty said they were skeptical that AI has been benefitting education overall. Eighty percent of students said they would not be comfortable submitting AI-generated work as their own, and roughly four out of five were concerned about AI's impact on jobs, creativity, and the environment.
Yet the survey also showed widespread use: 84 percent of students reported using ChatGPT, 64 percent said AI positively affected their learning, and about half used AI regularly.
"They're ethically opposed to the environmental impacts and the bias and the erasure of their jobs and voices and creativity," CSU English professor Jennifer Trainor told NPR. "[They] don't like it."
Trainor described a "groundswelling of resistance" to AI on campus. One student told NPR she was a "little disappointed that they accepted [AI] with open arms immediately."
Faculty sentiment was similarly mixed. About 52 percent of professors and instructors said AI had negatively affected their teaching, and 40 percent said they either discourage or outright forbid AI in the classroom. Martha Kenney, a professor and science and technology scholar, led a petition demanding CSU not renew its contract with OpenAI.
"I think refusing this technology needs to be a position that's on the table," Kenney told NPR.
Internal planning documents obtained by NPR referred to a potential OpenAI partnership as a "huge branding opp[ortunity]." At a press conference announcing the original deal, CSU chancellor Mildred García said, "no other university system in the US or internationally is doing anything like this, not at this scale."
The renewal comes as CSU faces steep budget cuts that could slash $144 million.
Despite the institutional commitment, the long-term effects of AI on learning and mental health remain unknown. A growing body of evidence has associated AI usage with impaired critical thinking skills, memory loss, and lower brain activity during cognitive tasks, according to the source material.
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