AI usage soars among business students even as graduates boo pro-AI speakers

A survey of 483 business school students conducted from 2024 to 2026 reveals that AI tools are now a common part of academic work, with more than four-fifths having used them in the past six months and a third accessing them at least eleven times weekly. The majority turn to AI for idea generation, source discovery and summarization, favoring Perplexity, ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude. Employers have followed suit, with AI-focused interview questions rising from 12% to 43% over the same period, even as some faculty impose outright bans.

Casey Evans, interim dean at Kogod, said the school has not forced AI use and has faced little resistance. Nonetheless, students remain uneasy about academic integrity and the impact on independent thought, and a real-estate executive’s pro-AI remarks at a University of Central Florida commencement were loudly booed.