At These Universities, Using AI Isn’t Shunned — It’s a Graduation Requirement

While most colleges and universities are reluctantly grappling with widespread student use of artificial intelligence, a few are not only tolerating it but making it part of their core curricula. In the process, they’re signaling to new students that using and critically evaluating AI will be a large part of their post-college lives.

Indiana’s Purdue University in December approved an AI “working competency” graduation requirement, saying that by the time they earn a diploma, undergraduates must be able to use the latest AI tools effectively in their chosen field while understanding both the technology’s strengths and limitations. 

Graduates must also be able to defend decisions informed by AI while sussing out its “presence, influence and consequences” in their work.

Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter

“The root of all of this is really making sure that our students are ready for the workforce and are not left behind by AI,” said Haley Oliver-Jischke, Purdue’s senior vice provost for academic and student success. While admitting that college students likely rely on AI for class assignments, she said what’s missing is the ability to go deeper. 

“Yes, they know how to use it, but are we instilling a framework and a practice where we’re emphasizing critical thinking?” she said. 

The long-term goal of the effort is to ensure that graduates are “wildly successful in an AI-enabled workplace,” while being able to evaluate AI-generated work and criticize it. 

A microbiologist by training, Oliver-Jischke said AI has already “revolutionized” her field. Recent research suggests that AI-enabled analysis of large genomic data sets, for instance, is allowing scientists to look at DNA directly from environmental samples, revealing entire ecosystems of previously unknown microbes.

“The technology is here,” said Oliver-Jischke. “You will lose out on opportunities if you don’t understand it or know how to utilize it and apply it effectively.”

Purdue’s faculty and curriculum committees began discussing the new requirement last summer, she said. The university has already identified 35 courses that will lead the way toward fulfilling the requirement. It goes into effect fully for the graduating class of 2030, who are due to arrive on campus in the fall. It won’t require a separate exam or course, but rather it will be embedded into students’ required coursework, she said.

While it’s unusual, Purdue’s move isn’t unprecedented. 

In January 2025, the State University of New York system revised its information literacy curriculum to include requirements that SUNY students effectively recognize and ethically use AI. While it integrates AI into an existing requirement, it doesn’t create a standalone competency like Purdue’s.

In June, The Ohio State University unveiled its AI Fluency initiative, which will embed AI education “into the core of every undergraduate curriculum, equipping students with the ability to not only use AI tools, but to understand, question and innovate with them — no matter their major.”

Both Purdue and Ohio State are public land-grant universities, founded within months of each other in 1869 and 1870, respectively, to meet what was at the time a booming demand for agricultural and technical expertise. 

Ohio State’s AI effort will require all graduates, beginning with the class of 2029, to be “fluent” in the technology and how it can be responsibly applied to advance their field. “In the not-so-distant future, every job, in every industry, is going to be impacted in some way by AI,” Walter “Ted” Carter Jr., the university president, said at the time.

Executive Vice President and Provost Ravi V. Bellamkonda told The 74 that as AI continues to influence how we work, teach and learn, “we will remain at the forefront of this technology.” 

Is ‘vibe coding’ the future?

The moves come as recent surveys suggest that college students are already making AI a large part of their education, even if they’re mostly outsourcing hard work: The AI and plagiarism detection platform Copyleaks in September found that nearly 90% of college students have used AI for academic purposes, with 53% using it either daily or several times a week. 

While most students say they use it for brainstorming, half use AI to draft outlines and 44% to generate actual drafts of work. About one in three students uses AI to summarize readings.

In light of statistics like these, requiring a deeper competence around AI is “a good step in the right direction,” said Alex Kotran, CEO of the AI Education Project. “Closing out 2025, I was feeling like post-secondary is sort of deer-in-the-headlights” when it comes to AI. “This is promising, but the proof will be in the pudding: Are they building the systems for professional development and learning, because that’s going to be critical. The policy is just step one.”

Kotran noted that the vast majority of job postings now specifically name AI skills as a requirement. Colleges that are seen as more effective at helping students get those skills are likely producing “more employable” graduates.

Purdue’s Oliver-Jischke said the focus at the university, which enrolls nearly 45,000 students, is on “working competencies” and how they can fit into instruction across departments. “This can be a large boat to turn, but because we have a commitment to AI and this is obviously a massive STEM school, everybody is curious, interested and willing to explore how this should be implemented into the core curricula.”

At the same time, she said, AI is evolving quickly and the landscape could soon be very different. “We recognize that, and we want to remain nimble,” she said. “And we will keep our curricula nimble to do that.”

The two schools’ focus on differentiated, workplace-specific use of AI is a smart one, Kotran said. But to be effective, universities should go beyond simply relying on off-the-shelf commercial products. “The future of work is not a bunch of employees using ChatGPT or Gemini day-to-day and being more productive because of that,” he said.

Instead, the real value of AI, at least for now, is in the custom software it enables users to build via what’s known informally as “vibe coding,” or using AI prompts to do the actual behind-the-scenes coding that once took advanced knowledge. “The real unlock comes when you’re building custom software to do stuff more efficiently,” he said.

Since generative AI came to market in 2022, the cost of building apps, websites, games and other software has dropped precipitously, while the task has gotten easier for non-technical users. 

“That’s going to change the way we work,” Kotran said. The more users can develop and control their own software, the more productive they’ll be. “But it’s very hard to get that insight if you haven’t seen vibe coding for yourself.” 

Done right, the efforts at Purdue and Ohio State could be significant, Kotran said. “It just increases the exposure that students are going to get to having the opportunity to build that intuition and to experiment,” he said. “And it will force professors to start building their assessments around it.”