The debate over AI in college classrooms is no longer about students taking shortcuts. It’s about who gets access to communicative power.
I recently saw a post from Sara (a pseudonym), a fast-food worker trying to promote her restaurant in a local social media group. I admired her initiative and willingness to engage the community. Others did not, as her post quickly drew sharp criticism from the group because of how it was written.
Her ideas were not challenged based on their merit, but for how they were expressed. I suggested that she try using ChatGPT to reword future posts to help mitigate the trolling, a recommendation she welcomed with enthusiasm.
Sara is clearly driven and hardworking, but has had different opportunities to develop her writing skills. She brought strong ideas and an authentic approach to engagement, yet paid a price for not meeting unspoken standards of “proper” communication.
Her experience highlights a familiar pattern: we often value the ability to articulate ideas more than the ideas themselves. Generative AI tools can interrupt this cycle by translating basic ideas into professional, concise language, reducing the likelihood that people like Sara will be penalized for communication gaps that have little to do with intelligence or capability.
Discomfort with AI in college
Most of us in higher education spent years developing communication skills. We invested significant time and money in learning how to sound credible and polished, which ultimately pays dividends in professional settings.
From this perspective, communication skills function as a form of social currency. They are accumulated through access to formal education systems that often conflate polished language with intelligence itself.
Those fluent in these norms reap the benefits; those who are not are quietly excluded. Some of the discomfort with AI in higher education comes from a simple shift: people like Sara now have access to communicative power that once required years of formal education.
In spaces that routinely mistake fluency for merit, Sara’s ideas are given a voice that can be amplified rather than dismissed.
Are we gatekeepers?
Like Sara, many students arrive at college with different access to the communication skills demanded by rigid academic standards. These include multilingual students, neurodivergent learners, and first-generation students, among others.
If AI can help level the playing field for a fast-food worker navigating through communication hurdles, why should we deny similar advantages to students?
Students should learn to write without AI, but many enter college already fluent in academic language by virtue of their background. Inequities arise when we continue to reward fluency as if it were a neutral measure of intellectual ability, while denying others access to tools that could help them bridge the gaps.
Sara used GPT not as an author, but as a translator. She knew what she wanted to say, but struggled only to express her ideas clearly.
AI did not replace her thinking, but enhanced her ability to communicate it. This distinction matters.
Professionals at all levels, from frontline workers to CEOs, already use GPT for tasks such as drafting emails, writing reports, and coding. This is widely accepted as a legitimate use of AI, not a shortcut for the unskilled.
If AI use is acceptable across the professional world, why should it be prohibited for students who are preparing to enter it? The workplace demands not only idea generation but prioritizes output.
Similarly, current approaches to academic assessment reward not the quality of ideas, but often the ability to present those ideas in polished scholarly language. When we prohibit AI outright, we are not merely protecting learning. We are asserting control over who gets to sound smart.
Whether educators are ready or not, widely available free tools now allow someone like Sara to write with a refinement once limited to those with advanced degrees. This reality raises difficult but necessary questions as we consider AI’s place in higher education:
- Are we currently assessing critical thinking or simply fluency in elite communication norms?
- If we prohibit AI use, are we gatekeeping access to communicative power?
- Are we concerned that AI devalues learning or unsettled by the shift in who gets to be heard?
- Where is the line between acceptable AI assistance and cheating, and who gets to decide?
