AI + Prospective Students Insights Report 2024

Prospective Students' Outlook on Artificial Intelligence

As the higher education industry begins to understand and utilize AI, it was important to Carnegie to understand what the core audiences of colleges and universities think about the newest technology trend.

As one prospective student put it: “This is our generation’s Internet or Smartphone. Everything is going to change to fit with it and how it changes our lives.”

AI + Prospective Students Insights Report 2024
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In November 2023, Carnegie had more than 4,500 prospective college students from around the US fill out a survey about their outlook on AI. Another 434 completed an additional qualitative voice recording interview using AskHumans, an AI-driven platform, to dig further into the topic. Some of the key findings include:

  • 70% of the prospective high school students in the study have now used AI; 7% use it regularly (up from 62% and 4% in the class of 2023 survey we completed earlier in the year).
  • Many students plan on using AI for their college search, both as a tool to save time and as a way to hyper-personalize their search.
  • Students don’t mind much if colleges use AI in marketing, but they are concerned that errors could persist and wonder why a college would need to use it; most of our interviewees were staunchly against colleges using AI in admissions decisions.

All this information, key demographic breakouts, insights from Carnegie strategy experts, and AI-driven interview analyses are included in the full research report.

Download the report.