In a campus-wide email sent Wednesday, USC announced that students, faculty and staff will “gain unlimited access” to ChatGPT Edu in 2026 as part of the university’s new partnership with OpenAI.
The university stated in its email that the partnership is part of USC’s “intention to lead in the responsible use of AI” and to “empower students, faculty and staff with the most advanced forms of this technology so that they can develop greater facility and experience with both its power and its limitations.”
“This is also a signal of our commitment to the importance of AI,” Geoff Garrett, dean of USC Marshall School of Business, said. “[it’s] the future of higher education.”
“Other universities are doing this as well, and other businesses are doing this. It’s the direction that the whole world is moving in all at once,” Aaron Hagedorn, an Instructional Associate Professor of Gerontology, said.
With the intention of maximizing the USC community’s access to AI tools, the collaboration provides access to several resources, including Zoom AI Companion, Microsoft Copilot, Google Gemini and Google Notebook LM.
“The world that [students are] preparing for is a world where they’re gonna be able to use this technology, and employers are encouraging it, so they might as well know how to use it well,” Hagedorn said.
“I think that faculty are always reluctant to use new media, whether it be the Internet, whether it be some programs on the websites, whether it’s anything new, I think they’re reluctant,” Joe Saltzman, a Professor of Journalism and Communication at USC Annenberg, said.
Garrett, who leads the USC President’s AI Strategy Committee, says that he has received largely “positive reactions to the announcement” from USC faculty and staff.
Despite concerns from some about AI, Saltzman says he does not mind if his students utilize AI as a resource to study.
“Memorizing names and dates and cramming for a test, as we used to do when I was a student, you forget it the next day,” Saltzman said. “So I’d rather have them do a take-home exam where they can look over the material, and maybe some of it sinks in.”
Saltzman said he used AI in the past to prevent students from easily acing an exam using artificial intelligence.
“I put my exams through ChatGPT,” Saltzman said. “I put it through to see what the student might do if he uses AI to answer my take-home exam, and it usually gets a B-minus, and I’ve tweaked some questions so it isn’t that easy for AI to answer.”
To assist faculty members in implementing AI resources in the classroom, the university is offering tools and guidance to faculty, including workshops and consultations for faculty and staff who need assistance utilizing AI resources.
“I think the big challenge we’re gonna have is to make sure students remember things in the future, and don’t just ask AI everything,” Hagedorn said. “Hopefully, people are still able to write emails and write papers without AI support. I find myself using it more and more, and I’m a little worried we’ll become dependent on it, and our skills will atrophy. But that seems to be the world that we’re moving towards, regardless.”
Despite the positives, Garrett and the USC AI Committee are remaining aware of the potential negative effects this type of student-wide access can have on education.
“I think we’re going to have to rethink how we assess work,” Garrett said. “But it’s part of a broader issue that strikes me … what is original work in an AI age?”
According to Garrett, these issues are preventable with proper policies in place, as his committee is currently working through a school-wide AI policy to set rules and regulations for the use of ChatGPT.
“My worry is,” Garrett said, “that if we don’t treat things with enough urgency, we’re just going to fall behind.”