Research paper: Undergraduate usage of generative AI in spring 2026
Eleanor Henricksen and John Gallagher have just released a pre-print on SSRN: “Students still think they write better than GenAI, but not equally: Disciplinary differences in usage, trust, and writing practices with artificial intelligence”
The paper summarizes responses to a spring 2026 survey on student generative AI use. The specific university where the survey was administered was omitted from the pre-print during review, but I presume it was administered at UIUC or a similar institution.
I was most interested by their question about generative AI usage frequency: 84% of students report using generative AI at least once per week. The survey results also show that self-reported usage frequency differs substantially depending on a student’s academic discipline. (A “discipline” is just a grouping of related majors; the paper contains full lists of the associated majors.)
The usual caveats about small-n subgroup comparison apply here, but the most interesting standout is how different Humanities & Arts students’ self-reported usage is compared to all other students. I wonder how much of this is explained by expressive responding or by greater normative expectations in the humanities around avoiding LLM use.
Here’s the raw data:
| Discipline | n | Never | Once a week | 2–3×/week | 4–6×/week | Daily |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Business & Finance | 38 | 0% (0) | 5% (2) | 18% (7) | 32% (12) | 45% (17) |
| Engineering | 84 | 6% (5) | 10% (8) | 24% (20) | 24% (20) | 37% (31) |
| CS / Data / Info Science | 20 | 10% (2) | 10% (2) | 20% (4) | 40% (8) | 20% (4) |
| Education | 17 | 12% (2) | 41% (7) | 18% (3) | 29% (5) | 0% (0) |
| Physical & Env. Sciences | 10 | 10% (1) | 10% (1) | 40% (4) | 20% (2) | 20% (2) |
| Life Sciences & Health | 28 | 4% (1) | 7% (2) | 46% (13) | 25% (7) | 18% (5) |
| Undeclared / Exploratory | 25 | 12% (3) | 24% (6) | 24% (6) | 20% (5) | 20% (5) |
| Social Sciences | 25 | 16% (4) | 20% (5) | 36% (9) | 16% (4) | 12% (3) |
| Agriculture & ACES | 23 | 17% (4) | 17% (4) | 30% (7) | 9% (2) | 26% (6) |
| Humanities & Arts | 59 | 49% (29) | 17% (10) | 19% (11) | 8% (5) | 7% (4) |
| All | 329 | 16% (51) | 14% (47) | 26% (84) | 21% (70) | 23% (77) |
There are several other interesting questions in the survey, so feel free to check out the paper for more:
Henricksen, Eleanor and Gallagher, John, Students still think they write better than GenAI, but not equally: Disciplinary differences in usage, trust, and writing practices with artificial intelligence. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=6869641 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.6869641.