03/06/2026
College used to mean late-night study groups and asking the smartest person in the lecture hall for help.
Now it means quietly opening five AI tabs ten minutes before a deadline and picking whichever answer sounds most convincing.
Students rotate between models depending on the task. ChatGPT for essays, Claude for reasoning and code, Gemini for quick answers, Perplexity for research with sources, DeepSeek as the open-source backup. ChatGPT was banned on most campuses when it launched.
Three years later, the majority of students use AI tools regularly.
The line between studying and prompting