This big university system is embracing AI. Students and faculty aren't all on board

Leaders of the California State University system, the CSU, want it to become the nation's first artificial intelligence-powered institution of its kind.

It entered into a $17 million no-bid contract with OpenAI last year to provide students, faculty and staff with a new resource: ChatGPT Edu — a version of the popular generative AI chatbot intended for use by educational institutions. The system recently renewed that contract for another $13 million a year for the next three years.

"No other university system in the U.S. or internationally is doing anything like this, not at this scale," said Mildred García, the CSU's chancellor, during a February 2025 press conference announcing the partnership.

But in a recent survey , majorities of its students and faculty said they were skeptical of the benefits of AI for education, and they worry about AI's impacts on job security, creativity and the environment.

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Colleges across the country – from Syracuse University to Dartmouth College to the University of Minnesota – have inked similar deals with AI companies, but as the largest public four-year system in the U.S., the CSU's partnership stands out.

As higher ed scrambles to figure out the benefits and harms of AI, the CSU offers an early look at what happens when an administration commits to a technology that its own community isn't convinced will improve education.

What the university has to gain

In December 2024, university leaders flagged a potential partnership with OpenAI as "a huge branding opp[ortunity]," according to an internal CSU planning document obtained by NPR.

Ed Clark, chief information officer for the CSU's office of the chancellor, told NPR in an email that "the planning document demonstrates the extent to which the CSU thoughtfully approached selecting a vendor that could support our commitment to innovation, accessibility and academic excellence."

Clark said the system chose to partner with OpenAI because they offered "the most cost-effective option that could make it even possible to bring AI tools to more than a half a million students, faculty and staff."

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A separate document obtained by NPR, dated 2025, shows that the CSU expected questions around its partnership with OpenAI. The document, titled "Potential follow-up questions on ChatGPT Initiative," advises officials to explain the no-bid contract by saying the deal is "essential for the success of the CSU's AI strategy."

The document goes on to say, "After conducting extensive research and evaluating various AI tools and vendors, it was determined that OpenAI is uniquely positioned to meet our needs."

AI won't be used to teach classes, and Clark, the CSU spokesperson, told NPR in an email that the technology should supplement learning, not replace it. Both the CSU and OpenAI frame AI adoption as a necessity to prepare students for careers steeped in this technology.

"As they prepare for the workforce, AI literacy is becoming part of career readiness… so the CSU's role is to help students understand how AI is changing their disciplines and how to use it ethically and responsibly," Clark said.

Leah Belsky, vice president of education at OpenAI, told NPR they share a responsibility to "help students use these tools well… to harness their full potential and succeed in the AI-driven future of work."

But Martha Kenney, a professor and science and technology scholar at San Francisco State University, part of the CSU, says some faculty and students reject the idea that AI in higher ed is an inevitability, and that their perspective deserves consideration.

"I think refusing this technology needs to be a position that's on the table," Kenney says. She says rejecting this technology on campuses is justified, given generative AI's environmental impact and the use of copyrighted work to train models . She also questions the educational value of technology like ChatGPT Edu: She says offering a chatbot that allows students to take shortcuts on assignments is "cheating our students out of an education."

Kenney co-authored a petition that called on the CSU not to renew its contract for ChatGPT Edu.

But Clark says the "online petition does not reflect overall sentiment from within our community." He says the CSU's survey shows strong support for AI given that majorities of students and faculty say it has had a positive impact on their learning and work.

Clark also says the CSU chose to renew its agreement with OpenAI after its generative AI advisory committee, which is composed of students, faculty and staff, "unanimously recommended renewing the contract."

How students, staff and faculty feel about AI

The CSU serves about 470,000 students and, according to the system, it awards nearly half of all bachelor's degrees in California. Its student body is diverse: Roughly half are Hispanic, more than a quarter of undergraduates are the first in their family to attend college and many students work while they attend school.

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Last fall, the system invited students, staff and faculty across all 22 campuses to take a survey on their views around AI. More than 94,000 people responded, and the results show widespread use of generative AI tools, but also significant ambivalence about the technology.

The survey did not ask whether students, faculty and staff agreed with the system's decision to spend millions on a contract with OpenAI.

Roughly 84% of students said they used ChatGPT. About a quarter of them said they used the version provided by CSU and the vast majority said they used the free version.

Large majorities of students and faculty also worry about AI's impact on creativity (83% of students, 82% of faculty), job security (82% of students, 78% of faculty) and the environment (80% of students, 84% of faculty).

The survey had some limitations, says David Goldberg, an associate professor at San Diego State University, part of the CSU, and one of the survey authors.

"The findings are based on the people who did respond. We don't know the opinions of the people who didn't," Goldberg explains. Still, he says the responses are a "pretty good representation across different fields of study and across different demographics."

Goldberg says the survey illustrates a tremendous amount of nuance in opinion across all groups.

"Even within one student, you can be using the tool a lot, see real advantages, and at the same time see these negatives," he says.

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Sejal Daterao is one of those students with complicated feelings.

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Daterao, 30, says she enrolled in the information systems master's program at California State University, Long Beach, to learn how to use AI more efficiently.

As a student, she says she uses ChatGPT Edu and other AI tools to conduct research, summarize text and video lectures, and create quizzes targeted to the subjects she's studying.

And she says she's grateful the CSU provides access to ChatGPT Edu — which includes features not available on the free version of ChatGPT. As a grad student, she says it would be hard for her to foot the bill for a premium subscription.

"Helping students use such technologies firsthand is really a good thing, honestly," Daterao says.

But she doesn't describe herself as pro-AI.

She's frustrated by the occasional false information AI chatbots generate and by tech companies' use of creative work to train AI models without providing credit and compensation to artists.

"It has a lot of bad sides, and a lot of good sides," Daterao says. "If you are smart, if you are being ethical, you can use the good sides in a really amazing way."

But another student, H, doesn't see many redeeming qualities to AI. She's in her fourth-year studying computer science at San José State University, also part of the CSU, and she asked that NPR refer to her by only her first initial because she's actively applying to tech jobs and doesn't want her opinions on AI to impact her employment prospects.

H says she was annoyed when she noticed that her classmates were using AI to write assignments for them.

"It was pissing me off, which is why I completely avoided using it at first," she says.