Maryland campuses grapple with cheating as AI reshapes college life

When Jameel Kiburi started studying at the University of Maryland, College Park, four years ago, he could write a multipage essay fairly easily. After all, he had plenty of practice in high school.

But now, the senior engineering major from Germantown says he’d struggle to write even a one-page essay without asking ChatGPT for ideas.

“I’ve definitely become more reliant on it,” he said, noting that he only uses AI when his professors allow it. “My freshman year it had just come out but wasn’t as popular, but now everyone is using it.”

Kiburi is one of the thousands of Maryland college students whose four years have been shaped by the explosion of generative AI. Programs like ChatGPT and Claude have become virtual study partners that help them brainstorm, understand difficult material and plan their days — acceptable uses in many college courses. But a rising number of students at Maryland’s public colleges are also getting caught using AI to cheat, and some professors are worried that an overreliance on large language models is compromising students’ ability to learn.

In response to public records requests filed by The Banner, six of the state’s 12 public campuses reported more AI-related honor code violations in 2025-26 than they did in 2023-24, and one reported fewer. Three campuses — Bowie State University, Coppin State University and the University of Maryland Eastern Shore — reported that they did not keep readily available records of those violations. Morgan State University reported zero AI-related violations, while Salisbury University did not track violations in 2023-24.

At the University of Maryland, College Park, the state’s flagship university, AI violations have increased from 120 in the 2023-24 school year to 208 last year.

The rise reflects a national trend in increasing AI usage among college students. A 2026 Gallup poll found that more than half of U.S. college students are using artificial intelligence in their coursework at least once a week, while 1 in 5 use it daily.

Honor code violations involving AI are likely heavily underreported, according to Dorothy Leidner, a professor at the University of Virginia studying AI ethics.

“It’s more than just a temptation now for students — it’s a way of life,” said Leidner. “You need to just assume they will use it, even if you tell them not to.”

At College Park, the “total number of academic misconduct referrals has been about the same,” even as the number involving AI is on the rise, Rebecca Aloisi, senior director of university communications, said in an email. The university’s Office of Student Conduct works with leaders across campus to “collaborate on guidance for instructors so that we can better prepare students to use this technology responsibly,” she wrote.

College Park released a lengthy set of guidelines for using AI in the classroom last year. Students, faculty and staff are “encouraged to explore how generative artificial intelligence tools can enhance their teaching, learning and work,” the guidelines state. But they “should disclose and, when applicable, make proper attribution when using generative AI tools in teaching, learning, research, scholarship and administrative activities.”

Students should assume that using AI to complete course assignments and assessments is not allowed unless specified in the syllabus or assignment instructions, the guidelines state. They acknowledge that using artificial intelligence as a learning aid, for practicing problems, exploring concepts or reviewing definitions, is common practice, but that students should speak with their instructors when doing so.

If a student is caught using AI when they aren’t supposed to, the Office of Student Conduct will investigate as it does for allegations of cheating or plagiarism.

The guidelines align with Leidner’s philosophy. Students who are using AI to brainstorm should get a pass, the AI ethics professor said.

“You wouldn’t kick someone out for talking to a librarian and being led to the best resource on something,” she said. “Instead of going to the library now, students go to Claude, which knows what’s in the library and has been trained on it. What’s the difference?”

Other Maryland universities have similar guidelines, though the specifics vary. The University of Maryland, Baltimore County, instructs faculty to define expectations for AI use in assignments and encourages professors to have students show their work so they can best assess if they used AI.

Towson and Salisbury universities treat AI violations as plagiarism as well and share resources for faculty to learn more about the platforms students are using and how to detect usage.

Major universities, like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, are releasing their own reports on AI usage and its effects on student learning. MIT’s report found that artificial intelligence has “upended foundational elements” of the university’s educational experience and has eroded the “social contract” between instructors and students.

Across campuses, AI use is often left to professors’ discretion.

Siv Lie, an ethnomusicology professor at College Park, said she’s never reported a student for using artificial intelligence, even though she’s caught several. Instead, Lie said, she tries to deal with it entirely on her own.

“In some cases I’ve given them a zero or a very low grade,” she said. “I have sometimes given them chances to redo the assignment as well. There are many times I felt that a student just freaked out and made a bad decision.”

Lie said she assumes that most students use artificial intelligence in some capacity. So she’s begun to redesign some assignments and exams to make it harder to cheat.

“I try to make assignments that are really based on stuff we’ve only talked about in class,” she said. “I’ve also been doing more in-class handwritten stuff.”

Several students milling around on McKeldin Mall last week agreed, in separate interviews, that their professors were assigning them more in-person exams because of the rise in AI. They’re also assigning more oral presentations, said Michael Early, a junior psychology major from Laurel.

“Most of my professors are pretty anti-AI, but I’ve had a few classes where you can use it but in only particular ways,” he said. “And if you do use it, even if it’s for brainstorming ideas, you need to credit the AI.”

Laurencia Aparin, a senior information science major also from Laurel, said her classes use AI frequently. For one assignment, a professor asked students to use a prompt and see which generative AI answered better.

“I feel like it depends on the major,” she said. “For our major, they tell us they want us to utilize it because for the future we might have to use it more in work settings.”

But Aparin, who said she uses AI for class and sometimes to study, noted she still has concerns about the environmental impact of artificial intelligence.

“I think it’s causing more harm for people, and making people think less,” she said. “That’s never good.”

And none of the students interviewed said they knew of anyone who was actually caught or disciplined for using artificial intelligence.

“Most professors were lenient in the beginning, but now they’re getting stricter with it,” said Kiburi, the senior from Germantown. “But at the same time, you kind of get work-arounds as students. More students are now just more careful on how they use it.”

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This reporting is part of The Banner’s Education Hub, community-funded journalism that provides parents with resources they need to make decisions about how their children learn. Read more.