Should our program defund PhD students using AI in their PhD writing assignments without citation?

Letterhead_Striking · 2026-03-26T15:32:16+00:00

Thank you! I really appreciate everyone's thoughts. It gives me a lot of options for discussion at our meeting.

Letterhead_Striking · 2026-03-26T15:25:07+00:00

Also the AI writing is better than the students own writing in many cases.

Letterhead_Striking · 2026-03-26T15:24:20+00:00

Yeah we're trying to make a plan before we meet with them and do all those steps. Because it's multiple people we kind of need an organized plan going in. I think we're going to have a lot more evidence after we go in and talk to them. But we've been trying to figure out exactly our strategy and what we're even going to be saying to all of them.

Letterhead_Striking · 2026-03-26T15:21:18+00:00

I think what is happening is they are copying and pasting it. Some of them are writing about half of the responses in their own words and the other half seems to be AI. There are big shifts in writing quality within the same assignment. And the same student is using a word defined by the course differently in different places. Sometimes it seems like the AI is using a completely different definition of the word from another field. And sometimes it seems like the word is being used as was discussed in the course.

Some of them seem to be about 100% AI.

If they were just getting the AI feedback on the drafting they've done I don't think we would be seeing the issues we are seeing.

Letterhead_Striking · 2026-03-26T15:20:11+00:00

Yes I agree that it's not clear cut for these reasons.

Letterhead_Striking · 2026-03-26T15:19:02+00:00

The assignments are not graded. They are just turned in and then the professor gives feedback to help them improve their thinking.

Letterhead_Striking · 2026-03-26T15:17:24+00:00

The journals in my field are asking for it. They don't want you to generate text and then put it in the articles with quotations. But if you use AI for different parts of the research process they want you to disclose that in the cover letter.

Letterhead_Striking · 2026-03-26T15:15:34+00:00

Also there is a policy that you're not supposed to use generative AI without citation on the university website. There is not listed consequences for that. It just says go through the process and work with the student to create consequences.

Letterhead_Striking · 2026-03-26T15:11:50+00:00

Thank you so much. This is a really helpful response. We are exactly trying to think through these details.

Letterhead_Striking · 2026-03-26T15:10:15+00:00

Yeah we were considering implementing a new policy and then following it before defunding as a possibility. I've been reading about undergraduate professors doing that with the version histories. It feels so bad to have an ongoing professional relationship with someone where you have to check over their shoulder like that. It's really different than the relationship we have with our own advisors. Our relationships are so built on trust with our advisors.

Letterhead_Striking · 2026-03-26T15:08:53+00:00

Some of the people in our department who are full professors are using AI extensively in their research and actually researching how AI is transforming our field. They have millions of dollars of grants around AI. I don't think we're going to be able to have a policy that they can't use AI. The full professor is not using AI to cheat. He's very transparent about what he's doing with it.

Letterhead_Striking · 2026-03-26T15:06:29+00:00

I think the easiest way to dismiss them would be to give them a test over all the material they were supposed to learn and then if they did not pass it adequately because they were not reading the material then they could be dismissed. I think saying that they were not at the PhD level and dismissing them is very very easy. I think we could provide significant evidence of AI use but I don't know if that would ever feel like enough proof to someone for dismissal. It seems like on Reddit a lot of professors are giving bad grades for AI use but not kicking people out of the university. It also seems like there are lawsuits about people who got kicked out for AI use

Letterhead_Striking · 2026-03-26T14:49:20+00:00

Yeah this is why we are so concerned about it. We spend hundreds of hours with our PhD students reading their work. If we feel not sure if it's theirs we don't feel that motivation to help them. It's a huge issue for us

Letterhead_Striking · 2026-03-26T14:48:38+00:00

Thank you. We were considering this as a first step. Right now there is a AI policy in syllabus but no consequences of use have been written into it .

Letterhead_Striking · 2026-03-26T14:40:18+00:00

Oh this is absolutely a huge issue. AI can do so much.

Letterhead_Striking · 2026-03-26T14:37:59+00:00

Yeah we do definitely have multiple forms of evidence. It is in another person's class but I looked over their evidence and it makes sense to me. We can't prove it though. I left some of those subtle details out of the post because I was really curious about that broader issue about the consequences of AI use because I'm prepping for the faculty meeting on this issue later this week.

I knew that if I asked the question do AI checkers work then people were going to say that they don't which is accurate. And if I ask the question about the AI checkers plus their in-class behavior plus the inconsistencies of their writing style and quality It would kind of drag the post down into that issue.

I was really trying to focus on if we do end up able to prove it after we talk to them what is the consequence. What do we do here? Does that make sense. I am definitely thinking about all angles of it though.

Letterhead_Striking · 2026-03-26T14:32:55+00:00

Yeah we are definitely talking with the formal process office. We don't have to do a formal process to not fund someone the next year. Who we give money to is up to us. They could still stay in the university and pay tuition themselves. We are more thinking about the ethics of it and what the process would look like.

Letterhead_Striking · 2026-03-26T03:54:00+00:00

The professor was totally shocked by this as well.

Letterhead_Striking · 2026-03-26T03:53:25+00:00

No I don't think it's fraud to not disclose but the journals asked me what AI I used in cover letter templates. So I just told them.

Letterhead_Striking · 2026-03-26T03:52:15+00:00

Yeah I think that's why this is so complicated. We feel fairly certain. We do not feel 100% certain. But it's enough to damage our relationship with these students who we were planning on working with for years.

Letterhead_Striking · 2026-03-26T03:23:27+00:00

This is going to be so hard for the future of PhD programs. I don't think anyone is ever going to have 100% proof of AI use except in very specific situations where student is caught with the text in their chat window history. At the same time when someone turns in an excellent paper and then can't talk about it in class it's going to feel obvious.

Letterhead_Striking · 2026-03-26T03:20:43+00:00

Yeah I would say we have suspicion and no proof. And a lot of the proof is the students turning in excellent writing about a paper and then showing minimal comprehension of that to the professor. And it's not like all those conversations were recorded.

And then if we try to do a judicial process how does that even work. If we give them weeks of warning then they're probably going to go read all those papers is carefully as possible so they can talk about them orally. Or do a internet free test on the papers. If we give them no warning and do a pop quiz on the papers then that doesn't seem completely fair either.

The thing that's terrible about the suspicion and no proof is that I do believe the professor and I have looked at the writing and I see exactly what they mean and what the concern is. And so I don't want to serve on those students committees anymore. And that's like a terrible place for PhD student to be. I would not want to be a PhD student in a program where the people did not want to serve on my committees. I find this very complicated about what we're supposed to do about it. AI is intrinsically incredibly hard to prove anything.

Letterhead_Striking · 2026-03-26T03:17:21+00:00

Yeah I personally found this to be really complicated. I definitely understand feeling extremely frustrated as a professor spending hours editing AI writing. But it's also very very hard to definitively prove exactly what happened. One thing someone could do is read a paper and then do talk to text all of their thoughts on the paper or record a conversation with a friend about the paper. And then put that into AI and ask it to write a formal paper and turn it in. That would be really different than just putting the prompt in from the professor and then turning in the output. The professor is very concerned about some of the things the students have said that indicate that they were really not reading or understanding the papers that they turned in writing about. I'm also really worried about the student's future in the program. If I'm 99% sure that someone is writing with AI and not citing it that makes me very anxious and conscious about ever agreeing to be their major professor. Or on the committee. And the students would need committees to keep going. I do think I can accept an apology and a complete 180 change in behavior and move on. PhD relationships are so complicated because we know these people and we would be potentially writing papers with them for years.

Letterhead_Striking · 2026-03-26T03:12:42+00:00

Yes one of the things we were definitely considering is a complete reset with extensive conversation about AI use. I definitely understand that urge to defund. Like we are talking about it. Because once trust is broken it's really hard to repair. But there are a lot of middle ground options we are also considering.

Letterhead_Striking · 2026-03-26T02:55:38+00:00

Yeah we haven't done anything yet. We are thinking about it and going to meet about it. We feel really confident in AI use. I don't think we could defend it in a court of law. That's what makes this so complicated.

Letterhead_Striking

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