- A senior at Northeastern University filed a formal complaint and demanded a tuition refund after discovering her professor was secretly using AI tools to generate notes. The professor later admitted to using several AI platforms and acknowledged the need for transparency. The incident highlights growing student concerns over professors using AI, a reversal of earlier concerns from professors worried that students would use the technology to cheat.
Some students are not happy about their professor’s use of AI. One college senior was so shocked to learn her teacher was using AI to help him create notes that she lodged a formal complaint and asked for a refund of her tuition money, according to the New York Times.
Ella Stapleton, who graduated from Northeastern University this year, grew suspicious of her business professor’s lecture notes when she spotted telltale signs of AI generation, including a stray “ChatGPT” citation tucked into the bibliography, recurrent typos that mirrored machine outputs, and images depicting figures with extra limbs.
“He’s telling us not to use it, and then he’s using it himself,” Stapleton said in an interview with the New York Times.
Stapleton lodged a formal complaint with Northeastern’s business school over the incident, focused on her professor’s undisclosed use of AI alongside broader concerns about his teaching approach—and demanded a tuition refund for that course. The claim amounted to just over $8,000.
After a series of meetings, Northeastern ultimately decided to reject the senior’s claim.
The professor behind the notes, Rick Arrowood, acknowledged he used various AI tools—including ChatGPT, the Perplexity AI search engine, and an AI presentation generator called Gamma—in an interview with The New York Times.
“In hindsight…I wish I would have looked at it more closely,” he told the outlet, adding that he now believes that professors ought to give careful thought to integrating AI and be transparent with students about when and how they use it.
“If my experience can be something people can learn from,” he told the NYT, “then, OK, that’s my happy spot.”
Renata Nyul, Vice President for Communications, Northeastern University, told Fortune: “Northeastern embraces the use of artificial intelligence to enhance all aspects of its teaching, research, and operations. The university provides an abundance of resources to support the appropriate use of AI and continues to update and enforce relevant policies enterprise-wide.”
Colleges often restrict the use of AI on campus
Many schools either outright ban or put restrictions on the use of AI. Students were some of the early adopters of ChatGPT after its release in late 2022, quickly finding they could complete essays and assignments in seconds. The widespread use of the tech created a distrust between students and teachers as professors struggled to identify and punish the use of AI in work.
Now the tables have somewhat turned. Students have been taking to sites including Rate My Professors to complain about their lecturers use or overuse of AI. They also argue that it undermines the fees they pay to be taught by human experts rather than technology they could use for free.
According to Northeastern’s AI policy, any faculty or student must “provide appropriate attribution when using an AI System to generate content that is included in a scholarly publication, or submitted to anybody, publication or other organization that requires attribution of content authorship.”
The policy also states that those who use the technology must: “Regularly check the AI System’s output for accuracy and appropriateness for the required purpose, and revise/update the output as appropriate.”
Are you a college student or a professor who has used AI for your work? Contact this reporter at bea.nolan@fortune.com
