95% of students now use AI. Protecting the value of the degree is now a reputation job.

HEPI and Kortext’s latest Student Generative AI Survey, published in March, found that 95% of UK undergraduates now use AI in some form, up from 66% in 2024. 94% use it to help with assessed work. Most of that is explaining concepts and summarising reading, which is exactly what we’d want. But the share of students putting AI-generated text directly into assessed work has risen from 3% in 2024 to 8% in 2025, and 12% this year.

The sector is responding. Nearly two-thirds of students (65%) say assessment has changed significantly because of AI, and 38% now have AI tools provided by their university, up from 9% two years ago. Enforcement is hardening too. A Guardian investigation last year found almost 7,000 proven cases of AI cheating at UK universities in 2023-24, 5.1 for every 1,000 students and more than three times the rate of the year before.

Why assessment has become a reputation issue

A degree is a promise. To an employer, the classification on a certificate says that someone was tested and met a standard. If employers start to doubt whether the graduate in front of them wrote their own dissertation, that doubt doesn’t stay with the student. It attaches to the name of the university.

Most of the conversation so far has happened inside academic quality committees, which is right, but it has left out the people responsible for what the institution promises publicly. Marketing teams are still writing employability claims and graduate profiles without knowing how assessment has changed underneath them, and employers are rarely told at all.

If employers stop trusting the grade, they’ll stop trusting the name on the certificate.

What I’d ask every university leadership team to do

Explain how your assessment holds up. Employers, parents and applicants deserve a plain account of how your degrees test genuine ability now, whether that’s oral assessment, supervised work or process portfolios. Put it where they’ll find it, not in a quality handbook.

Bring marketing and employer relations into the room. The group redesigning assessment should include the people who talk to employers and write the institution’s public promises. They’ll spot the reputational risks early, and they can turn the changes into a story worth telling.

Give students clarity, not suspicion. The HEPI survey shows students remain unsure what’s acceptable. A short, honest guide to acceptable use, consistent across departments, protects them and the university. (Half of students now think their institution should provide AI tools, which seems a reasonable expectation.)

Present AI fluency as a graduate strength. Employers want graduates who can use these tools well and judge their output critically. Show how your courses build that, and AI becomes evidence of capability rather than a risk you’re managing quietly.

Talk to employers directly. Ask your main graduate recruiters what worries them about AI and graduate quality, and tell them what you’ve changed. It’s the kind of conversation that builds trust long before a problem becomes a headline.

The opportunity

Every university is changing its assessment. Very few are talking about it. The first institutions to make the integrity of their degrees visible will own a simple and powerful position with employers: you can trust our graduates.

It’s a theme I want to explore with academic and marketing leaders on Season 2 of the podcast, because the credibility of the degree is now as much a reputation question as a teaching one.

Jonathan Sabarre FCIM MBA is Principal Consultant at QS Quacquarelli Symonds, a keynote speaker and host of Marketing Greats in Higher Education. Get the weekly email or invite him to speak.