Students can finish university assessments in minutes with AI, England's regulator warns

England's higher education regulator has a warning for anyone who assumes a degree still proves what it used to. The Office for Students says a significant proportion of assessments are unsupervised, and many can be finished to a high standard with AI — sometimes in minutes. The finding comes from research by the OfS and Advance HE, a teaching-excellence charity, based on the views of 244 higher education staff and 91 students from at least 127 universities.

The report points to unsupervised, non-controlled formats where students can reach AI tools while completing the work. It concludes that using AI in ways that cannot be reliably detected is frequently possible. The OfS said it had heard of students completing entire assessments in minutes and receiving grades similar to those who did the work themselves. Some staff reported receiving lots of assignments that looked the same, and doubted their institution's assessments were fit for purpose.

Josh Fleming, the OfS's director of strategy and delivery, said there were fantastic examples of universities seizing the opportunities AI presents, but called for far greater use of AI-free assessment. He said the technology poses a generational risk to the system as it stands, threatening to undermine students' learning and institutions' ability to assess them. Advance HE deputy chief executive Kathryn Harrison-Graves said students wanted greater clarity about what is expected of them, while staff had varying levels of confidence and support.

Closed-book and practical exams are the most effective forms of assessment, the regulator said, flagging an urgent need for remote or non-secure assessments to keep measuring the knowledge and skills they are designed to test. If it becomes possible to complete an assessment using AI without the knowledge and skills being tested, the assessment should be replaced, the research said. Unsupervised work ranges from coursework to remote online exams, which were rolled out widely during Covid; research from Swansea University last year suggested 93 UK universities still use them in some form.

The research also flagged a polarised atmosphere between students who use AI and conscientious objectors who avoid it on environmental and other grounds. Universities UK, which represents more than 140 institutions, said many had made substantial changes to how they assess students, including more in-person exams, presentations, vivas, process-based assessment and assessments that integrate AI in a controlled way. Different subjects will require different approaches, a spokesperson said, and universities should have the flexibility to pick methods that best support learning outcomes.