College and university students are increasingly turning to AI to assist them with their studies. A 2026 Lumina Foundation-Gallup survey revealed that, among students who use AI,
- 64% use it to help with coursework they don’t understand
- 60% use it to check answers on homework and class assignments
- 54% use it to edit or improve their writing
- 49% use it to generate new ideas (i.e. for paper topics)
- 45% use it for doing research for papers
- 36% use it to write papers outright
At higher education institutions, these insights may ring alarm bells. Recent research has highlighted a hidden but real risk associated with student overreliance on tools like AI: the erosion of the very critical thinking skills needed to use AI effectively and desired by 79% of today’s employers (Kosmyna, N. et al., 2025; Finley, A.P., 2023). In fact, 47% of graduating students are not proficient in skills like critical thinking, even though 95% of undergraduate students consider critical thinking and problem-solving skills as valuable to a business career (Zahner et al., 2026).
All of these factors give universities and colleges a huge opportunity.
In this article, we explore why critical thinking and data and information literacy are so needed in a time when students are turning to AI in increasing numbers to help them with their coursework. We also explain why human-created writing matters more than ever in the age of AI-generated content.
Critical Thinking: Separating the Sound from the Slop
AI-generated text abounds in today’s digital spaces, from cringeworthy passages to uncannily sophisticated prose. Such content necessitates critical thinking, yet students do not develop these skills passively. In her article with The Conversation, Sara Kells, an adjunct faculty member of IE University, summarizes why direct instruction around critical thinking matters:
“With AI, it is easier than ever to produce work that appears superficially thoughtful, persuasive and sophisticated. The ability to write fluent, proficiently constructed text is a completely separate skill to crafting a sound argument. The risk is not that using AI produces students who cannot think, but that it becomes increasingly easy to mistake polished performance for intellectual depth.”
— Sara Kells, Adjunct Faculty at IE University
Consider how a student might approach evaluating
whether the claims made in the news
headline on the right are true. Does a correlation between two or more variables indicate a causal relationship, as implied by the article’s title? What evidence does the article, and the research study it covers, present to back this relationship, and importantly, how do they position that evidence? Are the sources cited trustworthy, both in the article and in the original study? What clues do the methodology, sample size, and other details within the study itself offer about the validity of its results?
These questions require that the student systematically go beyond the headline to evaluate and analyze what’s presented and determine the credibility of what they are reading.
Side note: This article and its study were published well before the first generative AI chatbot launched, demonstrating that critical thinking skills have long mattered and will continue to matter in the future.
We Need Human-Created Writing Now More Than Ever
In parallel with this growing need for students to strengthen their critical thinking skills is an urgency for more, not less, human-created writing, even as AI-generated content proliferates online and on campus. Human-led writing resonates more strongly and creates more value for an audience because, unlike AI, humans:
- Develop original insights: Employers seek candidates who recognize the nuance in data and information, and do not simply generate the summaries or reports AI can make.
- Evaluate evidence to make important decisions: Humans outperform AI in sorting through bias, flawed arguments, and bad statistics to analyze conflicting data and make decisions.
- Present information in an authentic voice: Crafting successful arguments requires connecting with an audience through a distinct voice, something AI struggles to do.
At the same time, AI remains a permanent fixture in both the academic settings of universities and colleges, as well as most workplaces. Rather than divert students away from AI entirely, higher education institutions can guide students to use these tools more effectively to enhance, not replace their thinking, and in turn, to improve their writing.
How CAE’s Evidence-Based Offerings Strengthen Students’ Critical Thinking
To build students’ critical thinking skills, and in turn make them more effective digital citizens and writers, they need to see the process of applying those skills, not merely the product at the end of a series of decision points. Further, they need to practice the skills themselves, repeatedly and across realistic scenarios.
And this shift in student learning starts with faculty empowered and equipped to intentionally teach critical thinking within their existing curriculum.
CAE’s professional development workshops are designed precisely for this purpose. Among our most popular workshops is Using AI to Improve Writing Effectiveness. Faculty learn and practice applying specific approaches to use AI as an objective critic to discover gaps and unexamined assumptions.
Our professional development workshops are part of the comprehensive Critical Thinking Program, a comprehensive, scalable approach to not only teach these skills across disciplines, but to also measure them through empirically validated assessments. Learn how you can empower your faculty to equip students with both the knowledge and the skills they need to think, communicate, and thrive in a rapidly changing world.
