Purdue University Approves New AI Requirement for All Undergrads
26 comments
·December 13, 2025dehrmann
daxfohl
I like this take. It seems like it would be useful to require professors to sit in on the class too. It'd be interesting to hear lots of different perspectives, ideas, concerns, etc., rather than a lecture format to half-awake students about something they arguably know more about than the instructor.
djoldman
The announcement is here:
https://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/2025/Q4/purdue-unveils-compr...
Where the actual news is:
> To this end, the trustees have delegated authority to the provost, working with deans of all academic colleges, to develop and to review and update continuously, discipline-specific criteria and proficiency standards for a new campuswide “artificial intelligence working competency” graduation requirement for all Purdue main campus students, starting with new beginners in fall 2026.
So the Purdue trustees have "delegated authority" to people at the University to make a new graduation requirement for 2026.
Who knows what will be in the final.
gmfawcett
Delegated to the provost and deans. Who else would you expect to hold accountable for developing a graduate attribute?
conartist6
Well that's a public embarrassment...
andy99
That was my thought, it feels like something a career college or high school would do. Are CS students going to have to take a “how to talk to chat gpt course”? That’s probably less condescending than making an arts student or someone else that doesn’t need to have anything to do with LLMs have to sit through it.
I though Purdue was a good school, these kind of gimmicks are usually the province of low-tier universities trying to get attention.
turtleyacht
Optimistically, the idea could be to push prerequisites to an always-on, ever-available resource. Depending on the major, skills could include organizing papers into outlines, using Excel, or building a computer.
Professors can tailor lectures to narrower topics or advanced, current, or more specialized subjects. There may be less need to have a series of beginning or introductory courses--it's assumed learners will avail themselves.
Pessimistically, AI literacy contributes to further erosion of critical thinking, lazy auto-grading, and inability to construct book-length arguments.
jleyank
From my long-ago uni courses, current-day AI could have helped with the non-major courses: English and History, doing the first draft or even the final drafts of papers, etc. As a science major, I'm not sure what the point of relying on an AI is as it would leave you empty when considering further education or the tests they require. And as far as a foreign language goes, one needs to at least read the stuff without relying on Google Translate (assuming they have such a requirement anymore).
But I like to think that actually learning the history was important and it certainly was a diversion from math/chemistry/physics. I liked Shakespeare, so reading the plays was also worthwhile and discussing them in class was fun. Yeah, I was bored to tears in medieval history, so AI could have helped there.
thfuran
>As a science major, I'm not sure what the point of relying on an AI is as it would leave you empty
Why do you think it wouldn't do the same for other fields? The purpose of writing essays in school is never to have the finished product; it's to learn and analyze the topic of the essay and/or to go through the process of writing and editing it.
conartist6
It'll get you an academic integrity investigation if you get caught using it to write either a first draft or a final draft of a paper, and especially for an English class where the whole point is for you to learn how to write.
If you're going to try to fake being able to write, better to try to dupe any other professor than a professor of English. (source: raised by English majors)
jleyank
Hope so. But if you can’t use it here, where CAN you use the thing??
noitpmeder
How to Speedrun devaluing the credentials your institution exists to award.
mwkaufma
Heads up: forbes.com/sites/xyz are ppl and groups who pay for the domain, but aren't edited or promoted by forbes itself. Almost always conservative interest groups posing as journalists.
65
Seems mostly knee-jerk reactionary more than anything. I'm sure this is to justify hiring even more administrators.
turtleyacht
Upfront computer literacy may have never been convincing enough; AI could be the ubiquitous and timely leverage to open the way for general machine thinking.
gamblor956
This is going to be like when all the schools were pushing big data because that was going to be the next big thing.
After more than a trillion dollars spent, LLMs can replace: (a) a new secretary with one week of experience (b) a junior programmer who just learned that they can install programs on a desktop computer, and (c) James Patterson.
That's the bright future that Purdue is preparing its students for.
Yes, AIs will be a huge thing...eventually...but LLMs are not AI, and they never will be.
andy99
This has nothing to do with whether the technology is valuable or not, it’s about cramming superficial treatment of trendy topics into academic degree rewuirements, which whatever one thinks of AI should be frowned upon.
ivape
It's definitely something that won't age well. Kids are going to grow up with many AI friends by the time they get to college.
keiferski
I don’t really get the dismissive comments here. Universities have had gen ed requirements for years, one of which is usually something to do with computers. AI seems to be a technology that will be increasingly relevant…so a basic gen ed requirement seems logical.
BeetleB
The problem is the field is changing way too fast. It's almost certain that whatever they'll learn will be outdated/wrong/poor practice by the time they graduate. Just compare with the state of things 2 years ago.
alephnerd
These are the same people who would pooh-pooh teaching Excel and basic coding skills to non-STEM majors or have CS students take ethics or GenEd classes.
AI/ML isn't going to completely shift the world, but understanding how to do basic prompt engineering, validate against hallucinations, and know what the difference between ChatGPT and GPT-4o is valuable for people who do not have a software background.
Gaining any kind of knowledge is a net win.
hansmayer
"basic prompt engineering" - Since when has writing English language sentences become nothing less than "engineering" ?
UncleEntity
Yeah, I'm still bitter I had to pass a literacy exam to get my BA and that was 28 years ago.
And I just know this is going to turn into a (pearl-clutching) AI Ethics course...
Full disclose: I'm a Purdue graduate, though I disagree with certain things the school has done (Purdue Global).
Part of this is very reasonable; AI is upending how students learn (or cheat), so adding a requirement to teach how to do it in a way that improves learning rather than just enhances cheating makes sense. The problem with the broad, top-down approach is it looks like what happens in Corporate America where there's a CEO edict that "we need a ____ strategy," and every department pivots projects to include that, whether or not it makes sense.