Cognitive Internalization: The New AI Policy In Universities

Students aged seventeen to twenty-five have, according to a recent study, a higher reliance on AI tools and lower critical thinking performance than adults over forty-six, who rely much less on the same tools. This difference does not prove that the younger generation thinks worse than the older generation. It proves that the age at which someone encounters a powerful tool determines how easily they delegate their thinking to it. Universities, instead of treating this finding as a problem of course design, still treat it as a problem of student discipline, writing rules about what is allowed and what is not, while the real issue is how the very work that the student is asked to deliver is designed.