Professor caught using ChatGPT for lectures, students demand tuition fee refund

ChatGPT

A college professor at Northeastern University has come under fire after students discovered he was using ChatGPT to prepare his lecture notes, despite warning them not to use AI themselves.

Ella Stapleton, a business student at the university, grew suspicious when she noticed something odd in her professor Rick Arrowood’s class notes. There were obvious spelling errors, strange images with extra fingers, and even a direct reference to a ChatGPT search. “He’s telling us not to use it,” Stapleton told The New York Times, “and then he’s using it himself.”

Feeling cheated, she went to the university administration and demanded a refund of her $8,000 tuition fee. But after several meetings, which continued until her graduation this month, the school refused to give the money back.

Arrowood admitted to using AI tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gamma to make his lectures more engaging. He said he did review the material, but missed the AI-generated oddities. “In hindsight, I wish I would have looked at it more closely,” he told the NYT.

The incident has sparked a wider debate: Should professors be allowed to use AI in teaching when students are banned from doing so? Some educators don’t see it as a big deal. Arrowood now agrees that professors should be more transparent about their use of AI. “If my experience can be something people can learn from,” he said, “then, OK, that’s my happy spot.”

As AI tools become more common in classrooms, one thing is clear: the conversation around how they're used and who gets to use them is only just beginning.