OpenAI has established a beachhead at many colleges, overcoming university administrators’ distrust of artificial intelligence and giving ChatGPT a leg up to become the assistant of choice for the next generation of workers.
The company has sold more than 700,000 ChatGPT licenses to about 35 public universities for use by students and faculty, according to purchase orders reviewed by Bloomberg. In contrast, Microsoft Corp., which typically bundles its Copilot assistant with existing software, has seen more muted adoption of its AI tool in these schools — and teachers are more likely to use it than students.
The adoption of ChatGPT on campus happened quickly. Students and teachers used it more than 14 million times in September, according to data from 20 campuses that signed contracts with OpenAI. On average, each user called ChatGPT 176 times that month for help with tasks like writing, research and data analysis.
Private schools are not subject to public records laws, so their AI license purchases are not readily available, meaning the actual number of university contracts is likely much higher. Globally, OpenAI has sold “well over a million” licenses to colleges, according to a company spokesperson. A Microsoft spokesperson said many universities are using a range of the company’s AI products.
The technology industry has long offered students cheap software and hardware in the hopes of turning them into lifelong customers. Apple Inc. offers educational discounts and introduces a back-to-school offer every year to further entice buyers. Google’s Chromebook laptops and free apps have helped the company gain campus conversions.
Now OpenAI is playing a similar game in artificial intelligence. Microsoft’s Copilot and Google’s increasingly well-regarded Gemini could catch up. But for now, OpenAI has grabbed an early lead by leveraging ChatGPT’s popularity and offering deep discounts — a reflection of the traction the world’s leading AI startup has built among office workers and consumers.
Schools that want to buy bulk access to ChatGPT will pay a few dollars per user per month, according to the contracts Bloomberg reviewed. That’s a significant savings compared to the $20 per month that OpenAI typically charges for a smaller number of educational users. For business users, ChatGPT can cost up to $60 per month.
Arizona State University, one of the nation’s largest schools by enrollment, agreed in September to purchase access to ChatGPT for all of its students and faculty. According to a spokesperson, almost 10,000 students and 6,400 school employees have used the new licenses until the end of November.
Several other major universities have taken the same approach. In the fall of 2024, the California State University system decided it needed to make AI available to its entire student and workforce population—about 500,000 people—to ensure access even for those who couldn’t afford it themselves. Administrators evaluated a number of tools and found ChatGPT by far the cheapest and most familiar to students, said Chief Information Officer Ed Clark. The system, which includes schools like San Diego State University, agreed to pay OpenAI $15 million a year.
Initially, administrators were interested in Microsoft’s Copilot because it worked with apps like Word that the schools were already using, Clark said. But Microsoft quoted them a significantly higher price than what they ultimately paid OpenAI: $30 per user per month for Copilot versus effectively $2.50 per month for ChatGPT. Many universities that use Copilot — such as the University of Georgia and the University of Washington — pay about $30 per user per month, according to the documents reviewed by Bloomberg.
Less than two years ago, many university administrators had a dim view of artificial intelligence. Now universities are among the largest institutional customers of AI. How did they learn to stop worrying and love ChatGPT?
Teachers were among the first to grapple with the implications of generative AI because the technology was such an obvious resource for students. ChatGPT quickly became ubiquitous on campus, with students using the chatbot for basic research, writing – and, yes, cheating. Fearing an outbreak of plagiarism, some schools have banned or restricted ChatGPT, prompting students to use it surreptitiously.
But many school administrators have come to a cautious acceptance and are now trying to set ground rules for how teachers and students use artificial intelligence. “We don’t think there will be an option to opt out in the future,” said Anne Jones, vice provost for undergraduate education at Arizona State. “Employers expect and need a workforce that knows how to use these tools.”
The technology industry, meanwhile, is making a concerted effort to convince schools of the benefits of AI. OpenAI has hired education-focused vendors and poached a top executive from Coursera, an online learning platform that often partners with universities. “Students in particular are among our biggest users,” said Leah Belsky, the former Coursera employee who is now vice president of education at OpenAI.
Ahead of the finals in spring 2025, OpenAI made ChatGPT free for students and launched a major advertising campaign. It has also hired student ambassadors to drive adoption of the tool across the California State University system. “An increasing part of the education ecosystem is realizing that AI is here to stay,” Belsky says. Her pitch to universities is that officially adopting AI will make it possible to use it in ways that benefit learning, employability and teaching. In contrast, when AI is used as an “answering machine,” it can hinder learning, she says.
Microsoft, meanwhile, has sponsored studies on how AI is already being used in education. Schools using the company’s software already have access to the basic level of the AI chatbot for free, and the company recently announced a price reduction for academic institutions – from about $30 per month to $18 per month – for the premium version. “Microsoft has been working with universities for decades to support their evolving academic, research and operational needs through trusted technology and innovation,” the spokesperson said.
Federal and state policymakers have also begun offering incentives to schools to formally adopt AI programs. Earlier this month, the Trump administration announced new federal grant priorities for higher education, including a $50 million pool to support initiatives that expand access to AI and use the technology to “improve teaching, learning and student success.”
Even as they embrace AI, some schools remain wary and rush to study its potential impact on education. In March, Reed Hastings, chairman of Netflix Inc., donated $50 million to Bowdoin College to study the tools’ effects on teaching and learning.
The technology’s ability to help students learn remains unproven, says Eric Chown, a Bowdoin professor of digital and computational studies who was tapped to lead the effort. AI could reduce the hassle of administrative work such as managing calendars and creating syllabi, but does not appear to be as effective when it comes to actual teaching, he said. Chown worries that colleges are rushing to make deals with OpenAI, not so much because they’ve discovered how AI can improve education, but because they’re afraid of falling behind.
Many schools are slowly rolling out the tools as they test their effectiveness. The University of Nebraska at Omaha surveyed a few hundred employees in the spring of 2025 when they began purchasing ChatGPT licenses. It found that 92% of teachers, librarians and students surveyed said they would recommend the tool to others at university, with most saying it would save them one to five hours a week. Writing and brainstorming were the most frequently mentioned uses of the tool, although according to the results, about a quarter of respondents used it for tasks such as lesson planning and mentoring students. As of September, the school had approximately 800 active users.
Adoptions can vary greatly. At the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, approximately 200 faculty members are active on the school’s ChatGPT licenses. Of these, a small number of main users account for the majority of usage. One policy researcher used the tool 742 times in September – about 34 times a day, assuming a standard work week. Meanwhile, most users used the tool less than ten times in the entire month. (The university also pays for approximately 600 Microsoft Copilot licenses.)
Mairéad Martin, the university’s head of information, says it is not unusual for there to be ‘early adopter superusers’. But she said reluctance among many teachers is one reason the school is taking things slow. The university has forfeited the substantial discounts that come with large-scale licensing deals to reassure staff that administrators are taking seriously ongoing concerns about the technology, including plagiarism and data security.
Ford and Knox write for Bloomberg.
