Key facts
- The OfS said AI use in essays, dissertations and open-book exams threatens the credibility of English degrees.
- The regulator said institutions failing to design valid measures of students' knowledge could breach registration conditions and face sanctions.
- Josh Fleming, OfS director of strategy and delivery, said AI presents a generational risk to the system as it stands.
- The OfS said many institutions had already added in-person written exams, oral vivas and process-based assessments.
- A Department for Education spokesperson said the OfS should enforce existing standards and make its AI framework explicit and durable.
- The report by the OfS and Advance HE interviewed more than 300 students and staff at 127 universities and colleges in 2026.
England's higher education regulator said universities should return to traditional exams and in-person presentations to grade students, after lecturers complained that AI had made coursework "close to impossible" to assess. The Office for Students published the finding in an investigation with the charity Advance HE, which interviewed more than 300 students and staff at 127 universities and colleges in 2026.
The OfS said the credibility of degrees from England's universities was under threat from the use of AI in essays, dissertations and open-book exams, with students reporting that peers boasted of using AI undetected by staff. The regulator warned institutions that failing to design valid and reliable measures of students' knowledge and skills could breach their conditions of registration and lead to sanctions.
Josh Fleming, the OfS director of strategy and delivery, said AI use in higher education "presents a generational risk to the system as it stands, threatening to undermine students' learning and institutions' ability to assess them". He added: "We need to see far greater efforts to tackle these risks, including far greater use of AI-free assessment."
The OfS said many institutions had already redesigned assessment to reduce potential AI misuse, including greater use of in-person written exams or oral examinations known as vivas. Other examples include students critiquing or editing AI-generated output, or process-based assessments where students detail how they researched and produced their work.
A Department for Education spokesperson said: "We expect universities to take this issue seriously and we expect the OfS to both enforce the existing standards effectively, and work at pace to ensure its regulatory framework is explicit, strong and durable on the use of AI."
One academic told the researchers: "AI has put academic integrity at serious risk ... coursework is now overwhelmingly written in part, or exclusively, with the help of AI." Another staff member said: "I think we're realising that a number of our assessments may be unfit for purpose, and that pervasive use of AI may render our assessment of students close to impossible in some areas."
The report said students described peers completing assessments with AI "sometimes in just a few minutes" and receiving similar grades to those who worked without it, and some said peers could not recall basic details of work they had just submitted. Academics described receiving large numbers of submissions that looked the same, referenced the same literature and were written in the same style.