03 Nov, 2026
I am a computer science student. I got a scholarship to study computer science and AI last year and I love it! It's something that I wanted to do since I was a kid but couldn't afford it.
It's been a huge learning curve. I only had a B in maths from GCSE (which is the exam you take at 16 for non UK folk) and no technical training other than the funny little games I made on OpenProcessing*.
Regardless of how hard it's been, I have enjoyed the challenge. I wouldn't have signed up to study computing if I thought it would be an easy ride. The problem is that my university seems to be having an existential crisis because of AI, and it's making the experience much shittier than it was before.
The flip flopping makes everything uncertain
During my studies, my uni has flip flopped between YOU MUST NEVER USE AI and YOU MUST USE AI and also YES WE'RE USING AI BUT THAT DOESN'T MEAN YOU SHOULD!
They seem to have made an art of choosing the worst possible use cases for AI (marking and feedback, course content creation, and student engagement emails) and going all in on them, only to roll back the decision 3 months later. Students are mandated to use AI in assignments, only to reach the next module where you lose marks for even touching an LLM.
Coursework design has gone down the toilet
I mean, it was never perfect to begin with. Assessing skill in computer science is a difficult problem to solve, but getting Claude to crank out bloated assessment briefs is not the solution. Whereas before, assignments were designed by a person who thought them through at least once, then approved by other people in the department, now I doubt they're getting read more than once (if that). Errors abound, often with corrections coming a week or two before the deadline.
The amount of work involved has also tripled - LLMs don't know how much effort it takes for a student to learn new material then complete technical tasks, and professors are too far along in their careers to notice this when skim reading an AI generated brief. So those of us with less technical experience are forced to speed run content, which SUCKS! I am here to learn, god damn it, not barely scratch the surface of the 15 deliverables I have for a 3,000 word assignment.
Tutors are overloaded (even more than usual)
You know what university financiers love to hear? SCALE! Learning at scale, preferable automated, so they can milk the cash cow as much as possible without paying for extra staff. There has always been tension between educational and commercial interests in every institution, but the AI hype has forced through a level of workload that is unethical and unsustainable for tutors and lecturers. I only hear from my tutor these days when I haven't accessed the online portal in a while, because their data dashboard flagged me as 'at risk' T_T
Doomers left, right and centre
I don't care if computer science and maths are over! I still want to learn about them! OK, I do care about my future career, but it still doesn't mean I want to forget everything I learned or stop progressing on this journey. There are so many interesting avenues to explore (some AI, some not), but I can't move for headlines about how software engineering is over/not using AI makes you obsolete/blah blah blah. Can't a girl learn statistics for fun?
I could go on, but I won't. It'll give me indigestion. Maybe I'll go back to OpenProcessing for a bit and make some more silly games now I actually know how to do a bit of programming.
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