$1.5M partnership with AI company will offer USC students, faculty free access
The University of South Carolina is partnering with artificial intelligence company OpenAI to offer free AI tools to all students, faculty and staff beginning in the fall.
The school will be the first in the state to embrace the fast-growing, fast-advancing technology, via a $1.5 million agreement that would offer free enterprise access to ChatGPT. ChatGPT, which bills itself as one of the world’s leading AI automation tools for content generation, is arguably the most popular large language model chatbots.
The university says that “appropriate use” of AI can improve students’ academic outcomes by providing personalized study help, learning tools and a way to help better manage time. For faculty and staff, it may reduce administrative tasks and increase efficiency in creating lesson plans, analyzing data and researching.
And officials pointed out that adopting an AI will allow for better data security.
“The campuswide adoption of secure enterprise AI technology puts USC on the leading edge of higher education institutions,” Brice Bible, USC’s vice president for information technology and chief information officer, said in a news release. “This initiative will not only make our students more employable, but it will allow for much greater innovation in the classroom and across research teams in every discipline.”
USC officials said that the ability to effectively and ethically use AI tools will give students a “competitive advantage” in today’s job market.
The university will offer a new interdisciplinary certificate program in artificial intelligence literacy, consisting of four courses: two required courses about the capabilities and ethical use of AI and two elective courses relating AI to a student’s major.
More information about the initiative will be shared with the campus this summer.
OpenAI has increasingly set its sights on institutions of higher education as part of an escalating AI “arms race” among tech giants, The New York Times reported, with plans to embed its artificial intelligence tools in every facet of campus life.
The company has already created multimillion-dollar partnerships with prominent public and private universities across the United States to sell premium AI services and spread chatbots on campuses.
The University of Maryland and Duke University are already working to make artificial intelligence a part of campus life, whether it’s granting unlimited access to existing tools or creating their own university-centric platforms.
The California State University system, the largest public system in the country, partnered with OpenAI in February to provide access to its more than more 500,000 students and faculty. It’s a founding member of OpenAI’s NextGen Consortium, a group of 15 research institutions using AI to tackle challenges in health care, education and more. OpenAI has dedicated $50 million to those efforts.
“Our vision is that, over time, A.I. would become part of the core infrastructure of higher education,” Leah Belsky, OpenAI’s vice president of education, told the Times. “Every student who comes to campus would have access to their personalized A.I. account.”
This story was originally published June 20, 2025 at 1:07 PM.
