A critical review of GenAI policies in higher education assessment: a call to reconsider the “originality” of students’ work

This study offers a critical examination of university policies developed to address recent challenges presented by generative AI (GenAI) to higher education assessment. Drawing on Bacchi's 'What's the problem represented to be' (WPR) framework, we analysed the GenAI policies of 20 world-leading universities to explore what are considered problems in this AI-mediated assessment landscape and how these problems are represented in policies. Although miscellaneous GenAI-related problems were mentioned in these policies (e.g. reliability of AI-generated outputs, equal access to GenAI), the primary problem represented is that students may not submit original work for assessment. In the current framing, GenAI is…