Student Work Should Be Protected

A statement from your President Education

We are aware of the recently proposed changes to Turnitin’s Terms of Service and the concerns they have raised about the potential use of student work in AI development. Turnitin has stated that it does not currently use student submissions to train large language models or its AI Assistant, and that data is anonymised. However, we believe there are still important questions around consent, ownership and how student work could be used in the future.

Students put a huge amount of time, money and effort into their education. The work they produce reflects their ideas, creativity and hard work, and for many students, it is building the knowledge and skills they hope to take into their future careers. We believe that work deserves to be respected and protected.

Students should not feel that their work can become a resource for commercial AI development without having a meaningful say in how it is used. We value the creativity, ideas and effort that students put into their work, and we do not believe this should be used to train AI systems without clear safeguards, transparency and proper consideration of students’ interests.

We are actively engaging with University senior leaders on the issue and will continue to ask them for clarity on what protections are in place and whether these protections are strong enough to prevent student work from being used to train future AI systems, including large language models and agentic AI.

This is part of a much wider conversation about AI in education. Who benefits from it, how it affects students, and how we can make sure its use reflects the values of education. Universities have an important role to play in shaping that conversation and working with students to ensure that student work, creativity and academic integrity remain central as technology continues to develop.

We also want to hear directly from students about how you feel about these changes and the wider use of AI in education. Your experiences and feedback will help shape our future campaigns and conversations with the University. If you have concerns, questions or views you would like to share, please get in touch with us.

Here to help

As your President Education, my job is to represent you and make sure your voice is heard by the University and beyond. If something’s affecting you, or there’s an issue you think I should be raising, I want to hear from you. Email me at presidenteducation@roehampton.ac.uk, message me on Instagram at @rsupresidenteducation, or come and find me in the SU.

Shane Lemos,
President Education