Across higher education, artificial intelligence is now embedded in everyday academic work, from early research to final drafts. For many students, it has become a default starting point. The urgent question is not whether students use AI, but how they use it—specifically, whether these tools are reinforcing learning or bypassing the cognitive work that leads to it. As AI accelerates core academic tasks, educators are confronting a central challenge: how to preserve depth, judgment and intellectual engagement in an environment optimized for speed.