AI and educational choices : A study about whether Swedish students adjusted their educational choices after the launch of ChatGPT

Sammanfattning

This essay examines whether Swedish students’ educational choices changed following the release of ChatGPT. Using data on applications to Swedish university programmes and higher vocational education programmes between 2018 and 2025, we link educational programmes to occupational AIexposure measures and estimate a difference-in-differences design. C-AIOE is used as the main index, while AIOE and AIOE-LM are included as alternative measures. The results differ depending on the index used. When using C-AIOE, we do not observe a statistically significant change in applications to programmes with higher AI exposure. When using AIOE and AIOE-LM, we observe a statistically significant decrease in applications to highly exposed programmes. However, the parallel trends assumption is not satisfied for these indices, so the estimates should be interpreted with caution.