GENERATIVE ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND ACADEMIC WRITING IN HIGHER EDUCATION: OPPORTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES

Abstract

The rapid integration of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) into higher education has fundamentally transformed academic writing practices, creating both unprecedented opportunities and significant systemic challenges. This review synthesizes empirical literature, systematic reviews, and global policy frameworks published between 2023 and 2026 to critically evaluate the impact of GenAI on scholarly communication and pedagogical practice. Drawing on conceptual paradigms distinguishing assistive from substitutive AI deployment, the analysis reveals that GenAI offers substantial benefits including enhanced writing efficiency, cognitive scaffolding, linguistic democratization for non-native English speakers, and immediate formative feedback mechanisms. However, these opportunities are counterbalanced by severe risks: fabricated citations and hallucinations that compromise academic integrity, epistemic drift and cognitive atrophy resulting from overreliance on algorithmic output, unreliable AI detection tools that disproportionately flag writing from multilingual scholars, and algorithmic biases that perpetuate systemic inequities. The review examines institutional governance responses, particularly UNESCO's human-centered frameworks and the Traffic Light Model for assessment redesign, which establish operational zones for AI integration while protecting human agency and educational equity. Critical AI literacy emerges as an essential prerequisite for sustainable implementation. Geographic evidence skews heavily toward well-resourced, English-medium institutions, revealing urgent research gaps in Global South contexts, postgraduate cohorts, and longitudinal methodologies. The synthesis concludes that GenAI represents not a simple pedagogical solution nor an existential threat, but rather a systemic force requiring deliberate, evidence-based governance to ensure technology serves rather than supplants human intellectual development in academic writing.