This Common ‘Negative Perception’ Is Holding Back New Graduates, Says a Top Deloitte Executive

Deloitte Asia-Pacific CEO Rob Hillard says many colleges are falling short in preparing students for an AI-driven workplace because they are teaching graduates to see AI as cheating rather than a useful tool.

In a Bloomberg interview this week, Hillard said many recent graduates enter the workforce with a “negative perception” of AI because they were taught in college to see it as a form of cheating.

“We have to change that,” he said. 

Hillard said that universities have been slow to teach students how to prepare for the workforce using AI. He said that changing how students view the technology is critical as workplaces continue to evolve. 

The Deloitte executive said the future of work will be shaped by people actively using AI, adding that the only way to do that is by “working hands-on with the technology, with seeing how you can get the most effective interface between people and machine.”

A recent Gallup–Lumina survey of about 3,800 students found that 42% say their schools discourage AI use, while 11% report schools completely ban it. Schools are concerned about cheating and want to promote independent, critical thinking.

Even with restrictions on AI use, the majority of U.S. college students, 57%, say they use AI to help with coursework at least once a week, and one in five said they use it every day. 

Top consulting firms are increasingly using AI

Knowledge-heavy, client-facing fields like consulting face acute anxiety about AI-driven job loss, Business Insider reports. As other firms cut back on hiring, Deloitte is taking the opposite approach. Hillard said in the Bloomberg interview that the firm is hiring “record numbers of graduates” and “investing more than ever” in training them. 

An August 2025 Reuters report found that 71% of American workers worry that AI will “put too many people out of work permanently.” A February 2025 Pew Research Center survey found that one-third of U.S. workers believe AI will “lead to fewer opportunities for them in the long run.” 

Top firms like Deloitte are racing to use AI in everyday work, using AI tools to handle routine, data-heavy tasks in areas like audit, tax, coding and research — tasks that once fell to junior staff. 

Deloitte, for example, has rolled out its in-house AI platform PairD to tens of thousands of employees to assist with coding, creating content and conducting research. Across other consulting firms, AI agents are increasingly sifting through documents, summarizing vast datasets and generating analyses quickly — work that previously took junior staff days or weeks to complete. 

Leaders at other Big Four accounting firms like KPMG, PwC and EY say this shift to AI work forces them to rethink how junior employees learn. Skipping the repetitive work risks leaving entry-level staff without a deep understanding of the underlying processes of a task. 

It has also changed the way these firms hire. Hiring has slowed for some roles, like management consultants, according to BI. PwC also plans to cut U.S. entry-level hiring by about a third over the next three years, citing the impact of AI among the reasons, per BI.