Documenting the AI Divide — A Mixed-Methods Study of Student AI Adoption in Urban and Rural Nepal

AI adoption in Nepali schools and colleges is widely discussed but rarely measured. Researchers at Nepal Kasthamandap College set out to document how students actually use AI tools and how prepared teachers feel to integrate them, using stratified random sampling across urban and rural school and college settings.

The study combined a quantitative survey of 150 students (135 urban, 15 rural) with 11 in-depth interviews with teachers, administrators and AI experts, analysed through descriptive and inferential statistics alongside thematic analysis of the qualitative material.

90.7% of students reported awareness of AI, and 33.3% used AI tools weekly while 30% used them daily. Exposure was sharply unequal: 124 of 135 urban students showed AI exposure versus 12 of 15 rural students, and male students reported slightly higher usage than female students. 62.7% of respondents believed AI could reduce educational inequality if access were broadened. In interviews, teachers and administrators pointed to infrastructure deficiencies, limited digital literacy and insufficient training as the main barriers to responsible AI integration in the classroom.

This is a single-institution, self-reported survey with no deployed intervention or before/after learning measure — it documents the state of informal AI adoption and the equity gap around it, not a programme whose learning impact has been evaluated.