Grassroots ChatGPT Adoption in Yemen's Universities — A 277-Student Engineering Survey Amid Conflict-Era Resource Scarcity

Yemen has no coordinated national or institutional programme for AI in education. Instead, students have organically adopted generative AI tools — chiefly ChatGPT — for self-directed learning despite a decade-long conflict that has damaged infrastructure, strained household finances and limited reliable internet and electricity access.

A peer-reviewed study (Journal of Science and Technology, Vol. 30, No. 5, April 2025) surveyed 277 engineering students at Taiz University's Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology using a structured 5-point Likert questionnaire. A separate peer-reviewed study (Alkamel & Alwagieh, Social Sciences & Humanities Open, 2024) surveyed Yemeni university EFL students on ChatGPT-assisted academic writing.

The Taiz University survey found a strong correlation between generative-AI usage and students' overall grades and skills development; 89.17% reported using ChatGPT as a fundamental part of their learning, and nearly all respondents were familiar with generative-AI tools. The EFL study found students generally reported improved fluency, accuracy and overall writing quality.

The authors caution that socioeconomic hardship — limited funding, poor technological access and insufficient training — moderately hinders effective use, and that the correlational, single-institution survey design limits how far the findings generalise. The EFL study also flags academic-integrity risks, plagiarism and over-reliance on AI-generated text undermining independent writing-skill development. Both studies describe informal, learner-driven adoption rather than a coordinated institutional programme, teacher training or governance framework.