The study, carried out by Abdullah M. Alazemi of PAAET’s Language Center, used a convergent mixed methods survey design, collecting quantitative and qualitative data simultaneously through a single questionnaire administered in Arabic. The quantitative strand captured patterns of use, perceived benefits, and concerns on five-point Likert scales, while six open-ended questions invited students to describe in their own words how AI shaped their writing practices. The two datasets were analyzed separately, using descriptive statistics in SPSS and reflexive thematic analysis respectively, and then compared for convergence. The subscales showed good internal consistency, with Cronbach’s alpha values of 0.85 for AI use, 0.90 for perceived benefits, and 0.77 for concerns.

What the numbers reveal is striking in its consistency. Students reported using AI most often for language-related functions: 72.5 percent used it to correct grammar, 73.1 percent to enhance vocabulary, and 75.3 percent to express ideas more clearly in English. Meanwhile, 65.3 percent turned to AI for idea generation, 66.7 percent for summarizing academic materials, and 73.2 percent agreed that AI helped them complete writing tasks more efficiently. In other words, the technology is not primarily a shortcut for producing finished assignments; it functions across the entire arc of the writing process, from brainstorming and outlining through paraphrasing, drafting, and final revision.

The qualitative strand added texture to these patterns. Four interrelated themes emerged from the thematic analysis: AI as a facilitator of English academic writing, AI as a cognitive and academic efficiency tool, AI as a confidence-building resource, and students’ active negotiation of the opportunities and risks of AI use. Many students described a familiar frustration that AI helped resolve: knowing what they wanted to say but struggling to express it in academic English. One participant wrote that AI had helped them learn new vocabulary, formulate sentences more clearly and professionally, and increased their confidence in writing. Another described how it enabled faster organization of ideas and easier review of mistakes.

That efficiency dimension deserves particular attention. Students described using AI to condense long searches, summarize dense lectures, simplify complicated material, and organize information into manageable forms. One participant noted that AI had shortened a long journey of searching, reviewing, and writing. From a cognitive standpoint, this suggests students perceive the technology less as a ghostwriter and more as a form of cognitive support, a tool that reduces the extraneous linguistic and organizational load of academic work so that attention can shift toward understanding disciplinary content. The study interprets these practices through sociocultural learning theory, which treats tools as facilitators of participation in learning activities, positioning AI as a kind of linguistic scaffolding within students’ zone of proximal development.

Perhaps the most psychologically significant finding concerns confidence. Writing in a second language is notoriously anxiety-inducing, and 62.3 percent of participants believed AI increased their confidence in writing English, while 61.6 percent agreed it reduced writing-related anxiety. Students described having access to immediate, judgment-free feedback at any hour, something traditionally available only from teachers, peers, or writing centers during limited windows. The study draws on self-efficacy theory to interpret this pattern: as students perceived themselves becoming more capable of producing grammatically correct, coherent texts, their willingness to engage with writing tasks grew. Confidence, in these accounts, emerged not from the mere existence of AI but from a perceived reduction in the linguistic barriers that made writing feel daunting.

Yet the students themselves were far from uncritical. The fourth theme revealed a sophisticated awareness of AI’s risks. Approximately 63.4 percent of participants expressed concern about overreliance on AI tools, 58.6 percent believed AI may weaken independent writing skills, and 72.4 percent agreed that AI-generated information may sometimes be inaccurate. Some students reported deliberately reviewing, evaluating, and verifying AI outputs before using them, while others worried that habitual reliance might erode their ability to recall vocabulary or construct grammar independently. One participant cautioned that excessive dependence may reduce a student’s ability to think and solve problems independently, while another insisted that AI should serve as a supporting tool rather than a replacement for personal effort.

Notably, students intertwined ethical concerns with educational ones. Beyond worries about violating academic integrity policies, participants feared that heavy AI use would cost them opportunities to develop their own writing skills and critical thinking. The study found that 64.2 percent of participants reported concerns about the ethical use of AI in academic writing. Students effectively drew a line between responsible use, checking information, revising AI suggestions, and using AI to support understanding, and irresponsible use, copying content without verification or outsourcing thinking entirely. The issue, as they framed it, is not whether AI should be used but how.

The convergence between the quantitative and qualitative strands was strong, with no major contradictions between them. The survey data mapped the breadth of use and concern, while the open-ended responses explained the underlying experiences of language support, efficiency, and confidence. This alignment strengthens the study’s central claim: generative AI has moved beyond being an occasional educational technology and is now embedded in students’ everyday writing practices, functioning simultaneously as language tutor, cognitive assistant, and psychological buffer.

The implications reach well beyond Kuwait. The author argues that institutions should respond not with blanket prohibitions but with AI literacy frameworks that teach students to question, evaluate, and refine machine-generated content. In nursing and health sciences education specifically, guidance must address field-specific hazards, including fabricated or inaccurate clinical information and threats to patient confidentiality, and should encourage verification of any health-related content AI produces. The study’s limitations warrant caution: it was conducted at a single institution using convenience sampling and self-reported perceptions, the predominantly male sample may limit transferability, and no objective writing performance data were collected. Whether AI-assisted confidence translates into genuine long-term gains in writing competence remains an open question, one the author argues demands longitudinal research. What the study establishes firmly is that the debate over AI in higher education has shifted decisively from whether students will use these tools to how educators can ensure they use them well.

Subject of Research: Generative AI use for English academic writing among nursing and health sciences students in Kuwait

Article Title: Generative artificial intelligence use for academic writing in English among Kuwaiti nursing and health sciences students in a mixed methods study

Article References: Alazemi, A. M. (2026). Generative artificial intelligence use for academic writing in English among Kuwaiti nursing and health sciences students in a mixed methods study. Discover Education, 5(1), Article 1159. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44217-026-02297-w

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s44217-026-02297-w

Keywords: generative AI, academic writing, nursing education, health sciences, English medium instruction, higher education, Kuwait, ChatGPT, mixed methods, AI literacy, self-efficacy, writing anxiety

The Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2027 evaluated the leading 2,200 universities drawn from a pool of more than 20,000 higher education institutions worldwide, spanning 118 countries. Times Higher Education, based in the United Kingdom, is widely regarded as one of the oldest and most respected global university rankings. Its methodology rests on five broad pillars: Teaching, which includes measures such as teaching reputation; Research Environment, encompassing research reputation, research income, and research productivity; Research Quality, which is anchored in citation impact; Industry, which tracks how often a university’s work is cited in patents; and International Outlook, which considers the share of international students and the extent of international co-authorship. A distinctive feature of the THE methodology is its use of size-independent indicators, including the student-to-faculty ratio, revenue per faculty member, and citation impact, a design choice intended to prevent larger universities from gaining an advantage over smaller institutions purely on the basis of scale.

Semmelweis University’s climb in the 2027 edition was driven by measurable gains across the indicator groups. The university advanced considerably in two of the five areas, improved its score in a third, and held its position in the remainder. Taken as a whole, the university placed in the top 25 percent for every one of the five indicator groups. Its strongest performance came in Research Quality, measured through the number of citations in the relevant field, where Semmelweis ranks 166th in the world. Its second-best result came in the Teaching indicator group, where it was placed 242nd globally. These figures suggest that the university’s research output is being cited at a rate that places it among the most influential institutions in its field, while its teaching environment remains competitive on a global scale.

University leadership attributed the achievement to the institution’s integrated structure, which links education, patient care, and scientific research within a single clinical ecosystem. “This outstanding achievement is primarily due to the synergy that characterizes Semmelweis University. We are a medical and health sciences university surrounded by a clinical structure that is also a significant player in the scientific community. Our three core activities – education, healthcare, and science and innovation – reinforce one another, and each is centered on ensuring that our patients receive the best possible care. To this end, we have revised our curriculum to place even greater emphasis on practice-oriented education. Thanks to this, we are able to conduct a steady stream of significant observations, which leads to outstanding scientific achievements year after year,” said Dr. Béla Merkely, the university’s rector.

Commenting on the results, the rector pointed to further improvements in academic performance and the university’s strong international presence as the key drivers of this year’s progress. Semmelweis is among the most internationally diverse universities in the world: more than a third of its nearly 16,000 students come from outside Hungary, representing almost 130 countries. Demand for its English-language programs continues to rise, with nearly 40 percent more students applying this year than in previous years. That surge means the general medical program is now approximately three times oversubscribed, a signal of the growing global reputation that the ranking result both reflects and reinforces.

The university’s international engagement extends well beyond student recruitment. Semmelweis has established partnerships with world-class institutions including the Karolinska Institute, the Mayo Clinic, the Universities of Oxford and Heidelberg, and the National University of Singapore. It has also launched a postgraduate program with Harvard University for the fourth time, a collaboration that underscores the depth of its ties to leading academic medical centers. Such partnerships are increasingly important in modern health sciences education, where clinical training, translational research, and international mobility are tightly interwoven, and they provide channels through which research findings and educational practices circulate between institutions.

Dr. Péter Ferdinandy, Vice-Rector for Science and Innovations at Semmelweis University, described the university’s progress in international rankings as an undeniable achievement, and noted that the new result is consistent with strong performances in subject-specific rankings earlier in the year. In Times Higher Education’s 2026 World University Rankings by Subject, released at the beginning of the year, Semmelweis is already listed among the world’s top 200 in its own discipline, medicine and health sciences. In ShanghaiRanking’s latest Global Ranking of Academic Subjects, the university appears in the world’s top 50 band in Pharmacy & Pharmaceutical Sciences, and among the top 200 in Clinical Medicine, Dentistry & Oral Sciences, and Medical Technology. Together, these subject-level results paint a picture of an institution whose specialized strengths align closely with its overall standing.

“A structure has been established at Semmelweis University that can be considered unique even on the international level, and thanks to this, the university has been able to make significant progress in higher education rankings. The clinic achieves this level of performance based on theoretical and translational research. The primary goal remains to ensure that research findings are put to use directly at the patient’s bedside as soon as possible,” emphasized Dr. Péter Ferdinandy. In his view, improving the university’s ranking position will ultimately ensure that Semmelweis trains doctors and healthcare professionals of an even higher quality who can care for patients more effectively. The vice-rector’s comments highlight a philosophy in which rankings are not an end in themselves but a byproduct of a research-to-bedside pipeline that places clinical benefit at the center of institutional strategy.

The 2027 rankings also clarify Semmelweis’s standing within its region. In Central and Eastern Europe, the University of Tartu in Estonia ranks 301–350, Charles University in the Czech Republic ranks 401–500, and Wrocław Medical University and Jagiellonian University in Poland are listed in the 501–600 range, leaving Semmelweis clearly ahead of its regional peers. At the very top of the global table, the University of Oxford took first place, followed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in second, with Princeton University and Stanford University tied for third. The concentration of elite Anglo-American institutions at the summit of global rankings remains a familiar pattern, which makes the advance of a specialized medical university from Central Europe into the top 250 particularly notable.

University rankings have faced criticism in recent years, as they attempt to compare institutions with fundamentally different profiles using criteria that are, in some cases, difficult to compare directly. The practice of ranking higher education institutions dates back more than 150 years, but truly global rankings did not emerge until the early 2000s, when Times Higher Education launched its list in 2004 in collaboration with Quacquarelli Symonds; the two organizations have since gone their separate ways. Despite the methodological debates, globally recognized rankings such as THE continue to serve as important points of reference both domestically and internationally. They help students navigate among thousands of institutions, contribute to universities’ international visibility and reputation, and can have significant implications for potential institutional and research collaborations. Beyond the headline position, the individual indicators provide quantifiable and comparable insight into specific areas of an institution’s educational and research activities, and for Semmelweis University, the 2027 figures suggest that a strategy built on the integration of education, healthcare, and science is yielding measurable returns on the world stage.

Subject of Research: Semmelweis University's rise to 247th place in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2027

Article Title: THE Ranking: Semmelweis among the world’s top 250 universities

Article References: THE Ranking: Semmelweis among the world’s top 250 universities. (n.d.). Original publication

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: Not provided

Keywords: Semmelweis University, Times Higher Education, World University Rankings 2027, higher education, Hungary, Central and Eastern Europe, medical education, research quality, citation impact, international students, university rankings, health sciences