The Role of ChatGPT in Higher Education: Some Reflections from Public Administration Students

Launched in November 2022, ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence-based chatbot, can generate coherent, informative, human-like responses and have natural language conversations with users. In the higher education sector, ChatGPT has been met with both excitement and scepticism. Therefore, the aim of the paper is to investigate the perception of ChatGPT by students of public administration. Findings show that ChatGPT seems to be an attractive platform for public administration students. Students have generally positive perceptions of ChatGPT in relation to different study issues, suggesting the further impact of using ChatGPT in concrete public administration study issues is recommended to enhance learning from students’ perspective. However, students feel less effective in developing and improving critical thinking, creativity and personal communication skills. Accordingly, the findings of this paper add to the existing scientific knowledge and facilitate evidence-based policy-making, which is crucial for higher education in the future.