National plan urges AI teaching at universities, with Surrey’s discipline-specific model leading the way

From this month (September 2026), AI will be embedded into every degree at Surrey, tailored to each subject rather than taught as a general digital skill. This covers every programme, from foundation year through to postgraduate, and Surrey features in UUK’s Future Jobs Roadmap as a model for how it can be done.  

Published this week and based on conversations with around 200 employers, business groups and universities, the Roadmap sets an ambition for all undergraduates to have access to meaningful work-based learning by 2035, alongside steps for universities, business and government to support careers across a working life. 

Each subject at Surrey now integrates AI in discipline-specific ways and asks different questions. For example, what does it mean to use AI well in civil engineering, where safety, regulation and physical constraints matter? What does it mean in politics, where evidence, interpretation and democratic legitimacy matter? What does it mean in business, where AI-generated confidence can quickly become commercial risk? The answer cannot be the same in every course, because each profession has different standards of good judgement. 

Alongside work-based learning, the Roadmap’s commitments include ensuring AI tools are accessible to every undergraduate, and that every course has a lecturer who is an “AI trailblazer”, a universal lifetime entitlement to careers support, expanded employer co-designed learning and modular provision, regional graduate schemes connecting graduates with SMEs and simpler routes for employers to engage with universities. It also calls on government to support youth employment through targeted measures to encourage recruitment and strengthen pathways into work. 

Around 1.4 million undergraduates a year would take up work experience by the middle of the next decade if the 2035 ambition is met.