BETWEEN EMPOWERMENT AND COGNITIVE DEPENDENCY: HIGHER EDUCATION STUDENTS’ PERCEPTIONS OF GENERATIVE ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IN FOSTERING INDEPENDENT LEARNING WITHIN ISRAELI HIGHER EDUCATION
Generative AI has entered higher education faster than institutions have learned to guide it, and its effect on students' independence remains disputed. The present study asked how students in Israeli higher education perceive the role of AI in their formation as independent learners, a question the international literature has hardly examined in this national and linguistic context. A qualitative interpretive design was used, based on semi-structured interviews with thirty Arab students enrolled in Israeli institutions, conducted in Arabic around nineteen open-ended questions and analyzed through inductive thematic analysis with open coding and cross-question synthesis. Seven themes emerged. Participants framed AI as a supportive but non-substitutive academic assistant, used it widely for planning and time management, and reported gains in critical inquiry only where they verified its output, alongside clear warnings against passive reliance. Institutional guidance was described as thin, and students asked for training and boundaries rather than prohibition. Motivation rose as AI lowered difficulty, perceptions of geographical access were mixed, and integrity and dependency concerns cut across the interviews. The findings indicate that AI supports independent learning when the learner stays active and verifies, and that the guidance students request is the missing institutional condition.