As of February 2025, offered through an enterprise agreement between CES and OpenAI, ChatGPT Edu is available to eligible users at BYU, BYU-Idaho, BYU-Hawaii, BYU-Pathway, and Ensign College. ChatGPT Edu is accessible to all CES non-student employees, offering a powerful Generative AI experience. Widely utilized on college campuses, it is specifically designed to support academic and professional tasks such as research, exam creation, resume assessments, and more. For example, the University of Oxford has integrated ChatGPT Edu into their research workflows to accelerate data analysis, while faculty at Arizona State University have developed custom AI tutors to enhance language learning. These applications demonstrate the diverse ways institutions are harnessing AI to improve education outcomes.
Learn more about the ChatGPT Edu offering from OpenAI.
Key Features of ChatGPT Edu
- Uses GPT-4o, a powerful AI model that helps with reading, writing, coding, and problem-solving, and incorporates OpenAI's o1 reasoning and thinking models for enhanced critical analysis and decision-making.
- Offers tools for analyzing data, searching the web, and summarizing documents.
- Allows users to create and customize AI assistants to help with university-related tasks.
- Provides significantly more message capacity compared to the free version of ChatGPT.
- Supports over 50 languages for improved communication and learning.
- Ensures strong security and privacy protections, with controls for managing access and data.
- Keeps conversations and entered data private, without using them for AI training.
Availability and Restrictions
ChatGPT Edu is available to faculty and staff at BYU, BYU-Idaho, BYU-Hawaii, BYU-Pathway, and Ensign College through an enterprise agreement between CES and OpenAI. Student licenses are not available at this time. A limited number of licenses are allocated across CES institutions, and eligible faculty and staff can apply via the CES ChatGPT Edu License Registration form. Approvals depend on availability, and licenses are designated for full-time, 3/4-time, and part-time non-student employees. For questions regarding exceptions for student-employee access, users should contact their institutional AI committee.
Data entered into ChatGPT Edu remains private and is not used to improve OpenAI’s models, specifically under the CES agreement. Users may enter Public, Internal, and Confidential data for institutional purposes but should de-identify sensitive information whenever possible. Restricted Data, HIPAA-Protected Data, and Controlled Unclassified Information are not permitted unless explicitly approved by the institutional AI Committee. You can find more information on the ChatGPT Edu Data Guidelines page.
Apply for a ChatGPT Edu License
Please note that ChatGPT Edu is a separate product from ChatGPT Free, ChatGPT Plus, ChatGPT Pro, ChatGPT Teams, etc. If an individual has a current ChatGPT Free, Plus or Teams account, it can be migrated to a ChatGPT Edu account and any remaining unused time on the Plus or Teams plan will be refunded to the user.
Please reach out to the BYU-Idaho AI Office with any questions or concerns accessing ChatGPT Edu.
Frequently Asked Questions & Learning Resources
ChatGPT has growing capability and functionality. Learn more about what ChatGPT can do in the sections below.
a ChatGPT Edu license will also allow users to interact with different models, create, share and interact with custom GPTs, save chat history and organize it into projects, and more.
GPTs made by outside creators are not allowed within our tenant of ChatGPT Edu. However, GPTs created by those within the tenant can be shared with all other tenant users.
- o1 model: 50 messages/week
- o1-mini: 50 messages/day
- Any other model: unlimited
OpenAI, LLMs, and ChatGPT
Since it was established in 2015, the mission of OpenAI has always been “to ensure Artificial Intelligence benefits all of humanity.” This short video briefly discusses the origins of OpenAI, the basics of Large Language Models (LLMs), and how ChatGPT serves as an interface to interact with these models, closing with an introduction to OpenAI o1.
Prompt Engineering
A "prompt" is a message given to a chatbot like ChatGPT. Certain prompts help ChatGPT perform better than other prompts. Learn about how to create effective prompts through prompt engineering in the video below.
Introduction To GPTs
GPTs are versions of ChatGPT tailored for a specific context or workflow. This video briefly overviews GPTs and their uses, demonstrates using a GPT, and shows where to find existing GPTs and begin creating a new one.
ChatGPT Search
ChatGPT Search combines ChatGPT's interface with real web searches. It analyzes and summarizes data from across the internet, providing links to trusted sources. With this tool, users can also ask follow up questions to refine their search. This video demonstrates how ChatGPT Search can streamline your research process.
Multimodality
ChatGPT is multimodal, meaning it can process, understand, and generate many kinds of input and output. This video demonstrates engaging with ChatGPT to generate content using four kinds of input: 1) text, 2) audio, 3) image, and 4) PDF.
Advanced Prompt Engineering
While some prompt engineering can be simple, there are advanced methods that can be used to further prompt the model to give you what you want. Learn more about advanced prompt engineering techniques below.
Data Analysis
ChatGPT's data analysis capabilities allow users with little to no technical background to gain insights and draft plans based on provided data. This video demonstrates using ChatGPT to identify patterns and create project plans, charts, and spreadsheets.