The University of Texas at Austin agreed to spend more than $4.2 million on two-year ChatGPT Edu and Claude Edu contracts, according to reporting by The Daily Texan on 29 October.

The reported agreements cover 75,000 ChatGPT users and 70,000 Claude users. Those figures describe the scale of the purchase; they don’t tell you how many people use the tools regularly or what they achieve.

I’d want those answers before the next renewal landed on my desk.

Put the task in the buying decision

UT Austin has an AI Studio team to support its tools. The university describes workshops and work with departments on practical applications, so there’s a support offer alongside the licences.

You can apply that principle to a much smaller purchase. Pick a task people already do and decide what you want the tool to improve.

Take a parent communication. You might want staff to spend less time producing a clear first draft from an approved template, with the final message checked before it goes out.

Write that down before the pilot starts. It gives you something to assess when someone says the tool has saved them hours.

Count the checking time

Ask the people in the pilot to record a few complete tasks. Include the time spent correcting the output, because a two-minute draft can still leave twenty minutes of editing.

Keep the original and the finished version. A colleague can then judge whether the result is clear enough to use and whether the tool introduced anything misleading.

You might find that the main benefit is helping someone complete work they previously struggled with. Record that too, with an example that explains what improved.

A login count won’t answer either question. Nor will a folder full of prompts that nobody has tried on an actual task.

Check what the price includes

Before you expand the pilot, ask whoever owns the contract to check usage limits and extra charges. Check the renewal terms, including what happens to accounts and saved work when someone leaves.

The reported US agreements won’t tell you what your organisation will pay. You’ll need a quote for your own requirements.

An education label also leaves questions about what information staff can enter. Ask your data protection lead and IT colleagues to turn the agreed limits into examples people can follow.

Test accessibility with the people who’ll use the tool. Give them a named contact when they get stuck.

Set a review date before committing to wider access. At that meeting, ask to see completed work and the staff time it took to produce it.

Would you renew the licences on that evidence? If you can’t answer yet, decide what you need to check before the contract rolls over.

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