A knowledge base article about ChatGPT Education Terms of Service provided by the UC Berkeley IT Service Hub - Knowledge Portal
These Terms of Service outline the service provided and the roles and responsibilities for ChatGPT Education licenses. Licensees must review and acknowledge this document and linked documents, including the OpenAI Terms of Use, before using the service.
This document does not apply to free or paid ChatGPT accounts outside of the Education licensing agreement.
These Terms of Service are effective as of March 5, 2026, and may be updated from time to time. Continued use of the service after updates constitutes acceptance of the revised terms.
ChatGPT Education is a premium generative AI service provided by UC Berkeley that offers campus access to OpenAI’s ChatGPT platform for academic, instructional, research, and administrative use. The service is designed to support higher-education workflows such as writing and editing, analysis, research support, summarization, and problem-solving across a wide range of disciplines, as well as non-academic use cases including communications, planning, brainstorming, data interpretation, and everyday productivity tasks.
This service is offered under the University of California contract with OpenAI and includes data handling and privacy provisions appropriate for UC use. Conversations and user data are not used to train OpenAI’s public models when accessed through ChatGPT Education.
ChatGPT Education is available to eligible UC Berkeley eligible parties as a premium service, with costs borne by individuals and departments via chartstring. Use of the service is subject to UC policies, campus guidelines, and applicable data protection classification requirements.
ChatGPT Education is a vendor-hosted service. Most documentation and support for features, functionality, and model behavior are provided directly by OpenAI. UC Berkeley IT provides limited support related to service access and campus integration and may coordinate with OpenAI on issues that affect multiple users or institutional use.
Support documentation can be found at the OpenAI Help Center.
For technical support questions, reach out to support@openai.com.
As the service provider, UC Berkeley IT is responsible for:
Each ChatGPT account must be assigned to, and used by, a single individual. Anyone accessing ChatGPT through SPA accounts must ensure that only one individual is using each licensed account. Use of a ChatGPT Education license is meant only for purposes consistent with the missions of teaching, research, academic administration, or other legitimate university functions. Users of ChatGPT Education are responsible for:
Violation of these terms may result in revocation of access, suspension or restriction of privileges, and potential disciplinary action under campus or systemwide policies.
Certain advanced features in the UC Berkeley ChatGPT workspace (e.g., Deep Research, Codex) are subject to per-account monthly usage limits. If a user reaches their limit, access to those features may be suspended until the start of the next billing cycle, when their usage limits automatically reset.
ChatGPT Models and Limits provides the full list of features and usage details.
Conversations will be retained for 365 days, and then deleted. If a user deletes a conversation from their interface, the data will be retained by OpenAI for an additional 30 days, for the purpose of abuse monitoring. Note that ChatGPT will not retain any original uploaded files, and or to be able to query them after 48 hours post upload.
A valid chartstring is required to pay for ChatGPT Education licenses. Requestors are responsible for monitoring the chartstring's fund sources to ensure that the chartstring will continue to work.
Licenses will be billed annually to the chartstring provided with the request and will follow an annual billing cycle. Initial charges will be prorated based on the month in which the license is activated, relative to the start of the negotiated annual billing cycle.
Licensees may terminate service at any time. Terminations and other billing changes will take effect in the next annual billing cycle after Berkeley IT receives the request. Charges cannot be refunded.
Requests are processed on a monthly basis, on the second Wednesday of each month. Requests made within 5 days before the end of the billing cycle may require one more cycle to take effect.
From time to time, OpenAI may schedule maintenance to improve service or conduct repairs. Information about ChatGPT Education service disruptions is available via the OpenAI Status page.
UC Berkeley IT will announce major scheduled maintenance to users via email, and will post notifications on the campus System Status page.
If a large-scale unscheduled outage occurs, Berkeley IT will work with OpenAI to resolve it. Notifications will be posted and sent as described above for scheduled outages.
License requests are processed on a monthly basis, on the second Wednesday of each month. Requests made within 5 days before the end of the billing cycle may require one more cycle to take effect.
For all support requests, the UC Berkeley IT goal is to have a staff member assigned and acknowledge requests within four business hours of receipt. Campus priorities may require exceptions to this goal during certain periods of the academic year, including curtailment and holidays.
UC Berkeley IT strives to provide the best possible service, but circumstances beyond our control may interfere. We apologize for any disruption in service. Neither UC Berkeley IT nor OpenAI is responsible for loss of data or business, security breach, or other damages.