Everyone Is Cheating Their Way Through College. ChatGPT has unraveled the entire academic project.

It definitely would have made it a lot easier....college Algebra was my all time nemesis.

I am a college professor. It is true they will all cheat every opportunity they can. So the professor, or department, or school, must change the evaluation methods. We are doing that now. Older and lazier profs don't know how or can't be bothered.

The easiest way to limit AIs impact is to get them to write on paper. Or to perform live. Presentations with no "reading" or "memorisation" allowed. Just some slide with images and notational words. Or - they can write on paper a written exam. There is no AI. There are many other evaluation methods and colleges are experimenting with ways to go forward that can take AI assists in stride - even in an evaluation context.

I will say that this year - the freshman class - there are some students who cannot write successful text on paper. 5-10 minutes into the effort, they are shut down completely. Asked to write a 2 page text for an evaluation, a few students in a course of 20 can't do it. They are digital natives and their cognition shuts down if they are not wired.

“We’re going to [use AI to] target the digital LSATs; digital GREs; all campus assignments, quizzes, and tests,” he said. “It will enable you to cheat on pretty much everything.””

“It’s not just the students: Multiple AI platforms now offer tools to leave AI-generated feedback on students’ essays. Which raises the possibility that AIs are now evaluating AI-generated papers, reducing the entire academic exercise to a conversation between two robots — or maybe even just one.”

Well I can guarantee that science and engineering profs are on to this and are rapidly evolving ways to evaluate true knowledge and skill acquisition in the age of AI. Because the teachers and the schools do not want to put a stamp on a doctor or engineer who knows nothing, only AI fakery.

R4 this is possible but yours is the worst case scenario. I already do feed papers into AI to help me identify and be precise about various issues I know are there and which I should submit to the student's attention. So it makes my feedback more precise and helpful. There will always be cynical profs who do the least work possible. That is on deans and students if they put up with it. If a clever student WRITES his own damn paper, and gets an AI produced feedback, that little cunt can take the feedback to the dean and call out the teacher.

You don't want to write it, they don't want to read it

R6, it seems to be approaching a little bit that joke about Russia under communism: we pretend to work and you pretend to pay us.

Instead, here, it is: we pretend to study, and you pretend to grade us.

Maybe it should be down to a few exams a year, in person. Like Europe. They don't have as much busy work in Europe.

I believe cheating is the world’s second oldest profession.

I have the same experience as R2.

We have to change assignments. I'm in the humanities. Writing is a staple of my discipline. I must now have more in-class writing assignments. In a class of upperclassmen, there are few who can write.

Another problem with this generation is that many cannot sit through a one hour and twenty class without getting up and leaving. Supposedly, they are going to the bathroom. But they are checking their devices.

Oh no. No devices will be allowed on campus anymore!

[quote] College is over.

[quote] O

[quote] V

[quote] E

[quote] R

[quote] Over.

I totally agree.

A.I. and ChatGPT have ruined everything.

There is no point to college any more, because artificial intelligence does all the thinking for college students now.

Students and Professors are just going through the motions.

Technology is creating a complete and total "brain drain" in humanity.

R12, the end of the article details a project to have devices that can be hidden and used that will provide instant feedback to students through AI without anyone knowing. So the devices will be there and they will be listening. That is just the way the world will be in the United States.

I told you bitches: School’s out forever.

Now I can be an engineering student and party 4 nights a week!

College has now become about cheating and hacking the system, and finding ways to get around technology restrictions, rather than actually... you know ......... learning.

I think most deans and professors who are dead inside recognise that the schools must evolve to deal with the way the current and future generations create knowledge and are productive. They are wired. It's going to be messy for a while. My swiss system finally announced a campus AI guidelines and system wide guidelines and they were dead in the water two months into the fall semester. All this honour system and clear notation of IA use was worth shit. Lame. You have to think fast these days and on your feet. Constant adaptations. I experiment with full AI inclusion in creative applied projects and some of the students I thought might be full losers could synthesise valid outputs that cannot be reduced to "ai responses" though Ai played key roles. I know this because I have interviewed them weeks after they produced and some had retained the insights and knowledge they demonstrated. It was about marketing by the way. SOME, not all, were able to access business and domain knowledge far beyond their resting state, quickly and precisely. They spit out valid productions 3x faster than pre-covid cohorts. Then excused themselves to leave early.

Soon, all of Datalounge will be one set of robots being bitchy to another set of robots who respond in cunt.

I’m here for it.

HA-ha!

[quote] “It’s the best place to meet your co-founder and your wife.”

So I see Mr. Lee has his priorities. I sweated college as an older freshman (like, 40 year old freshman). I worked really hard at a state university nestled among the most elite colleges in the country. I loved every second of it, though I was often frustrated and overwhelmed. Being that old meant holding down jobs to keep my life -- and school -- financed. On some level I envy kids going into school now with whole new ways to learn, but then I also think that pen on paper for note-taking, and clunky word processing tools weren't the worst ways to get through school

I must admit that when I read articles like this I am exhausted by the overarching ambition and acquisitiveness of these young people. The thirst for real world riches, status, and influence is mind-numbing. We still need plumbers, hair dressers, public servants, etc., that this class of student would be horrified to pursue.

My husband just taught (visiting) 1 semester at one of the nation’s top law schools and is now grading papers. I asked him about this, just the other day.

He said there’s a fast-growing understanding that AI has rendered grades far less meaningful, everybody knows it, and now it’s ALL about the personal letters of recommendation. Students need to form connections and relationships with the professors who matter.. and need to personally impress those professors based on actual 1:1 discussion.

But this only pertains to the very top schools where individual professors’ reputations and their recommendation letters are a Big Deal. Beyond that, you’re right, it’s a sea change toward mass fakery and academia is absurdly unprepared for what’s already happening.

A friend of mine who's a college professor told her students that if they use AI for their assignments/papers they had better proofread them carefully because she's going to grade them as if they'd written them. So of course they ignore her and turn in slop, so she grades them accordingly, which makes them terribly upset.

You can just ask chatgpt to answer a question in layman's terms as plain as possible and then paraphrase that answer, retyping it out in your own words, then run it through grammarly and do the work of clicking corrections until it's not red anymore.

The paper booked libraries, the typewriters, the days of liquid paper, researching by books is over. Painstakingly citing your sources, over.

An English professor had us do an in-class writing sample the first day of class to compare against later papers submitted.

An economics professor made us turn in a rough draft of our term papers partway through the course. He announced that only another student and I had ones that were nearly ready to submit. The entire class knew that the other person had bought her paper, not written it herself. Moreover, she had the balls to suggest writing a second paper, instead of taking the final exam (idea rejected).

That prof was one of the most boring I've encountered; on the other hand, I found him highly sexually attractive.

p.s. and obviously this is a sea-change problem in all the high schools as well, especially in the “college prep” lane of classes and grades. It’s so much more corrupt at the high school level because parents get restive and jobs get threatened if their child’s school’s ranking starts to slip relative to its competitors. So there’s constant internal pressure to churn out high grades and just obsess about prep for the standardized tests. Learning beyond that becomes a lesser priority.

Ah, humanity.

Hurtling at light speed, towards mediocrity.

All thanks to artificial intelligence.

Not just college - there was a story in the UK this week that a lawyer made a submission with references to multiple pieces of case law. Only problem was the case law mentioned didn't exist.

I agree with r2. I'm a former college professor and now I'm a high school teacher. The solution is to have them write pen and paper. Eventually, there will be creative ways to evaluate work that's assisted with AI. It's kind of an interesting challenge to figure out how to go forward. With or without AI, ALL students cheat ALL the time. It's astounding. It never even occurred to me to cheat when I was in school.

My law degree at Stetson University would have been even easier than it was!

R30, it probably would be even easier at Harvard. The lower rank schools tend to have more involved teachers than the top 12.

We are raising morons.

I didn't raise them.

At least now a few parents of young children have read the memo. DO not tether your kids to cell phones and internet for 18 years.

Wait until the teachers use AI for rec letters.

We're going to start seeing the effects of AI when this generation joins the workforce. It's going to be a "new normal" and it will be very scary for those of us in our elder years. Imagine being in a health crisis -- or just being an elderly person dependent on others for basic needs -- and these idiots are the doctors, nurses and health aides tasked with keeping you alive.

And just wait until they start procreating.

Don't worry y'all, dum dum Donnie will find a way to screw this up too.

R25 photo please!

R37: it was years ago, and you'd have to be into "daddy" types (50+) to have been into him.

Pics, or you're lying r38

[quote] Older and lazier profs

Like yourself, who can even be bothered to write out “professors”.

R38 I am!

yeah thats me. those who can do, do. those who can't become profs.

the point is all the profs who innovated in the 90s and 2000s to collaborative projects and portfolios, etc. Or who are very old fashioned and expect "research papers" - all of that died 1.5 years ago. So it's back to very written essay or report exams in exam conditions. or live oral exams where the students dont know the task beforehand. they have to know the general knowledge presented over the course.

It's a pity because I liked portfolio based evaluation. But its dead in the water.

As a teacher, there are MANY ways of working around AI software - teachers need to buck up and work it

Warning: TL;DR.

I did many of these things back before AI was available, because cheating just by using the internet was rampant.

I taught eight (!) sections of American Government/semester (and four in the summer), and because I'm easily bored, I had a few different methodologies/variants of how I taught them (full disclosure, two of the sections were online).

One variant was writing/presenting in the classroom. IIRC (and I'm not sure I do), I gave them some chapter-related timely topic on the off-day (TH of the T-TH 1 1/2 hour classes), and gave them 1/2 hour or so to write an essay to address it -- but I never rushed anyone. I had a hat (really!) with all the students' names in it on yes, little pieces of paper, and two or three unfortunates would be chosen to read their papers in front of the class. It was great! It was fun for me, students (other than the readers) enjoyed it, and the readers...well, I got to learn all about their pathetic writing skills and their ability to bullshit their way through a presentation (a good skill to have IRL). I only read the papers written by the presenters, and I graded the papers coupled with the presentations (easy enough). Their writing was soooo bad that they never read the papers verbatim -- they filled in the blanks and made changes to verbiage extemporaneously while they were speaking. The ungraded papers were counted toward an "attendance grade" for the non-reading students. Each student presented only once, and that student got to pick the next name out of the hat. I honestly had a blast. And the students did too.

Another method was what I suppose you could call "kinesthetic learning." I sent my students out on their own personal field trips. At the beginning of the semester, I would tell them that they had to attend either a government meeting/event or a special interest group meeting/event, and I had to approve it ahead of time. I gave them a few weeks to think about it, then we had a sign-up sheet. If they couldn't think of anything, I would make suggestions. The last half of the semester (same thing, only on the "off" days), the students would give Power Point presentations to the class of their adventures with the government/special interest groups. I also had a requirement that they had to take photos of themselves with the, say, county commissioner, judge, president of the interest group/activity etc. to prove they'd been there. I never use this expression IRL, but what a hoot! And I can't tell you how many students told me how pleased the government officials were that the students visited and showed an interest, and the students were very proud to be fussed over by people they perceived as being important adults. So a good time was had by all.

One more thing: I always always always had essay questions on my exams. Students were expected to fill the back of a legal-size exam page with their essay answer(s) -- no two-sentence-call-it-an-essay! Grading these is a chore, especially with (let's see) 180 or so students a semester with mid-terms and finals (which is why no one assigns them), but I honestly enjoyed it. I often felt that I was born to teach (sigh).

And I mostly taught at community colleges, so YMMV.

I loved my job, and my ratings from my students were consistently very high. But the administration(s) hated me and my out-of-the-closet self. I miss teaching a lot. Even writing this post is making me depressed. Too bad DeSatan hates gay people, or I'd still be doing it.

Thanks, R44. Did bring back memories of 8th grade English, where we wrote a short "composition" each weekend, reading them aloud for Monday's class; I dreaded that.

HO LEE SHIT, R44.

WHY NOT TYPE 100 MORE PARAGRAPHS, SO WE CAN SCROLL PAST THOSE TOO????

YOU REALLY NEED TO LEARN HOW TO EDIT YOURSELF.

ChatGPT Summary of R44: “I taught American Government at community colleges using creative methods like random student presentations, field trips to government events, and essay-based exams to engage students in meaningful learning. Despite the challenges of grading and working with large classes, I found great joy in seeing students connect with real-world politics and develop critical skills. However, my outspoken nature and progressive views led to friction with administration, and political shifts left me feeling disconnected from a job I truly loved.”

ChatGPT summary of R47:

R44 taught American Government creatively at community colleges, using interactive methods to engage students. While grading and large classes were challenging, they found fulfillment in helping students connect with real-world politics. However, their progressive views and outspoken style eventually caused friction with administrators, and political changes made them feel alienated from a job they once loved.

Pretty good, R47!

As for R46, I gave you the TL;DR warning. If you are so mfing lazy you can't scroll through a long post, you have bigger problems than I've ever had.

R46 is that dumb clown in the back of class who wise-asses his way through life. If he was still in school, he would be AI-ing everything.

I was born in 1978 (technically Generation X, but part of the niche “Oregon Trail Generation” or “Xennials” 1977-1983). I am continually grateful/thankful that I am the age that I am. I was lucky to have seen the shift from analog to digital, got out of college before both cell phones and social media had proliferated (which THANK GOD). And I know how to write (I’m a published author). These screen children are way too connected and are unable to string two sentences together let alone write an entire paper on their own without assistance. It’s actually sort of pathetic.

Danny DeVito: Alright, listen up—if AI’s doing all the homework now, then college is just a really expensive nap pod, right? Back in my day, we cheated the old-fashioned way: by sweating, whispering, and pretending to go to the bathroom. Now it’s all ChatGPT and no chapstick. I say we lean in—open a degree mill, serve some hoagies, call it "DeVito U."

Benjamin Franklin: While the tools of progress oft outpace our capacity to adapt, I must wonder if reliance upon artificial minds may extinguish the sacred flame of curiosity. Education, dear reader, ought not to be a performance for parchment, but a pursuit of personal enlightenment. That said, I do admire the efficiency—perhaps I should’ve had a chatbot write Poor Richard’s Almanack and saved myself a few sleepless nights.

Gloria Steinem: This isn’t just about college; it’s about a broken system measuring worth with test scores and regurgitated essays. If students are turning to AI en masse, maybe the real rebellion isn’t cheating—it’s refusing to play a rigged game. Women, marginalized voices, creatives—we’ve always had to find back doors. Maybe now the whole house needs rebuilding.

George Washington: I must confess, had ChatGPT been available during Valley Forge, I might've asked it to draft a surrender letter or two. Yet this abandonment of scholarly rigor grieves me. A republic relies on informed citizens, not clever prompts. If college is truly "over," then I fear the great experiment may be too.

Lou Reed: Man, this sounds like a B-side to Transformer. The system's collapsing under its own velvet smoke and mirrors. If learning’s now just noise in the machine, then maybe we should quit pretending the factory ever made anything real. Walk on the wild side, kids—just don't forget what you sound like underneath the echo.

Diana Ross: Well, honey, if everyone's cheating, then it’s not just the students—it’s the system that’s out of tune. You can dress up a degree with sequins and shine, but if no one’s doing the work, the show falls flat. Time for a new act—one where education hits the right note, with soul, style, and substance.

Our Honor Code was everything. Do colleges no longer have honor codes and honor councils?

AI is here to stay. College needs to admit it and incorporate it. Maybe writing long papers shouldn’t be a thing any more. Maybe classroom debates and discussion should be more emphasized

The only cheating I ever did was to read the Cliff Notes for one book

R53 ah a novel concept! How to debate your opponent and not shout them down!

An AI presidency would be more humane and logical.

Why even bother going to school if AI is going to take over all of the jobs? Glad I'm old.

[r44] as a current (HS) English teacher, I loved your response and actually think I’m going to use some of your ideas. I’m still young enough to feel like I can innovate/be creative because the alternative is too depressing.

AI doesn’t do everything. I work in insurance and have used it for analysis, sometimes the data it gathers doesn’t make sense. You have to filter it.

Even in the late 1980s and early 1990s, students would blatantly plagiarize and cheat. I taught a music course for dancers in those years. I thought it would be fun and exercise their creativity for them to write informal biographies of a chosen composer. (Or they could even write it as a an autobiography, using the first person). They would simply copy an encyclopedia bio word for word. I had to get sneakier and sneakier. My favorite assignment was to work through with them a way of analyzing a choreographer's use of music by comparing the structure of the music to the structure of the related dance, or see if there was a relationship between the number of instruments in the musical composition and the number of dancers on stage, or to see if a particular character in the dance was always associated with a particular musical instrument. They I gave them some carefully chosen excerpts of dances by famous choreographers and they'd have to do that sort of analysis on their own. This kind of specificity is impossible for AI to deal with. It's methodology is more suited to topics that are general, where the sample size is sufficient to create plausible-sounding passages.

If I were teaching creative writing, I might have them describe their bedrooms in minute detail, and then send me pictures of their bedroom. I'm that kind of evil. But many professors are using lectures that they have given for 20 years. They are not going to revamp their curriculums to outwit lazy students. (Partly because they're somewhat lazy themselves).

R44, maybe you can teach in Panama?

AI is getting bored with us and spending more time day dreaming.

The younger generation(s) of lawyers I work with cannot think for themselves at all. They do the most basic work on the cases they are assigned and I have to really push them hard to think about what information we need and how to go about getting it in order to resolve the matters efficiently and hopefully in our clients’ best interests. Most of them are totally clueless

Question for the teachers and college professors here: do you use AI to grade papers? I assume most "papers" are now submitted electronically, so it should be easy to feed them into a bot and have it issue the grade.

I am a professor and I don't use AI to grade papers and your assumption about electronic submission is wrong. Electronic submission is DEAD IN THE WATER because it allows the student the freedom to cheat. All my papers this years 2024-25 are written in class, on paper. There is NO other way to quickly tamp down on the cheating. And we do oral exams. With no notes.

If any professor is allowing traditional research papers I would hope they ARE submitting them for AI use checks but whats the point. Fucking waste my time. Sorry, starting May 2024 - I went back to total paper. It's not idea because some of them struggle to write on paper but fuck them. They will need to adapt.

R44 get thy ass back to teaching at a good gay friendly school. Don't let bigots stop your dreams!

When I was a kid, teachers used to say cheating is only cheating yourself and although I rarely cheated, I justified it on the basis we had so much homework and testing. When I got to college and had a wide range of electives to choose from, I picked the ones that sounded the most interesting and (with the professor’s permission) skipped the intro courses. That’s when I really understood what my teachers meant. I wanted to learn these subjects, not just pass the course.

Gap year really needs to be instituted in the US. Either work a crappy job, learn humility and be motivated never to work there again or travel if you parents are rich or work as you go. The point being, stop the high school > college lock step.

Just for fun, R66, I looked at HigherEdJobs.com; there are eight F/T openings, and five are in TX. I actually interviewed at a couple of schools in TX 15 years ago, but at that point, I would put something on my CV from which they could glean I was gay, so that if they didn't want to hire me because of that, I'd know right away. Better to not get an interview at all than to move to TX and find them trying to find ways to get rid of me after I'd already been hired.

I've said this here before, but [bold]no one[/bold] takes American Government. Generally speaking, community college students have to take one social science course, and the options are 1) psychology (everyone takes that because it's easy), 2) sociology, 3) anthropology, and 4) American government. When the students can't get into any of the other courses, they're forced to take American Government. Hence, there aren't that many job openings in my field anyway.

It's OK -- I'm old and lazy. And I have good memories, because I taught long before MAGA was a thing. Thanks for the vote of confidence, though.

[quote] It's not idea because some of them struggle to write on paper but fuck them. They will need to adapt.

And that becomes the real question. Who exactly is going to need to adapt? These are interesting strategies in this thread to get around AI and the enormous capacity for cheating. But is it really worth it if AI conquers all in the end? There's another thread about using AI to fake your way through applications for major jobs. Essentially cheating your way into a job you're clearly not qualified for. At which point, I imagine you use AI to continue faking your way through the actual job.

It's a dangerous world we are creating, and I'm not sure we've got any real plans to deal with it.