Posted by sethbannon 1/2/2026
In reality, they cheat when a culture of cheating makes it no longer humiliating to admit you do it, and when the punishments are so lax that it becomes a risk assessment rather than an ethical judgment. Same reason companies decide to break the law when the expected cost of any law enforcement is low enough to be worth it. When I was in college, overt cheating would be expulsion with 2 (and sometimes even 1 if it was bad enough) offenses. Absolutely not worth even giving the impression of any misconduct. Now there are colleges that let student tribunals decide how to punish their classmates who cheat (with the absolutely predictable outcome)
The two solutions to this are (1) as some commenters here are suggesting, give up entirely and focus only on quality of output, or (2) teach students to care about being more than appearance. Make students want to write essays. It is for their personal edification and intellectual flourishing. The benefits of this far surpass output.
Obviously this is an enormously difficult task, but let us not suppose it an unworthy one.
I suppose there are other fields where the degree might be used mostly as a filtering mechanism, where cheating through graduation might get you a job doing work different than your classes anyway. However, even in those cases it's hard to break the habit of cheating your way around every difficult problem that comes your way.
Here, I'll identify another: There is much pain and suffering in this world.
Coming up with a solution is left as an excercise for the reader.
Perhaps we as humans should stop making choices which cause pain.
Why do you make choices that cause pain in yourself and others?
The real problem is students and universities have collectively bought into a "customer mindset". When they do poorly, it's always the school's fault. They're "paying customers" after-all, they're (in their mind) entitled to the degree as if it is a seamless transaction. Getting in was the hardest part for most students, so now they believe they have already proven themselves and should as a matter of routine after 3-4 years be handed their degree because they exchanged some funds. Most students would gladly accept no grades if it was possible.
Unfortunately, rather than having spines, most schools have also adopted a "the customer is always right" approach, and endlessly chase graduation numbers as a goal in and of itself and are terrified of "bad reviews."
There has been lots of handwringing around AI and cheating and what solutions are possible. Mine is actually relatively simple. University and college should get really hard again (I'm aware it was a finishing school a century ago, but the grade inflation compared to just 50 years ago is insane). Across all disciplines. Students aren't "paying for a degree", they're paying to prove that they can learn, and the only way to really prove that is to make it hard as hell and to make them care about learning in order to get to the degree - to earn it. Otherwise, as we've seen, the value of the degree becomes suspect leading to the university to become suspect as a whole.
Schools are terrified of this, but they have to start failing students and committing to it.
I graduated from a SUNY school in 2012. At the time, you could still actually go to school and work part time and get through it. Not saying it was easy by any stretch but it was possible. Tuition + living expenses were about $17/year on campus , less expensive housing was available off campus.
Now, even state schools have tuition which is only affordable through family wealth or loans. Going to university is no longer a low stakes choice - if you flunk you’re stuck with that debt forever. Not to say students aren’t responsible for understanding that when signing up, but the stakes are just a lot higher than what it used to be.
Would you mind expanding on what exactly that entails?
I would prefer to write responses to textual questions rather than respond verbally to spoken questions in most cases.
Wouldn't a written exam--or even a digital one, taken in class on school-provided machines--be almost as good?
As long as it's not a hundred person class or something, you can also have an oral component taken in small groups.
And universities wonder why enrollment is dropping.
Ask the student to come to the exam and write something new, which is similar to what they've been working on at home but not the same. You can even let them bring what they've done at home for reference, which will help if they actually understand what they've produced to date.
Let me ask, how do you generally feel when you contact customer service about something and you get an AI chatbot? Now imagine the chatbot is responsible for whether you pass the course.
Adding this as an additional optional tool, though, is an excellent idea.
If the class cost me $50? Then sure, use Dr. Slop to examine my knowledge. But this professor's school charges them $90,000 a year and over $200k to get an MBA? Hell no!
At that point what’s the value add over using YouTube videos and ChatGPT on your own?
Students had and still have the option to collectively choose not to use AI to cheat. We can go back to written work at any time. And yet they continue to use it. Curious.
Individuals can't "collectively" choose anything.
This test is given to the entire class, including people who never touched AI.
Students could absolutely organize a consensus decision to not use AI. People do this all the time. How do you think human organizations continue to exist?
Wouldn't that be a fine outcome?
I know we've had historical record of people saying this for 2000 years and counting, but I suspect the future is well and truly bleak. Not because of the next generation of students, but because of the current generation of educators unable to successfully adapt to new challenges in a way that is actually beneficial to the student that it is supposed to be their duty to teach.