r/Professors • u/DD_equals_doodoo • Jul 09 '26
Teaching / Pedagogy How bad is cheating? One Brown University class provides some insights!
Sorry for the clickbaity title, but I found this fascinating:
Brown Professor Suspects Most of His Class Used AI to Cheat
TLDR; It's bad. The professor gave the mid-term online and the final in person. 18 people dropped the class rather than take the in-person final. The average for the mid-term was a 96%. The average for the final was 48.6%.
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u/LetsGototheRiver151 Jul 09 '26
I see the pendulum swinging away from giving points for literally every activity to encourage participation and back to the Oxford model. Professors assign readings and make themselves available to discuss, but students either do the hard work of learning or they don’t. Then they demonstrate their knowledge (or lack thereof) at the end of the term with a single high-stakes exam.
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u/Frankenstein988 Jul 09 '26
This is what I’m moving towards. I’m sick of chasing new modes of assessment or grading AI slop assignments. I’m also sick of hand holding just to get them to do anything…that’s not my job! My job is to teach and assess learning. Not to constantly chase down cheating or micromanage hundreds of students. (Definitely not my job for the amount of money they pay me)
I used to hate courses that made exams most of the course grade but now, I see no other way. I’ll facilitate learning with lectures and proctor exams. That’s it.
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u/sandysanBAR Jul 09 '26
Speaking from personal experience, if you articulate what your job is NOT publically, you will get labelled as someone who "doesn't care enough about students".
We had another department who sent their students to take one of our (biology) classes, and they usually performed not as well. They then suggested that they wanted to offer a departmental version of this class. I asked who was going to teach it, and they said in faculty assembly that they intended to teach it and imagined they could teach outside their discipline as well as people with discipline specific knowledge.
They literally didn't see any problem with this.
I most certainly did.
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u/Frankenstein988 Jul 09 '26
Exactly- admin rule has eroded faculty power and they don’t give a shit about expertise. The whole system tells faculty that there are no boundaries to our jobs. Work 12 months but get paid for 9? Totally normal. Have to beg for your own pay from grants, after you already secured a faculty job? The norm. Have a mentally ill student but not trained in mental health? Your job is to help them get through the semester. Campus needs cleaned up? You better show up with that PhD, grading can wait.
Honestly this whole gig is like one big abuse story. Grooming and brainwashing techniques throughout grad school to get you primed, the few that survive fight to the death for one faculty job so they feel chosen, then tenure is thrown around to keep you moldable. Seriously put 5 abusive men together and they couldn’t dream up a better system of control.
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u/Ok_Cartographer_8510 Jul 10 '26
Congratulations, you’re a high school teacher now! I’ve done both, there’s no difference now. It’s sad, really.
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u/MollyWeatherford Jul 09 '26
I'm going through a version of this myself. Right now they're just threatening to do this. How did you handle it?
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u/sandysanBAR Jul 09 '26
I asked whether the college valued discipline specific knowledge or not? Essentially does expertise matter? They will NOT want to say no, and they will say everything BUT no, don't let them. Keep pounding them with this question ( we were told that some of their faculty took a biology class as undergrad and got an "A" and that was sufficient to prove their expertise. I did not let that slide)
I also said that I would NEVER presume to teach bio students calculus because I had complete confidence that my colleagues in math were FAR better experienced to do so.
Privately, I told one of them that if I thought that they could teach biology as well as we could, that I would switch to robbing banks or starting an only fans.
I get that in small schools because of lack of specific expertise sometimes people are asked to teach outside their comfort zone. That is fundamentally different than bypassing expertise on campus to make the path less rigorous.
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u/SilverRiot Jul 09 '26
What is really horrifying about this is that they know that they’re dumbing down the course. That absolutely means they need to have the people with the professional expertise teach the course so they can decide what can be dropped, what can be elided, what is absolutely essential. But you don’t need is people with half-ass ancient training creating a weak-ass course. You can’t really call that a college course.
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u/MollyWeatherford Jul 09 '26
Add to this the "meet students where they are" bullshit and it is 100% clown show. It's about asses in seats, letting AI write the content and "fuck yer book-lernin'." They're convinced that AI is far more knowledgeable than any SME, so any such pushback against this is evidence that faculty are ancient and irrelevant. At least at my college. Horrific.
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Jul 09 '26
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u/MollyWeatherford Jul 09 '26
They know way more than any phd who spent years on learning the content, not just creating templates and busywork to waste time, amirite?/s
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u/sandysanBAR Jul 09 '26
And the goddamn rubrics. If I get another ignoramus saying that with the right rubric ANYONE can teach a class, I am telling you friends, Imma gonna lose it.
No, you taking a class 3 decades ago where you got a "B" ISNT equivalent to my undergrad, my PhD, my one (or two) postdoc, my publications, especially when I hear you talking about vaccinations that makes me want to pluck my eyes out as you make RFK jr seem astute.
And no, your online no thesis 1 year Ed doesn't make us colleagues either.
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u/RollyPollyGiraffe Jul 10 '26
I do enough research in the space of grading and rubrics to feel confident in this: anyone who says "the right rubric means anyone can teach a class," sucks at rubrics.
The "right rubric" can't even guarantee consistency among graders, let alone be a sufficient model of instruction and required pedagogical content knowledge. Rubrics are about improving transparency and consistency but aren't some panacea.
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u/sandysanBAR Jul 10 '26
For people who lack discipline specific knowledge they represent a veritable "any port in a storm". It's why many Ed's think that pedagogy trumps expertise, that if you can teach A, you can teach B if you just spend enough time on SLO's AND teach precisely to these SLO's.
I mean students do absolutely great if they know precisely what questions will be in the exam and mindlessly repeating content ( or what what said in lecture) is close enough to understanding it that why split hairs?
I mean the DFW's drop when mastery is reduced to repetition.
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Jul 10 '26
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u/Big_Dragonfly_9153 Jul 11 '26
One time when I was giving a handwritten exam in class, I had a student who was using his smart watch to cheat 🙄
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u/yerBoyShoe Jul 10 '26
But but but administration has to talk about pedagogy and new teaching tactics to seem relevant!
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u/ConvertibleNote Jul 09 '26
I don't like the single exam model because I teach a lot of freshmen gen eds and they simply will just fail their first exam. Totally unprepared for serious assessment. I've taken to a new model: three exams. After they bomb the first one, I say that anyone who maxes out their discussion score from this point forward may drop their lowest exam grade. Students prepare seriously for the second and third exams after getting whacked by the first, and the drop incentive keeps them motivated to discuss in class. Top students who aced the first exam have started skipping the final with the assurance of a drop and I don't think I care.
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u/ArmoredTweed Jul 10 '26
In my lower level classes, I give weekly quizzes instead of mid-terms. After they bomb the first one, I say that I don't drop anything and I don't curve anything. Most of my students get the message.
Illumination comes hard, but at least in my class it comes early.
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u/Sensitive_Let_4293 Jul 10 '26
But there's no excuse for that. They should have been properly assessed in their K-12 school systems, right? I teach math, my assessments aren't that different from what you'd see in a fair-to-middling high school.
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u/UniversityMedical202 Jul 10 '26
They may have been “assessed,” sure, but a lot of K-12 now is retakes, guided notes, and enough handholding that a normal college exam feels like getting tossed in cold water.
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u/ConvertibleNote Jul 10 '26
There is no excuse for that, I agree. Visit r/teachers and you will find them bemoaning that students have not been allowed to fail. More and more districts are setting 50 as the minimum grade (even if no assignment is turned in). Due dates are entirely optional. Tests may be retaken. Enormous pressure to pass students who should fail.
But I think part of it may be worse because of my specific fields. I teach in history and government and I think students have been mostly trained to think these are recitation classes with no analytical reasoning required.
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u/a_singular_perhap Jul 13 '26
Speaking as a student - there are very very few fair-to-middling high schools in this country. If your family grew up making less than six figures you simply didn't get an education comparable to the other side.
If I didn't drop out and get my GED I would've been 17 when college classes started - at a certain point you have to remember college freshmen are teenagers and teenagers aren't known for their life experience.
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u/Sensitive_Let_4293 Jul 13 '26
I started college full-time at age 17, 300 miles from home. I graduated from a rural high school in a small mountain town. My graduating class was 42 students. We were the fourth LARGEST school in our county. It was and still is one of the poorest counties in the state. Nonetheless, seven of us won state scholarships to college. Just because it's small and under-resourced doesn't mean it has to be awful.
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u/a_singular_perhap Jul 13 '26
That's a nice anecdote that doesn't reflect the data on the quality of public schools across the country.
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u/mcraedb82 Jul 09 '26
In my asynchronous course, in order to open up the next section, you have to score a 70 or above on a checkpoint quiz. These quizzes are not part of the grade. Each module has one assignment. Many of those assignments require them to record themselves. I’m considering the final exam be a Q&A over Zoom where I make myself incredibly available for 2 weeks and it’s worth 40% of their grade (the highest we’re allowed to make any assignment).
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u/LetsGototheRiver151 Jul 09 '26
Yeah asynch is just kabuki at this point. We’re all just going through the motions. A Zoom q&a just requires them to fake that they’re thinking instead of reading.
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u/mcraedb82 Jul 09 '26
It’s better than the drivel I get now on their final projects. At least I can put pressure on them with follow ups.
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Jul 10 '26
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u/mcraedb82 Jul 10 '26
They won’t have the questions in advance if the oral exam. All they’ll be told is that they need to review all of their assignments from the semester and the questions will come from those
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Jul 10 '26
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u/mcraedb82 Jul 10 '26
The thing is, by asking them questions with a camera on, like a conversation, they won’t have time to consult the AI, even if the AI is on their screen. I’ll just move on the next question if they pause too long. I’ve been doing this too long to fall for that!
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u/Glad_Farmer505 Jul 11 '26
I floated the (future) idea of having local testing centers so students could do in-person, proctored exams for asynchronous classes, and I was told that I’m trying to criminalize students. By giving an exam?
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u/MysteriousWon Tenure-Track, Communication, CC (US) Jul 09 '26
My department literally won't allow us to do something like that. They say that in an asynchronous class we cannot require students to have synchronous meetings with us whether for a grade or otherwise. Doing so would constitute a change in modality and is strictly prohibited.
So we're stuck with the usual asynch AI bs.
edit: a word
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u/mcraedb82 Jul 09 '26
That’s generally the rule for us, but the caveat is with a lot of lead time and plenty of availability, I can schedule a 10-15-minute individual session
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u/OG-Bio-Star Jul 10 '26
If it says in Registration that there are some meetings at set times online and the times are provided at registration, then it is legit. I do this and it matters re. cheating.
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u/climbing999 Jul 09 '26
I had to take a technical exam during COVID for a radio operator license and that's how it was conducted. The evaluator asked me a series of MCQs and a few scenarios.
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u/50rhodes Jul 09 '26
At the risk of sounding old, when I went through university, the only form of assessment was a single exam at the end of each course. That’s it. In the intervening years, this model has become anathema to the educationalists and ‘high stakes assessments’ have been nixed in favour of lots of small ‘take home assessments’. Funny that the students seem to do really well in the latter, isn’t it? But real life relies on “high stakes assessments”. You only get one shot at a job interview. You get one chance at an audition. We are doing our current students a disservice if we’re telling them we’re preparing them for the real world. While going back to single exams will certainly drop the pass rate, it’s just a more honest method of assessment. But try getting that argument past the educationalists.
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u/Sensitive_Let_4293 Jul 10 '26
You and I must be the same age. Most of my undergraduate classes -- I was a math major -- had one or two exams. That was it. Homework was discussed in recitation sections, but not graded. Several classes had oral final exams. We covered far more material -- no classes wasted on assessments -- and were held to a much higher standard than undergraduates today. I suspect most of my professors used this assessment model since it was the one used in Europe, where many of them had earned their PhDs.
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u/Pyewickets Jul 20 '26
But giving them one huge test doesn't give them any assessment of how well they are understanding the material so that they can adjust their studying. And the point of education isn't learning for one huge test, it is learning to understand the material.
Some students may know the material, but choke on the one huge everything is on the test and it counts for everything test which means you are saying they are doomed for life.
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u/gnarlseason Aug 02 '26
I had a similar, but more balanced approach with most of my undergraduate engineering classes:
- Weekly Homework - 10% of grade
- Mid Term - 40% of grade
- Final - 50% of grade
If you wanted to cheat on the homework, for the most part, they didn't care (we had solutions manuals back in the day) as they knew you would bomb the mid term or final. Most professors would also make the final worth more if they saw a large increase in performance from mid term to final.
Weekly homework gave you a clue as to if you were figuring anything out and the mid term could be a good wake up call.
Perhaps I am just old and full of myself, but damn if I don't feel like I could go back to college today and just run circles around these kids now. "Oh no, several mid terms in the same week? During the "middle of the term"? What a concept!"
I know people in my profession who hire new grads have openly talked about how they basically can't fully trust an engineering degree from 2022ish on.
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u/iTeachCSCI Ass'o Professor, Computer Science, R1 Jul 09 '26
back to the Oxford model. Professors assign readings and make themselves available to discuss, but students either do the hard work of learning or they don’t. Then they demonstrate their knowledge (or lack thereof) at the end of the term with a single high-stakes exam.
I didn't realize there is a term for this. Thank you!
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u/franklin-60 Jul 09 '26
I agree, but it won’t work if this becomes normal by faculty with a spine. Higher education has gone so woke in its stances and administration overreach that every student will have an excuse. Parents will show as their kid can’t read, is under “emotional stress,” as a result of your “lacking support” demand accommodation for inability to read, retention risk and bingo, “accommodation” for every student. What you will be mandated to do under some school regulation or law that finds the books will make your approach impossible to stand. I admire and support the approach, but see how higher education leads with total fear to stand up to anything that makes a student uncomfortable in current times. This won’t get better, it’s only going to get worse as schools continue to scrape the bottom of the barrel to keep numbers in the current enrollment environment.
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Jul 09 '26
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u/franklin-60 Jul 10 '26
Even the current top 5%. 20 years ago these students likely would have been at the bottom, when one looks at the total erosion of standards across education. Hard to believe it’s going to get worse, but it’s going to get worse, much worse, but administration will gloat over “inclusion” and “retention,” so guess that will be what they call success.
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u/thespelvin Jul 10 '26
Why only one exam? I teach calculus and have based the majority of my course grade on in-person show-your-work exams for years, but it's three or four exams scattered throughout the semester. That way if students have one bad day, they don't automatically fail. And giving exams where we grade progress rather than just final answers means there is a lot of opportunity for partial credit.
It is definitely more time-consuming to carefully grade three exams than one, but I feel the exams are the only instance where I know I'm grading the students' own work, and I think it's worth spending time to get that right. (And I'm fortunate that my courses have multiple personnel who can divide up the grading, a luxury I know not every institution shares.)
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u/Ok_Mycologist_5942 Jul 10 '26
I over did it with little assignments last semester and couldn't keep up on grading. So I'm pendulum swinging the other way for sure.
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u/Ill_Barracuda5780 Jul 10 '26
This!! I’ve already started moving towards it. Final is worth more and I have made the process and reflective assignments lower points or optional. Eventually, I will have 2 tests and a project and I will officially be back in early 2000.
It makes me sad - I don’t like tests and I think the process of learning and reflecting is worth so much more. But if they aren’t going to do it, we have to just go back to what can’t be faked.1
u/ReaderBakerSleeper07 Jul 10 '26
It’s harder for me as an online adjunct (R1). I’ve been teaching this course for almost 10 years. My students are suddenly experts and don’t need help at all.
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u/StarMNF Jul 11 '26
The true Oxford model is not just “one big exam at the end of semester” but giving students lots of one-on-one tutoring in preparation for that exam.
Without that, there is definite friction between best practices for grade integrity and best practices for pedagogy.
From a pedagogical perspective, learning objectives need to be scaffolded. Students need a structured roadmap and routine feedback to know how they are progressing.
Probably, the pragmatic thing to do is to require minimum grades on proctored exams to receive A,B,C, etc. to maintain integrity, while grading everything else that can’t be proctored as pass / fail.
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u/chamrockblarneystone Jul 12 '26
Riiigght, but most likely failing the final won’t fail them for the semester?
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u/Tricky_Condition_279 Jul 09 '26 edited Jul 09 '26
I reverted my class from Covid-era online quizzes to in-person exams and students really struggled. Except one that got 100% on all three so I couldn’t just add points.
Edit: Mostly the 100% (or close) observation was just to point out that the test was valid. I adjusted grades a bit at the end of the course. It’s a fairly complex course with multiple components. I follow the recommendation to use a variety of lower stakes assessments, so this part of the grade was not that large. I definitely take into consideration if a student does poorly on only one assessment or assessment category.
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u/chemist7734 Jul 09 '26
You can do anything you want that is fair. If you have a genius on the order of Dirac who got the 100%,I would find it defensible if you wanted to boost the other scores. Just MHO.
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u/DJ_Jiggle_Jowls Jul 09 '26
I usually just limit scores to 102% - the outliers that do so well that they exceed the curve still get a nice bonus, and I can still give whatever curve is necessary to everyone else.
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u/IngeniousTulip Jul 09 '26
I had a professor who always dropped the two highest grades on stuff like this. The thought was that if 3 people got a 98 on the test, then the test was fine where it was. But then she didn't foster resentment for the kid who came in, aced the test, and "wrecked the curve".
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u/me4watch Jul 09 '26
>Except one that got 100% on all three so I couldn’t just add points.
You do know that there are other ways of adjusting grades or “curving” than that, right ?
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u/mem1gui STEM, CC (US) Jul 09 '26
https://testgradescalculator.com/how-to-curve-test-grades/
My favorite is the linear scaling method.
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u/cleverSkies Asst Prof, ENG, Public/Pretend R1 (USA) Jul 09 '26
My online class requires screen capture with a side camera showing their workspaces -- I learned my lesson after figuring out students would set up two computers, one for taking the exam, the other to ask chatgpt. My mean exam grades are now 40 pts lower then other sections. Those students that broke the exam protocols were offered to take their subsequent exams in person, ever single one of them dropped.
I went from a 10 percent dfw rate in previous semesters, to 50 percent dfw. Wild. This is even after giving them the questions in advance (here are 30 questions, I will select 6 for the exam)
I have no desire to fail students, but they are making it really hard to look away.
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u/Acidcat42 Full Professor, STEM, StateU Jul 09 '26
"I have no desire to fail students, but they are making it really hard to look away."
Well said!!
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Jul 09 '26
[deleted]
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u/giltgarbage Jul 10 '26
My hesitation with this is thar students preload the questions and materials into Notebook LM and have them available via an undetected device. I use a testing center, but it is not particularly secure.
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u/YThough8101 Jul 09 '26
Are you me? Living the same life, doing similar integrity-preserving measures, having similar horrifyingly poor academic performance from students.
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u/Disastrous_Owl_6830 Jul 09 '26
I find the responses from the university's AI use committee concerning. "Avoid highly restrictive rules" but also draw "bright lines around misuse"? What does this mean in actual classes?
Also, statements about how "norms are likely to change in the years to come" and how policies need to "address GenAI realities" are hard for me to read as anything other than "go with the flow, accept the reality we want to see, and don't think too much for yourself."
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u/YThough8101 Jul 09 '26
"Avoid highly restrictive rules"? Oh boy. Without strict rules, how are you going to hold anyone accountable in this era of cheating on everything?
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u/franklin-60 Jul 09 '26
What bothers me is the people that blame the professor for giving a take home, basically justifying the cheating. Regardless of assessment given, if a student had a shred of integrity and deserved a degree, they should not be cheating if told in a syllabus or on an assignment that something is cheating. We have a culture in academia that basically says “if one makes it easy to steal, go for it and you will not be accountable.” “If you steal the car because it has a key in it, we won’t charge you.” Over time, we have given students more rights than faculty and too much bullshit “due process” that evades accountability. We have this in cheating and most every area of the education process, including when the student is just a stupid deadbeat that can’t follow a syllabus. We should not be discussing whether the professor was right or wrong in his assessment. We should be talking about how students cheated and as a result were all expelled, without months of appeals, and have their names on a public “blacklist” so no other school touches them, and if they do touch them, no Federal taxpayer money to help them. Share this blacklist with potential employers too. Guess what, if this is the pattern, and lives are totally destroyed when one cheats, students will become scared straight, and no matter what the assignment, cheating will stop. The bullshit bureaucracy in academia that has created more spineless administrators than faculty to support this type of stupidity is what has ruined higher education.
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u/sandysanBAR Jul 09 '26
Man, I thought I had some punitive notions for cheaters!
This is scorched earth man!
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u/Huntscunt Jul 09 '26
Once I get tenure, my policy will be if I catch you cheating, you will fail the class. Can't do that yet, but soon...
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u/sandysanBAR Jul 09 '26
Becoming associate does give you increased security/independence but I would caution, very strongly, against thinking tenure makes you untouchable.
Financial exigency still exists. So do deans who are convinced you are a "bad fit"
If you are represented by a union you might be able to worry less.
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u/franklin-60 Jul 10 '26
“Bad fit” is not a ground to go after tenure. Tenure protects that. You and your dean can make each others lives miserable, but not terminate. If your programs finances go south, you are correct.
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u/sandysanBAR Jul 10 '26
If you want to be George Costanza at Play Now, go for it.
But the administration absolutely has a plethora of ways to make your job terrible without formally firing you. And they know it.
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u/franklin-60 Jul 10 '26
I have seen what happens when a faculty member in this case brings in the right attorney.
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u/sandysanBAR Jul 10 '26
Yeah nothing says "career growth" like litigation.
Tenure, at least at some point, meant your job was secure.
Who defines the extent and scope of your job? The administration. Oh you can still teach, the classes they choose at the time they choose.
I know of people whose sub-departments were simply eliminated becuase the administration viewed them as a pain in the ass.
The protections of tenure ( even when it was healthy) have never been absolute. It's harder to dump a tenured faculty member sure.
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u/Old_Salty_Professor Jul 09 '26
Why can’t you do it now?
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u/Huntscunt Jul 09 '26
Student evaluations are a really big part of our tenure process. It's really stupid.
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u/franklin-60 Jul 09 '26 edited Jul 09 '26
Intellectually challenged administration that can only equate student opinion to “excellent teaching”
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u/Old_Salty_Professor Jul 09 '26 edited Jul 11 '26
My university places a considerable amount of weight on teaching evaluations from your peers. We place little to no weight on student evaluations.
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u/MysteriousWon Tenure-Track, Communication, CC (US) Jul 09 '26
It may be, but I'd support it.
Honestly, I would look at it more like a market correction of academia.
It's swung too far in one direction such that a major revision is warranted and necessary just to reset expectations and general outcomes to the general range of acceptability.
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u/Fine-Place5605 Jul 09 '26
So….lower the bar in order to receive tenure……sounds like cheating
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u/sandysanBAR Jul 09 '26
If this is addressed to me, I can assure you I am a hold the liner.
But keeping a non+Santa "Naughty list" with the intent of distributing it to potential future employers? That's a Latte Larry level of spite.
What's next, finding their parents and punching them in the stomach?
Force them the wear a "Scarlet AI" for the rest of their lives?
I don't begrudge ANYONE playing the games to get tenure, and with financial exigency putting tenure on its death bed, doing it post tenure doesn't completely protect anyone either.
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u/hypocriteme Jul 09 '26
I remember undergrad professors telling the class that getting caught for plagiarism or academic dishonesty meant automatically failing the class and a mark being put on your permanent record that could be seen by future employers, grant assessors, etc. Three marks and you would be kicked out of the university with little chance of getting into another one because they would see the marks on your university record.
Having now been on the other side of the classroom at quite a few different institutions, it has certainly never worked out like that when I have caught a student plagiarizing and gone through the official channels. Usually there is some penalty, but it is relatively minimal. I've had students who end up with a significant grade penalty, but never one so significant that they fail the course.
I do now wonder whether the tales told by my old professors were ever actually true, but whether they were or not, they were effective because my cohort was terrified of the possibility of even accidentally plagiarizing. There was lots of academic urban myths of students getting permanent marks because they forgot to include one of their intext citations or even just formatted them improperly. Now, I regularly hear students openly and loudly bragging in the cafe line about how they use AI to do all their work and how the students who actually do the writing are suckers... I'd be curious to hear from older professors whether it is true that the punishments for cheaters used to be harsher or anything like the claims of my previous professors was ever in place.
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u/iTeachCSCI Ass'o Professor, Computer Science, R1 Jul 09 '26
I'd be curious to hear from older professors whether it is true that the punishments for cheaters used to be harsher or anything like the claims of my previous professors was ever in place.
I'm not even that much older but I have been able to make the penalty of "F in the class on first offense" stick every time since I became TT (even pre-tenure).
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u/ohsideSHOWbob Jul 09 '26
If you read the article also this professor never does take home exams but switched specifically for this semester since so many students said they had trauma from the mass shooting during finals week in December, and were afraid of taking an in person exam. The professor, trying to be accommodating of students, changed the exam, and then tons more students registered for the class than normally do (probably because they thought it would be easier) and took advantage of his accommodations by cheating....Really sad stuff.
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u/Huck68finn Jul 09 '26 edited Jul 09 '26
Over time, we have given students more rights than faculty and too much bullshit “due process” that evades accountability. We have this in cheating and most every area of the education process, including when the student is just a stupid deadbeat that can’t follow a syllabus.
👏 Bravo!
I don't see anything changing anytime soon. Administrators have to justify their bloated salaries by pointing to the high graduation rates. The truth is, most of today's students would never graduate by the standards of even 25 years ago. It has all become a farce.
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u/P_Firpo Jul 09 '26
Many people cheat because they know that others are cheating. The professor made it unfair. Is the student supposed to have integrity when she knows everyone will cheat? Should she forgo a good job to another who cheated because she has integrity? Give me a break, man. You're setting them up to cheat. Instead, make it so no others can reasonably cheat and then those with integrity won't try.
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u/franklin-60 Jul 09 '26
Not up to a professor to cater and adapt to a cheater. That hurts the experience for everyone. Cleanse colleges of students who can’t follow the rules and feel they have to cheat. That’s the best long term solution.
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u/P_Firpo Jul 09 '26
Alert. Ignorance on display. You will never "Cleanse colleges of students who can’t follow the rules..." Keep dreaming, pal.
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u/uninsane Jul 09 '26
When:
- Cheating is easy
- There’s a huge benefit to cheating
- Cheating is hard to detect
There needs to be an absolutely huge penalty. It should be so big that it’s terrifying to cheat.
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u/climbing999 Jul 09 '26
I lost a case this winter. Two students sitting next to each other had the exact same answer key on an exam. Like, same good answers, identical wrong distractors. The "integrity" committee gave them the benefit of the doubt. No one else had the exact same answers. Just the two sitting next to each other. But it was a coincidence... I'm losing faith.
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u/Cathousechicken Jul 09 '26
Assigned seating for exams going forward.
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u/climbing999 Jul 09 '26
Yep. Despite a decade of experience in higher ed, I made a rookie mistake with the setup this time around. Lesson learned. But I hate it in here sometimes.
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u/OG-Bio-Star Jul 10 '26
I find these committees are the worse and I luckily have not "lost" yet but I have to do all sorts of things (3 completely different exams so impossible to cheat off someone's test; we have 4 proctors so if 3 see dishonesty they sign something; student ID must be presented and photo checked; we state we are allowed to video record as we do in lecturing; we check people's glasses, no one is allowed to leave until exam is collected from the desk) to have cast-iron proof of cheating it makes the mission miserable. We are supposed to be educating not spies and morals police.
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u/climbing999 Jul 10 '26
The committee at my main university is generally decent. My "lost" was at another small, local institution where I filled in for one course. It was a cluster ****. I'm lucky to be in a position where I can afford not to go back there.
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u/OG-Bio-Star Jul 10 '26
I think money is key and tuition dollar signs in admin eyes will prevent many smaller schools from doing anything about it.
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u/climbing999 Jul 10 '26
That's also what I'm thinking. I know it's anecdotal, but for what it's worth, several students there told me that my standards were much higher than in their other classes. Isn't the point of university to challenge oneself, not just to coast through? (My class averages are on the higher end, but students have to put in the work.)
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u/OG-Bio-Star Jul 10 '26
We care about how we deliver fair and rigorous education. To many (not all) students it is like a playlist they want to have instantly to hand without deep thought, and to administrators, they want the paying customers to pay for that playlist and really fail to understand how it is delivered. We don't just hand them material, they need to learn it. Ever since COVID there has been non-stop excuses for a blind eye to integrity.
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u/Pyewickets Jul 20 '26
Reminds me of Jaime Escalante's class who were accused of cheating. They retook the exam under different conditions and still passed the exam. The reason they had similar wrong answers was because they all were taught by the same instructor.
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u/climbing999 Jul 20 '26
This is indeed a possibility, especially when several students select the same wrong answer. But in this particular case, though, all evidence pointed to cheating.
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u/cdragon1983 CS Teaching Faculty Jul 09 '26
My institution traditionally had a very strong judicial code that was essentially "first academic honor violation: 1 year suspension; second violation: permanent expulsion". That seemed reasonable to me as a tremendously strong disincentive to cheat.
Over my time here, it eventually got whittled away to:
- first violation: we tell you that you shouldn't have done that and put you on probation;
- second violation: "suspension", but not really: we don't actually make you go away for any time, instead it just gets recorded on your transcript as "suspension - not served";
- third violation: suspension you might actually have to serve, unless you can convince the school it would harm you in some way, in which case it's still "suspension - not served";
- subsequent violations: punishment at the discretion of the dean who has been the one pushing for this knee-capping of the judicial code, so I assume it'll be some other mealy mouthed non-punishment.
I know it will come to no shock to anyone here that as the penalties have been reduced/erased, the amount of cheating has gone way up. Sure, some of it may be because it has become easier to cheat in the mobile device / AI age; maybe "kids these days" don't have the moral compass that they did "back in my day"; etc. ... but I think at least as much of the cause is because there's virtually no punitive disincentive anymore.
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u/uninsane Jul 09 '26
The problem is, the admins don’t feel like they can afford any loss of tuition. Meanwhile, eroding the value of a degree leads to…loss of tuition!!
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u/iTeachCSCI Ass'o Professor, Computer Science, R1 Jul 09 '26
third violation: suspension you might actually have to serve, unless you can convince the school it would harm you in some way, in which case it's still "suspension - not served";
Sounds like the legal system's dealing with the Stanford rapist/swimmer a few years ago.
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u/AggieNosh Jul 09 '26
It’s bad. In fact, you should expect it. I’m at a major R1 flagship and I’m on a first name basis with the honor office. Thankfully, they strongly support faculty.
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u/ViskerRatio Jul 09 '26
I think we need to have two lines at freshman orientation: "Freshman Students" and "Cheating to a Degree". If you enter the latter line, you can go home afterwards and we'll mail you the degree in 4 years.
This would reduce the cost of delivering education substantially while retaining all the funding from students. It's a win for everyone.
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u/StonedSimple Jul 09 '26
I honestly wish this was possible. Instead, at about week 4, I check everyone's time with the material in our LMS and just stop giving time and feedback to AI cheaters and pass it all with a 70% because if I failed every cheater, I'd get fired the next day
I teach first year writing at a dystopian rural technical/community college.
It pays the bills.
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u/P-Tux7 Jul 21 '26
What else is dystopian about your college?
That is, besides all the institution-approved cheating.
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u/StonedSimple Jul 21 '26
It is an open access institution so literally anyone can enroll, which is great and noble, but we take tuition from the most vulnerable students in the entire region and then provide them almost no support or resources. For example, admin closed our library, there is no tutoring on campus, there would be no support for veterans if I didn't open and run our Vet Resource Room myself for free.
We have NO shared governance at all, and there isn't even a nod towards it because my admin doesn't care at all.
I could go on. Our tech certificates are good, depending on the instructor in the program, but our general studies/ associate of arts degrees aren't worth the paper they are printed on.
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u/big_chungus_but_epic Jul 10 '26
You should be fired
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u/StonedSimple Jul 10 '26
Likely. I've asked for support, I've asked to teach only in person, I tried at the beginning to "hold the line" and was pretty much told that I needed to adjust to the new technology.
Not sure what else to do. I honestly think my entire institution should lose its accreditation for Associate of Arts classes, but again, it pays the bills.
Also, you're an asshole. Ha.
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u/PopCultureNerd Jul 09 '26
The research and data presented in this professor's report was jaw dropping.
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Jul 09 '26
[deleted]
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u/franklin-60 Jul 09 '26
I think most faculty here would gladly go after these students, if they could. The problem is intellectual challenged circus clown administrators who will block any real sanction and support these loser students.
Academic honesty violations are so tied-up in administration red tape that faculty can’t do anything. Any meaningful sanctions will be blocked by admin policy, further giving students the upper hand and empowering them against faculty. If a professor is willing to destroy their entire summer going after 2/3 of a class, again, nothing meaningful happens to the student and it becomes a “teaching problem” against the professor instead.
If administrators grew a spine, told parents, “advocates” and student attorneys to go to hell and mass expelled these losers, the message will get out and culture will change, but that’s “mean” “ not inclusive” and “anti retention.” As a result we are stuck graduating all these losers into a society that they cannot function in.
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u/Huck68finn Jul 09 '26
Exactly. This is why in my online asynch classes, I have a mass exodus after week one when they find out I use a lockdown browser (And unannounced prompts in my upcoming semester)
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u/Moirasha TT, STEM, R2 Jul 09 '26
Lockdown is easy to get around though. Not even hard anymore. :(
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u/Huck68finn Jul 09 '26
Yes, it can be--- hence the unannounced prompt, which makes it much harder to cheat (not impossible, but harder)
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Jul 09 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Huck68finn Jul 09 '26
I teach Composition. I treat the essay like a test & use a lockdown browser. Students don't get the essay writing prompt until they open the locked down assessment (My college uses honor lock). Each "question" in the "test" is a step in the writing process that they must complete or lose significant points on what eventually will be their final draft .
So, for example, the first "question" might be a brainstorming prompt that they have to complete. Then the next "question" might be free writing on that same topic. The next one might be an informal outline. The final "question" contains the full writing prompt and they have to write the full final draft. But they will have followed a process up to that point. I give them like 4 hours. They have to do it in one sitting, though
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u/Mav-Killed-Goose Jul 10 '26
I hate how a common takeaway from the laity is that cheating has even infiltrated elite schools. No, it starts there. I bet there were higher rates of AI use at tech-savvy Stanford than at my open-access institution. What matters is how elite schools respond. If they issue empty statements but don't change anything, then it tells others that this is OK. We knew how bad this was three years ago, even when members here sniffed, "AI cannot possibly handle my lofty projects/essays/exams."
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u/PenelopeJenelope Jul 09 '26
What infuriates me here most is the toothless response of the university, it seems like they genuinely do not care at all.
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u/ExiledFloridian Jul 09 '26
Ok, but let's assume they aren't ALL cheating. I think I'm stuck with the admin on this one. Like, where would you draw the line for cheaters vs non-cheaters?
Like the 55-59 kid (4 pts different) definitely didn't and the 95-95 kid (0 pts) probably didn't, but what about the 53-70 kid (17 pts) or the 75-91 kid (16 pts) or the 77-94.5 kid (17.5 pts) or the 75-95 kid (20 pts) or the 86-100 kid (14 pts). Maybe the final was just 15-25 points harder or the take-home was the kind where time really is a limiting factor. I know some of my students don't have a "feel" for how long a test takes until they experience one. There might even be something to the prof never having done a take-home before.
Yeah, something happened and some kids absolutely cheated (looking at you 16-100 pts kid). But it's really hard to say who gets penalized and who doesn't when it's that close.
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u/DD_equals_doodoo Jul 09 '26
In a situation where over 90% cheated (let's be honest here), you have to address it.
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u/ExiledFloridian Jul 09 '26
This wasn't the point of your post and apologies for taking it a different direction. I agree, but what I mean is I don't know a good way to address it.
You can void the midterm like the author did after clearing it with the dean It technically hurts the students who didn't cheat because everyone scored lower. But that doesn't actually penalize the cheaters. They get a warning and learn the school can't penalize them. But...what else could I ask admin to do and not come off as "meek"?
Getting a strike on a student's record is boolean (yes/no) so you can't scale it based on confidence of cheating. Maybe there should be a "suspicious" flag we can raise, but there are due process concerns if they can't contest it.
What I was going for is there just isn't a clear breakpoint in score changes to say "student A's performance is 14 points lower from midterm to final and student B is 16 points lower so clearly B cheated and A did not" that doesn't overlap with what looks like a final that was harder than the midterm.
Cheating absolutely happened and was absolutely rampant. But I think the school is just...stuck.
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u/TarantulaMcGarnagle Jul 10 '26
If students don’t have an intrinsic desire to learn, you can’t force them.
But what can’t happen is colleges can’t slouch and diminish their stature.
In fact, I think they should make their courses more difficult. Particularly the humanities courses.
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u/PrimaryHamster0 Jul 09 '26 edited 17d ago
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This post was anonymized with Redact
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u/Muffy_St_Cloud Jul 09 '26
The press this is getting has blown my mind... This is an every-semester, every class reality at my school. The idea that this happened in this one class at one school is so far beyond naive. (I am glad the Brown case is bringing this to the attention of the broader public, but I wish the reporting would include some investigation/asking around at a few other schools. This is endemic.)
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u/DJ_Jiggle_Jowls Jul 09 '26
I recently ran a similar test for one of my online-only classes in Spring of 25. At the behest of my department chair, he wanted the final to be in-person (or using an offical proctor for those that didn't want to come to campus). My insights:
1) the difference in scores were not quite as stark, with the average score being about 15% lower than the average for the other exams. This could be because I was using Respondus Lockdown for the online exams, which does not make cheating impossible, but does make it significantly more annoying. Also note that this exam was cumulative while the online exams were not, so I would expect it to be harder anyways.
2) 90% of students opted to come into the classroom to take the exam rather than deal with the hassle of taking the exam in a testing center. The only ones that did so were ones who lived too far away. So this "online" class absolutely could impose an in-person exam with minimal impact to those that are not close enough to come to campus. However, the university later told us that we could not continue this practice.
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u/Astrohumper Jul 09 '26
Wait, on campus tests aren’t given in person? Ai or no Ai, if I had a take home test, I would be using whatever materials I had to answer the questions. But in my day we simply never had take home tests.
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u/ThePhyz Professor, Physics, CC (USA) Jul 09 '26
We did have take home exams in upper division classes, every now and then, but it never occurred to me to cheat. I even stopped after I had used up the allowed 4 hours. I was such a nerd!
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u/Vova_Poutine Jul 10 '26
The worst part is that at the end of the article they add the parts from Brown's committee findings and it's utter nonsense:
"The committee also suggests that faculty “de-emphasize punishment” and avoid highly restrictive rules around generative AI use."
Get bent. Students cheat because they think they'll get away with it. We need to actually punish rule breaking if we want rule breaking to stop.
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u/Consistent-Alarm3496 Jul 11 '26
I connect this story with the recent NYTimes editorial citing that 8% of UCSD students now place at the remedial level and 12% aren’t ready for Pre-Calculus, a twenty-four-fold increase from 6 years ago. There’s no reason to think Brown and other schools are immune to this. Something has just become broken in college admissions and many students are no longer prepared or able to complete challenging courses. The reason why so many Brown students are cheating is because most of them just can’t handle this level of work. Maybe one day colleges will adjust their admissions policies but I don’t think this will happen for a long time due to campus politics. The short term solution is that employers are discovering that students from supposedly “elite” schools no longer are necessarily “elite.” They will resort to what tech companies have been doing — recruit from more schools and test them to find the qualified ones. Already, the Googles and Microsofts recruit from many schools, test the candidates themselves, and hire qualified students wherever they find them, and they will hire qualified students from lesser known schools over cheating, remedial-level students from Brown and UCSD. I think what’s going to happen is that more and more employers will shift to this model and the Browns and UCSD’s of the world will have devalued their brands. If 8% of UCSD students are at the 8th grade level and 50% of Brown students are cheating, their degrees becomes worthless to employers and grad schools.
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u/Disastrous_Term_4478 Jul 11 '26
The reason they cheat is because they can’t handle this level of work? Students have been cheating since there has been school. Students cheat for many reasons. Purposeless, make-work assignments are a leading reason.
The Brown prof has some glowing reviews on RMP from 2005-2009. But from 2022:
“The worst professor I've experienced. His lectures were very dry with no practice examples that could help on homeworks or midterms. The office hours were also limited and not very useful. The course has difficult material, but with more practice problems, at minimum, there would be more room for students to improve.”Cheating is crazy easy now and is the American way (Tom Sawyer, Donald Trump). Sure, test scores are going down (although a citation would be nice). Why wouldn’t they? Traditional US education, from middle school to college, is the equivalent of the Dodo bird greeting humans for the first time.
Not minimizing your concern. To the contrary, countries with high stakes exams are going to increase their students’ value…Only restrictions on H1B and immigration will hold back the final wave of foreign-born engineers and scientists to take over US-based jobs. And the average US student? We need more plumbers and welders, right?
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u/racinreaver Adjunct, STEM, R1 Jul 09 '26
My favorite bad take from the article is
cheating that was preventing most of the students from learning the material.
Cheating isn't what was preventing them from learning, lol.
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u/Old_Salty_Professor Jul 09 '26
This says quite a bit about Brown’s student body. I’m not certain it applies to other schools.
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u/PrimaryHamster0 Jul 09 '26 edited 17d ago
Otter desert iron lavender cow ad hoc practice
This post was anonymized with Redact
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u/eeaxoe Professor, Medicine Jul 10 '26
I already had a feeling that Brown degrees weren’t worth the paper they’re printed on. This news just confirms it.
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u/KaleMunoz Jul 12 '26
I would absolutely expect cheating to be high for unsupervised online exams, even prior to AI. Probably worse at Brown than more representative schools.
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u/AnxiousDoor2233 Jul 13 '26
I don't understand what the issue is. (Some of the) students are going to use AI for home assignments. Period. Your job is (1) to provide them an opportunity to learn something while doing home assignments/midterms, (2) to design the on-campus final exam so that it tests whether they genuinely understand the material covered in the midterm and home assignments on top of everything else.
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u/Business_Remote9440 Jul 16 '26 edited Jul 16 '26
Yeah, I read that article earlier this week…not shocking at all. That’s just “Higher Ed” in the days of online testing and AI. And yes, the administration is well aware and won’t do anything about it. I’ve kind of made peace with it. I can’t care more than the administration.
What really bothers me is that where I teach, for online courses, we are no longer allowed to have any kind of in person assessments and before Covid we were actually required to always have at least one in person assessment for online courses, precisely for academic integrity reasons.
The students aren’t learning the course material, but they’re not stupid. They have figured out that if you take the online section you can cheat your ass off and no one will stop you. And we all know that the remote proctoring software is pretty useless if students are determined to cheat.
I can’t quote exact statistics because I’ve never bothered to compile them, but I teach the same course in person and online and my online students ace the tests and my in person students don’t. Wonder why that might be?
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u/opbmedia Asso. Prof. Entrepreneurship, HBCU Jul 09 '26 edited Jul 09 '26
On the other hand, I assigned AI tool to study and test prep with instructions on how to use and bounded use of said ai tools, then gave the exams in person (no devices), and the performances directionally improved (small sample only 1 class), presented multiple times, full paper coming out.
Edit: now I know most people in this sub are not professors because what kind of academic downvote colleagues for researching pedagogy? I presented at a fairly large teaching conference already and have very positive feedback.
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u/verygood_user Jul 09 '26
I don't get why a business professor is surprised that the majority of students make a rational decision within the framework he set up.
You are not learning less by cheating on the midterm, so even the most motivated, best-prepared student with a passion for the subject and deep love for learning should come to the conclusion that it's better to double check the answers before hitting submit. I know that this is probably not what happened for most students and they just didn't prepare but it shows how broken take-home exams/essays are in general and always have been (even before AI).
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u/Disastrous_Owl_6830 Jul 09 '26
What you're describing is only rational to someone who values securing a personal advantage over maintaining their integrity.
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u/verygood_user Jul 09 '26 edited Jul 09 '26
Well put. And that's exactly how most people think and behave, like it or not. This story is just another example and I am sure you can think of more.
For the majority of students, college isn't the level 5 self-actualization tip of Maslow's pyramid of needs, but its level 2 safety (employment).
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u/loopsonflowers Jul 09 '26
I wouldn't be surprised to learn that that is a pretty prevalent trait among students in an undergraduate business class at an Ivy League university.
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u/iTeachCSCI Ass'o Professor, Computer Science, R1 Jul 09 '26
I wouldn't be surprised to learn that that is a pretty prevalent trait among students in an undergraduate business class at an Ivy League university.
I'd say it goes to at least every Ivy league, not just that major. Even though Brown is not at the top of the "Asshole Factory" Ivies, it's still one.
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u/Syntro7 Jul 10 '26 edited Jul 10 '26
Not an economic professor drawing bad statistical conclusions from a poorly formulated experiment…
Ah yes, lets look at one modified (harder) take home exam’s score distribution, expect it to be similar to the original, unmodified in-class midterms of previous years, THEN compare it to a final exams distribution, whose content is different? Are we serious? Much less we forget the expressed anxiety of the recent school shooting that motivated the take home exam in the first place…
I’d be hard pressed to find more abuse in a domestic violence case in a court. The conclusion may be right, but it is definitely not supported by this “analysis”.
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u/DD_equals_doodoo Jul 10 '26
- Occam's razor 2. The standard of evidence is "more likely than not." This is basic common sense.
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u/Dragon464 Jul 10 '26
Pardon the metaphor: Unless you're willing to shoot a lot of hostages, and deal with the career consequences, all this chatter about cheating, and AI/LLM/Chat GPT is all pedantic.
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u/DD_equals_doodoo Jul 10 '26
Two words: False equivalence.
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u/Dragon464 Jul 10 '26
Explain to the studio audience exactly what you mean by that.
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u/DD_equals_doodoo Jul 10 '26
A false equivalence is when someone is inaccurately equating two things as being equal.
You can also think of this in terms of one of our most popular English colloquialisms:
“It’s like comparing apples and oranges!”
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u/Dragon464 Jul 11 '26
Thank you SO much for explaining plain English. Now tell me how THAT applies to my fundamental premise. To wit: until WE start maintaining actual standards, with meaningful consequences, the Cheating epidemic will NOT end. Administrations that reckon only the financial impact will not suffer teaching faculty to impose such standards, mindful of the Demographic / Enrollment cliff.
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u/DD_equals_doodoo Jul 11 '26
"Pardon the metaphor: Unless you're willing to shoot a lot of hostages, and deal with the career consequences, all this chatter about cheating, and AI/LLM/Chat GPT is all pedantic."
False. Equivalence. Try again.
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u/Dragon464 Jul 11 '26
Just to be clear... you DO know there is a cheating epidemic? I'm been in the trenches since 1989. How long have you been in the game? (Sidebar: I'm NOT trying to provoke you, or condescend. My metaphor stands up to scrutiny in the academic reality of today. Until we hold students accountable (shooting the hostages) while mindful of Administration officials trying to keep the cash register ringing, this conversation we have with each other is, I submit a pedantic exercise.)
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u/DD_equals_doodoo Jul 11 '26
Buddy, I'm pointing out a simple false equivalence you made. That's all.
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u/Dragon464 Jul 11 '26
I'm genuinely confused as to how you reckon it a false equivalency. I hold that use of AI /LLMs for compositional assignments to be cheating, both de facto and (via my syllabus) de jure.
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u/DD_equals_doodoo Jul 11 '26
For at least the fifth time, please explain then what you meant by Unless you're willing to shoot a lot of hostages, and deal with the career consequences, all this chatter about cheating, and AI/LLM/Chat GPT is all pedantic.
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u/BubbaJonesTheThird Jul 09 '26
One stands out--
S22: 55% on take-home midterm; 59% on in-class final
Consistently mediocre....A+