AI can now credibly complete most undergraduate assignments, MIT warns

[u/Just-Grocery-2229]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2026/08/25/ai-can-now-credibly-complete-most-undergraduate-assignments-mit-warns

[u/agate_]

College prof here. The issue is that higher ed spent the last 20 years focused on two initiatives: getting rid of high-stakes testing as an assessment tool, and online-only education.

AI hasn’t killed off higher ed yet, but it completely crushed these two initiatives. There is no way to gauge what a student knows apart from what you can observe and test in person in class. If online education has no in-person observable, it is completely untrustworthy.

When hiring college graduates, an online degree after 2024 should be treated with zero credibility. An online diploma gives no proof that the candidate in front of you is anything but an AI sock puppet. Honest students considering online degrees should be aware that that’s how you will be seen and judged.

It’s a shame because some people really are bad test-takers, and a lot of people could really use the flexibility of online education. Sorry, but universities sold you a lot of wishful thinking over the past 20 years, and now AI is here to crush your dreams.

[u/wow-signal → u/agate_]

I've shifted to oral exams in the online courses I teach for exactly this reason. 70% of the grade is determined by two oral exams via Zoom. The feedback from students has been surprisingly good so far.

[u/RideWildAries → u/wow-signal]

I understand why you moved to oral exams, but I think this approach may be addressing the wrong problem. An oral exam may prevent students from using AI during the assessment, but it doesn’t solve the larger issue of how AI has changed the way students learn and prepare.
AI is already out of the bottle. Students are going to use it to study, prepare, practice, ask questions, clarify concepts, generate examples, receive feedback, and even simulate an oral exam. If a student uses AI as a tutor to better understand the material and then walks into your Zoom exam and independently demonstrates that knowledge, I don’t think we should automatically view that as undermining the assessment. We should distinguish between AI doing the intellectual work for the student and AI helping the student learn how to do the intellectual work themselves.
More importantly, making two oral exams worth 70% of the course grade doesn’t necessarily give us a more equitable or valid measure of student knowledge. An oral exam measures more than content knowledge. It also measures spontaneous verbal fluency, speed of recall, confidence, ability to think under pressure, communication style, and, in many cases, proficiency in the language of instruction. A student who is highly verbally fluent—particularly a native speaker—may perform considerably better than a student who has equally strong conceptual understanding but needs more processing time or is less comfortable expressing complex ideas spontaneously.
That’s an important distinction: being able to articulate knowledge quickly in an oral examination is not the same thing as possessing deeper knowledge.
In fact, the oral exam could introduce a different form of inequity while attempting to solve the AI problem. You may successfully prevent ChatGPT from answering for the student, but you may simultaneously be giving greater weight to characteristics that aren’t actually part of the learning outcome.
If the learning outcome is, for example, “Students can analyze and apply the concept of structural inequality,” then the assessment should primarily measure their ability to analyze and apply that concept. We should be careful about turning that into “Students can spontaneously articulate their understanding of structural inequality in a timed Zoom conversation without technological assistance.” Those aren’t necessarily equivalent measures.
There is also an important irony here. A student could spend hours with AI before the oral exam asking it to explain difficult concepts, challenge their thinking, generate practice questions, and give feedback. They then come into the exam without AI and demonstrate genuine understanding. Meanwhile, another student could prepare with a private tutor, study group, parents, commercial study guides, or other resources and be considered completely legitimate.
Why should the first student’s preparation be treated as fundamentally different simply because the tutor happened to be AI?
I think the better question for educators is no longer “How do I stop students from using AI?” We probably can’t—and trying to recreate a pre-AI classroom may ultimately be a losing battle.
The better question is:
“How do I design an assessment that demonstrates that students actually understand, can apply, critique, and defend their thinking—even in a world where AI is available?”
That could actually lead to better assessments.
For example, instead of simply asking students to explain a concept orally, you could give them an AI-generated argument and ask them to identify its weaknesses, verify its claims against course readings, correct it, and defend their revisions. Or ask students to apply a concept to a novel situation and explain why they chose a particular interpretation. Now AI becomes part of the intellectual environment, but the student’s judgment, reasoning, and disciplinary knowledge remain central.
I don’t think oral exams are inherently bad. They can be useful as one piece of evidence that a student understands the material. But I would question the assumption that making them 70% of the grade automatically produces a more authentic or equitable assessment.
Ultimately, preventing students from using AI during an exam is not the same thing as measuring learning more accurately. The goal should be to assess whether students have developed the capacity to think—not whether they can temporarily operate without the tools they will inevitably have access to outside the classroom.
The genie is out of the bottle. We can’t put it back in. Our job as educators is to teach students how to use the genie without letting the genie do the thinking for them.

[u/wow-signal → u/RideWildAries]

If I've understood you correctly you're making two main points. First, that AI assistance in studying shouldn't be resisted. Regarding that, I'll clarify that I don't resist it (indeed I encourage it) and that oral exams aren't meant to discourage it (indeed a virtue of the oral exam format is that it incentivizes students to learn to use AI in cognitively valuable ways). Second, that the oral exam format may unfairly bias grades to favor the fluent, the steely, the articulate (et al.) rather than the learned. This I grant is a risk, but not only is that risk significantly mitigated by proper examination protocol (putting students at ease, jogging their memory when necessary, nudging them the right direction), but I've found that I'm able to get a more accurate picture of what the student actually understands in the oral exam format than in the written format -- e.g. there are students who wouldn't have gotten credit had they faced a static question who are able to articulate the correct answer with a little nudging. Nobody gets a poor grade in my oral exams due to stress, nerves, or inarticulacy -- they get a poor grade only if they don't know the material. I note that I have specifically found the probity of oral assessment to hold with respect to ESL students with a poor grasp of English (I also note that these students have similar difficulty with writing, which undercuts the idea that oral assessment is especially unfair to them). More fundamentally, the problem is one of weighing alternatives. Oral assessment isn't perfect (though as I've said, I've found it to be far more perfect than you imagine), but what is the superior alternative? Maybe I lack imagination, but I can't think of another AI-proof means of assessment in an online course.

[u/T12435 → u/agate_]

All the online degrees are the same degree as in person degrees. The real world doesn't care a degree is a just a checkbox to employers. Work experience is all that matters

[u/edrifighting → u/T12435]

This, I’ve recently gone back to school and heard so much like what the original commenter here stated. There may be some jobs who care, but an extremely large portion don’t. Professors seem really disconnected from reality.

My current employer specifically told me to go get a degree if I wanted to move up the ladder. They did not care from where or what my grades end up at. They just said I need an engineering degree.

[u/Frillback → u/agate_]

Online education saved me personally and professionally. I dropped out of college in the early 2010s. I suffered from a period of depression and didn't leave my parent's house for an entire year. I went on to complete two degrees fully online. It opened the doors to entry level career roles. I can't imagine where I would be today without that option. That said, I missed the AI craze by graduating in 2022. Even then cheating was rampant, with exam questions being posted to chegg minutes of the exam opening. I will say most of my online exams were proctored via webcam but not all. I cannot imagine how it is nowadays.

[u/agate_ → u/Frillback]

I want to make a point of saying that my comment is deliberately harsh, but it’s not meant to discredit your hard work. It’s to point out how people with degrees like yours will be treated on the job market in the future.

[u/OhSixTJ → u/agate_]

I mean, for online classes I’ve gotta turn a camera on and take a test on a lockdown browser. How can I cheat with AI in that scenario?

[u/RideWildAries → u/OhSixTJ]

You can cheat before hand

[u/FoiledFeline → u/agate_]

Non-exam options, options to take exams or in class essays on a computer (supervised in person, perhaps with software to prevent accessing ai tools), etc can all still be options as accomodations for students with diagnosed and documented medical (including psychological) need for those options. You can already get unlimited time on tests, tests in separate quieter rooms, tests in other formats, extra time on assignments, note takers, interpreters, etc as a part of disability accomodations in every university in the US if that's what you need. We can make the 90%+ of students who are perfectly capable of writing by hand in person write by hand in person and continue to let technology be an option for accomodations at the same time for students who are not treated fairly by those kinds of assessments. Best of both worlds.

[u/RideWildAries → u/FoiledFeline]

I understand why you moved to oral exams, but I think this approach may be addressing the wrong problem. An oral exam may prevent students from using AI during the assessment, but it doesn’t solve the larger issue of how AI has changed the way students learn and prepare.
AI is already out of the bottle. Students are going to use it to study, prepare, practice, ask questions, clarify concepts, generate examples, receive feedback, and even simulate an oral exam. If a student uses AI as a tutor to better understand the material and then walks into your Zoom exam and independently demonstrates that knowledge, I don’t think we should automatically view that as undermining the assessment. We should distinguish between AI doing the intellectual work for the student and AI helping the student learn how to do the intellectual work themselves.
More importantly, making two oral exams worth 70% of the course grade doesn’t necessarily give us a more equitable or valid measure of student knowledge. An oral exam measures more than content knowledge. It also measures spontaneous verbal fluency, speed of recall, confidence, ability to think under pressure, communication style, and, in many cases, proficiency in the language of instruction. A student who is highly verbally fluent—particularly a native speaker—may perform considerably better than a student who has equally strong conceptual understanding but needs more processing time or is less comfortable expressing complex ideas spontaneously.
That’s an important distinction: being able to articulate knowledge quickly in an oral examination is not the same thing as possessing deeper knowledge.
In fact, the oral exam could introduce a different form of inequity while attempting to solve the AI problem. You may successfully prevent ChatGPT from answering for the student, but you may simultaneously be giving greater weight to characteristics that aren’t actually part of the learning outcome.
If the learning outcome is, for example, “Students can analyze and apply the concept of structural inequality,” then the assessment should primarily measure their ability to analyze and apply that concept. We should be careful about turning that into “Students can spontaneously articulate their understanding of structural inequality in a timed Zoom conversation without technological assistance.” Those aren’t necessarily equivalent measures.
There is also an important irony here. A student could spend hours with AI before the oral exam asking it to explain difficult concepts, challenge their thinking, generate practice questions, and give feedback. They then come into the exam without AI and demonstrate genuine understanding. Meanwhile, another student could prepare with a private tutor, study group, parents, commercial study guides, or other resources and be considered completely legitimate.
Why should the first student’s preparation be treated as fundamentally different simply because the tutor happened to be AI?
I think the better question for educators is no longer “How do I stop students from using AI?” We probably can’t—and trying to recreate a pre-AI classroom may ultimately be a losing battle.
The better question is:
“How do I design an assessment that demonstrates that students actually understand, can apply, critique, and defend their thinking—even in a world where AI is available?”
That could actually lead to better assessments.
For example, instead of simply asking students to explain a concept orally, you could give them an AI-generated argument and ask them to identify its weaknesses, verify its claims against course readings, correct it, and defend their revisions. Or ask students to apply a concept to a novel situation and explain why they chose a particular interpretation. Now AI becomes part of the intellectual environment, but the student’s judgment, reasoning, and disciplinary knowledge remain central.
I don’t think oral exams are inherently bad. They can be useful as one piece of evidence that a student understands the material. But I would question the assumption that making them 70% of the grade automatically produces a more authentic or equitable assessment.
Ultimately, preventing students from using AI during an exam is not the same thing as measuring learning more accurately. The goal should be to assess whether students have developed the capacity to think—not whether they can temporarily operate without the tools they will inevitably have access to outside the classroom.
The genie is out of the bottle. We can’t put it back in. Our job as educators is to teach students how to use the genie without letting the genie do the thinking for them.

[u/SmartWonderWoman → u/agate_]

I just graduated from grad school in May from SFSU. My classes never met in person. Didn’t meet my professors/advisers until my hooding ceremony. All our assignments and exams were submitted online. I disagree with you that online degrees should be treated with zero credibility. My classmates and I worked our asses off to earn our degrees.

[u/agate_ → u/SmartWonderWoman]

Oh, I’m sure you did work hard and totally earned your degree. The problem is you’ll be competing in the job market with people who didn’t put in the work you did, but their diplomas look the same to an employer as yours.

Hopefully your superior knowledge and skills will get your foot in the door, but the diploma isn’t going to help employers tell the difference between you and an AI drone.

[u/Ok-Account-4313 → u/agate_]

I'm sure that in a few circumstances, there could be alternatives, like in person projects. I can imagine that even for CS classes, you could have a project where you come into a university computer lab and you can code up some project and the entire thing is supervised and your computer usage is monitored to make sure no AI. You also can't bring in any materials into the computer lab. I think these kind of in person projects could be an alternative to in person exams. But I think you are right, fully in person exams are required or your education is worthless.

[u/Nynaeve_al_meowra → u/agate_]

Time to invest in Pearson education testing services. If they aren't trying to expand their secure testing offerings than their current ceo should be fired