College faculty and administrators spend a lot of time bemoaning cheating by students, now far easier than in the past due to artificial intelligence. What can be done? What’s the cause?
In today’s Martin Center article, Aaron Pomerantz suggests that they consider how the culture of higher education now encourages cheating.
He writes, “However, cultures don’t spontaneously generate: they evolve as adaptive responses to particular environments. This means that, in some way, cheating—including the misuse of AI—has proven uniquely advantageous to these students. This is because higher education has allowed, and even actively created, an environment in which this is true.”
Pomerantz points out that what matters most to students is not really learning, but merely the appearance of learning — passing their courses with high grades and getting their degrees. How that is accomplished is not terribly important, and for the most part they take the path of least effort.
He continues, “Even in some ideal world where every assignment is AI-proof, the higher education environment would still have these problems. We would still have students incentivized to prioritize grades over learning and professors whose professional futures can depend, at least in part, on keeping those students happy.”
Is there a solution? Not an easy one. Our higher ed system must change its culture, seeking to shape the character of students rather than merely slapping degrees on them. The objective is to create people who will exercise ethical judgment even when cheating is easy.
Good luck with that.