Kevin Bae

Non-Social in a Socially Networked World

College degrees cost more and are worth less than ever

All the kids are cheating. People are paying for expensive degrees that are absolutely worthless. How far away are we from graduating college students that don’t actually know anything about their majors? This will be like the kids coming out of high school that can’t read, write, or do math at a freshman high school level.

All testing should now be analog and in person. That’ll fix their little red wagons.

For decades, campus standards have been plummeting. The hallowed, ivy-draped buildings, the stately quads, the timeless Latin mottos—all that tradition and honor have been slipping away. That’s an old story. Then Covid struck and all bets were off. With college kids doing college from their bedrooms and smartphones, and with the explosion of new technology, cheating became not just easy but practically unavoidable. “Cheating is rampant,” a Princeton senior told me. “Since Covid there’s been an increasing trend toward grade inflation, cheating, and ultimately, academic mediocrity.” 

Now that students are back on campus, colleges are having a hard time putting the genie back in the bottle. Remote testing combined with an array of tech tools—exam helpers like Chegg, Course Hero, Quizlet, and Coursera; messaging apps like GroupMe and WhatsApp; Dropbox folders containing course material from years past; and most recently, ChatGPT, the AI that can write essays—have permanently transformed the student experience.

“It’s the Wild West when it comes to using emerging technologies and new forms of access to knowledge,” Gregory Keating, who has a joint appointment at USC’s Department of Philosophy and Gould School of Law, told me. “Faculties and administrations are scrambling to keep up.” 

Dishonor Code: What Happens When Cheating Becomes the Norm? – The Free Press

Image by robtowne0 from Pixabay


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