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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   10950 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 12, 2025

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Everyone Is Cheating Their Way Through College (NYMag)

link-archive link

Article describing what was predictably coming to college campuses since GPT3 got released. The narration follows some particularly annoying Korean-American student trying to make quick bucks from LLM-cheating start-ups and a rather dumb girl who can't follow basic reasoning, which makes the read a bit aggravating and amusing but overall the arch is not surprising. Recommended for a quick read. Basically all the grunt work of writing essays and the intro level classes with lots of rote assignments seem to be totally destroyed by cheap and easy high quality LLM output.

Some interesting highlights for me:

  • There is a consensus in the article even shared by the cheating students that writing essays in "Indigenous studies, law, English, and a “hippie farming class” called Green Industries" is an important transformative experience and if young adults miss out/cheat on this for 4 years then we must be seriously worried about the next generation.
  • It is not explored much what the students are doing with their time instead of writing these very important essays. There is one throw-away quote from a brain-rot girl about how she scrolls TikTok all day and has no time for essays. Perhaps all the students are getting one-shotted by dopamine addiction algorithms but perhaps they are not and many are socializing or learning actually interesting things instead of writing indigenous studies slop essays. This should be a major question but just left unexplored.
  • None of the journos or the academics quoted in the article can bring themselves to question if these young adults should even be in the university if they are all so eager to cheat (and earlier pandemic-era mass cheating spree is mentioned as well). There is a whole paragraph dedicated to justifying seemingly pointless essays, never-again-remembered-calculus-exercises, and the importance of doing "hard things" (which is apparently writing pointless essays and never-again-remembered-calculus-exercises). But there is not a single example of a "hard thing" students are missing out on because of LLMs in the whole article. Literally every single example is students automating busy work which should cost any 120+ IQ individual little brain power but lots of time. And a bizarre out of place paragraph about the need to "consider students more holistically" with a non-sense blurb from some academic.
  • Academics sound extremely lazy and whiny about trying out the most obvious solution: ditch all course-work based grading in favor of oral examinations and comprehensive graduation exams. This would immediately solve the whole problem (it would even align the incentives to get students to use LLMs for studying instead of cheating) and it is not even a "revolutionary" solution, just how universities used to work not that long ago. But obviously this would fail 90%+ of the current university students and likely destroy the entire industry as vast majority of the students providing their income stream are not nearly smart or conscientious enough to pass then.

Basically all the grunt work of writing essays and the intro level classes with lots of rote assignments seem to be totally destroyed by cheap and easy high quality LLM output.

It's not "high quality" if professors are complaining left and right about your shitty slop. If it really were high quality then professors would be happy to get it. I for one would implement a policy of immediate expulsion of anyone who turns in blatant shameless AI slop without even trying to hide it.

From the article

caught students in her Ethics and Technology class using AI to respond to the prompt “Briefly introduce yourself and say what you’re hoping to get out of this class.”

Seriously, just do the dang assignment. Kids are being programmed into using chatgpt for literally no reason. There is no possible way chatgpt can answer this question better than the student himself, while also saving time.

writing essays in "Indigenous studies, law, English, and a “hippie farming class” called Green Industries" is an important transformative experience and if young adults miss out/cheat on this for 4 years then we must be seriously worried about the next generation.

The essay you write might not be all that important, but you signed up for it, and cheating is cheating. If you hate the class then take another one; nobody is forcing you to be there. And minmaxxxing your graduation requirements is one of the underrated skills you learn college that transfers to the real world.

If you really can't avoid one or two shitty classes, then just grin and bear it. Getting hazed by some bullshit class that everyone has to take is actually an important transformative experience. You need to learn grit.

never-again-remembered-calculus-exercises

Clearly you didn't like math and didn't give a shit about your calculus class beyond getting an A. But years of math education builds on itself, and if you'd better remember la hospital's rule and delta epsilon and shit if you ever want to take a more advanced math class.

Literally every single example is students automating busy work which should cost any 120+ IQ individual little brain power but lots of time.

Some assignments feel like busy work, but you need 1000 hours of practice on something to get good at it. Why do I need to memorize any calculus formulas when I can just look at the book? Plug and chug 30x actually results in learning ironically enough.

ditch all course-work based grading in favor of oral examinations and comprehensive graduation exams.

Coursework is where the learning happens, exams are just a test. With lazy kids these days, you need a stick to make them actually do it, or else they're gonna blow it all off until the end of the semester, try to cram, and bomb it hard.

Anyways doing coursework is a huge ass chesterton's fence right there. Sure, tear it down, and while you're at it, remove all the other classes and replace them with a single class AI literacy.

Sorry but I get a strong feeling you have never been exposed to any university system other than modern American liberal arts colleges. What I have seen around Europe typically was that learning happens during exam crunch time and coursework is either just recommended or has relatively little effect on your end grade. If you are doing a “hard” degree then for many major exams you are also responsible for subjects of previous semesters as well so you have to stay on top. This works perfectly fine. I don’t think American students are any lazier than their counterparts in continental Europe, I think they just got conditioned heavily by the only education they have ever experienced.

Also no I liked maths a lot and I have an engineering job using a decent amount of trig-calculus level maths regularly. But I also observed how nonsense the maths requirements were for most degrees.

Incidentally I found it amusing you chose the student using chatgpt to write personal introduction for an “ Ethics and Technology class” as a particularly egregious example. I have never been exposed to an ethics class that wasn’t total non-sense taught by dimwit professors. Just all around busywork. We were either forced to take such classes because of vague ideas about how it would make us more ethical or something or people did so for easy elective credits. The whole faculty had a jobs-program feeling to it. It would be absolutely my top course to cheat through with an LLM.

What I have seen around Europe typically was that learning happens during exam crunch time and coursework is either just recommended or has relatively little effect on your end grade.

That's exactly my point. The kids will just goof off for 90% of the semester and just cram it all in before the exam. If so when what's the point of even having the rest of the semester.

using chatgpt to write personal introduction

Even if it's busy work, using chatgpt to do something that would take literally 5 minutes is just a retarded move.

That's exactly my point. The kids will just goof off for 90% of the semester and just cram it all in before the exam. If so when what's the point of even having the rest of the semester.

You should look into Western Governor's University and their model. Basically you can finish your degree as fast as you can finish testing for each course.

I remember a well-known poster here (Tracing Woodgrains? Not 100% sure) having the same plan, then they took longer than a traditional degree to graduate because a large part of the university experience is social pressure and the WGU experience doesn't provide that part.

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