{"id":103452,"date":"2026-07-07T04:00:11","date_gmt":"2026-07-07T08:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=103452"},"modified":"2026-07-06T17:27:31","modified_gmt":"2026-07-06T21:27:31","slug":"clankers-in-higher-education","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2026\/07\/07\/clankers-in-higher-education\/","title":{"rendered":"Clankers in higher education"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>On his Substack, <a href=\"https:\/\/daviddfriedman.substack.com\/p\/ai-and-exams?publication_id=1348706&#038;post_id=204945810&#038;isFreemail=true&#038;r=2jlrz&#038;triedRedirect=true\" target=\"_blank\">David Friedman<\/a> discusses the impact of AI on university exams:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Computers-New-AI-feature.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"float:right; padding: 0px 0px 10px 25px\" src=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Computers-New-AI-feature-480x517.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"480\" height=\"517\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-103453\" srcset=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Computers-New-AI-feature-480x517.jpg 480w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Computers-New-AI-feature-139x150.jpg 139w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Computers-New-AI-feature.jpg 565w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 480px) 100vw, 480px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<ul>\n<p><em>Professor Roberto Serrano, who is the Harrison S. Kravis University Professor of Economics at Brown University, has detected a massive fraud in one of the classes he teaches, ECON 1170, an advanced undergraduate course in mathematical economics. He has conclusive evidence that at least 50 students cheated on the March midterm exam, making it the biggest known scandal at Brown and in the entire Ivy League<\/em><\/p>\n<p>&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><em>&#8220;Academic integrity is a value worth defending. The faculty cannot be left on its own in a battle that is decisive if we want to preserve the future of higher education,&#8221; explains the 61-year-old professor &#8230; (<a href=\"https:\/\/english.elpais.com\/education\/2026-06-28\/ai-fraud-at-brown-university-academic-integrity-is-at-risk.html\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>El Pais<\/strong><\/a>)<\/em><\/p>\n<\/ul>\n<p>It was a closed book take-home exam; the problems were designed to test the student&#8217;s ability but proved doable by an AI. After Serrano changed the final from take-home to in-person about half the students who had gotten perfect scores on the midterm chose not to take the final.<\/p>\n<p>The existence of AI, like the earlier problem of students buying papers online, reduces the ability of teachers to test their students but does not eliminate it, is inconvenient but not catastrophic. It makes some kinds of testing more difficult but not impossible; Serrano could have asked students whose midterms were suspiciously good to explain some of their answers and failed any obviously unable to do so. That would have been additional work for him and, judging by the article, not a policy Brown would have endorsed. Unwilling or unable to do that that he can base his future grading on work done in-person and adequately monitored.<\/p>\n<p>[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>It is not immediately obvious what is wrong with using AI on a test. If the purpose of the test is to generate information for potential future employers, why should they want the student tested without a tool that, if they hire him, he will have? A basketball coach does not evaluate potential team members by how well they can play with one hand tied behind their back.<\/p>\n<p>Arguably the skills the employer wants tested are those that an AI cannot replace and it was up to Professor Serrano to find ways of testing for them. His take-home midterm, taken without the assistance of AI, might have provided information for him and his students about how far they had come along a path that would eventually produce skills an AI could not substitute for but not information for a future employer about the skills of the students taking the exam.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On his Substack, David Friedman discusses the impact of AI on university exams: Professor Roberto Serrano, who is the Harrison S. Kravis University Professor of Economics at Brown University, has detected a massive fraud in one of the classes he teaches, ECON 1170, an advanced undergraduate course in mathematical economics. He has conclusive evidence that [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[79,15,13],"tags":[1506,764],"class_list":["post-103452","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","category-technology","category-usa","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-university"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-qUA","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103452","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=103452"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103452\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":103454,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103452\/revisions\/103454"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=103452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=103452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}