It's not just 'a person' or 'a student', we as a collective become more dumb. Very simple example to highlight this: Most developers use(d?) stackoverflow. Everything related to software development is stored there. The LLM's trained on it. Now a huge set of developers now longer go to stackoverflow to get answers. Or add to the collective. Stackoverflow is losing money (ad revenue). If / when stackoverflow goes away we will lose a huge amount of collective information on software development. We, as a group, will take a huge step back.
Failing grades soar with AI usage, dwindling math skills in Berkeley CS classes
121–130 of 828 posts
Re: Failing grades soar with AI usage, dwindling math skills in Berkeley CS classes
#122It's interesting that it's specifically math-within-CS being discussed here. I can imagine a lot of students "just want to learn programming" (or similar), and see the math as a tedious distraction. As a naturally curious person, nothing will stop me from learning about the topics that interest me. But school also taught me a lot of things that didn't interest me, and a lot of those things turned out to be useful any…
Back in the university, I took both math and CS courses and a significant percentage of students seemed interested in neither math nor programming but rather in the jobs they would get afterwards. I didn't notice the same thing with math majors.
Re: Failing grades soar with AI usage, dwindling math skills in Berkeley CS classes
#123>In addition, the guidelines state that “a typical GPA for a lower division course will fall in the range 2.8 – 3.3.” In spring 2026, both classes’ average grades were C-pluses, according to Berkeleytime, corresponding to a 2.3 GPA. As a Cal alum, I am actually really glad to see they are holding the line on grade inflation. I worked my butt off to achieve the GPA I did, and it would really suck to see my labor deval…
Unpopular opinion: turning public universities into an academic hunger games is diametrically opposed to their purpose for existing, which is to create an educated populace. Intentionally lowering the quality of instruction, as well as deliberately trying to trip students up on exams, is not improving educational outcomes for anyone. People who complain about "grade inflation" have completely lost sight of why public…
Obviously a balance would be best, but as someone who went to a very grade-inflated school, I do believe that grade inflation gets in the way of education substantially. When you can get through classes with very little effort and understanding and know you will get a sufficient grade, many people will simply not learn the material deeply.
Re: Failing grades soar with AI usage, dwindling math skills in Berkeley CS classes
#124The likely 'real' reason is hidden in one paragraph within the article and has nothing to do with the implication of the eye-catching title: "Both Garcia and Ranade have joined more than 1,300 UC faculty in signing a petition calling for the reinstatement of ACT and SAT standardized testing scores for STEM admissions in the UC system. The petition and its accompanying open letter detail similar concerns with students…
If the removal of standardized testing in 2021 was the real reason, then why is there a sudden spike of failure rates happening right now?
It takes time to work through the system and it has been steadily getting worse.
It was already discussed on HN.
Re: Failing grades soar with AI usage, dwindling math skills in Berkeley CS classes
#125Even as a software engineer myself, I'm feeling a bit of cognitive decline having AI doing some/most of the thinking for me
The solution? I'm not sure but possibly use AI as more of a collaborate partner to discuss with rather than letting it give you the answers
Re: Failing grades soar with AI usage, dwindling math skills in Berkeley CS classes
#126Pretty ironic that these kids are failing a non major requirement called "the beauty and joy of computer science"
Re: Failing grades soar with AI usage, dwindling math skills in Berkeley CS classes
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
If the removal of standardized testing in 2021 was the real reason, then why is there a sudden spike of failure rates happening right now?
Testing was the annoying flood barrier. AI is the rainstorm that shows why it was necessary.
This pattern reads heavily LLM in style, but also... that is spot on.
Re: Failing grades soar with AI usage, dwindling math skills in Berkeley CS classes
#128Probably not a bad thing, the coursework is antiquated and meeting students with new advanced tools and the awareness of AI's impact on things in the coming future
I imagine there is some apathy and laziness here but idk how unjustified it is
"Noooooo you need to manually code on paper in assembly"
Alright, well maybe the CS grads need to, but why expect that of everyone else
Re: Failing grades soar with AI usage, dwindling math skills in Berkeley CS classes
#129Sorry, but I don't think AI is entirely to blame here. When I graduated from a CS program at a top-10 school, I felt frustrated that the professors didn't ever teach. They had slides. They read off slides, verbatim. They explained things sometimes if you asked them, but most often in a very elitist and condescending tone. Like in the movie Good Will Hunting, you could have learned nearly all of it and more by borrowi…
University education is weird. Research profs (who make up a large fraction of all profs in a typical R1 institution), are hired for research ability and are only minimally evaluated on teaching ability. Furthermore, few research profs actually receive any kind of mandatory training on how to teach; a typical research prof might be assigned a course to teach and then just let loose to do so on the first day of the semester. If a prof actually cares they may attend some optional teaching training - but I stress that these are optional at many of the institutions I know of. (I suppose if someone gets really bad teaching evals they may be advised to attend said trainings - but for a tenured prof, that's just advice).
Worse, a decent chunk of research profs will treat teaching as a burden that just has to be done - a distraction from their exciting world-changing research. So, you get attitudes like the ones you mentioned.
I'm actually not sure why the system is set up to assume that profs who are good at research are automatically suited to teach classes, but that is how it's setup.
Re: Failing grades soar with AI usage, dwindling math skills in Berkeley CS classes
#130Students need to be taught how to use AI apps efficently to learn. Their goal is not to solve problems, but to learn how to solve them. Let alone, they instead use AI apps to solve problems for them.
AI apps are very powerful for teaching. You just need to tell them to do that, and not to directly solve your problem.