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Failing grades soar with AI usage, dwindling math skills in Berkeley CS classes

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Re: Failing grades soar with AI usage, dwindling math skills in Berkeley CS classes

#351

I have some sympathy for these kids. If LLMs were around when I was a student, I would've also used them to "speed up" my homework assignments then proceed to fail all my tests. Now I work mostly with PhDs who were at the top of every academic environment they've ever been in. And yet I can see their thinking skills rapidly declining as well; many of them can no longer brainstorm, code, think deeply, or write without…

> If LLMs were around when I was a student, I would've also used them to "speed up" my homework assignments then proceed to fail all my tests. You go to a university because you are deeply interested in understanding the subject that you study. Doing the homework and the tests are just the "goalposts" to check for yourself whether you made progress on this. So, as long as you are not under time pressure (which you in…

> You go to a university because you are deeply interested in understanding the subject that you study. Doing the homework and the tests are just the "goalposts" to check for yourself whether you made progress on this.

I think this was true a long time ago. Perhaps with LLMs this can become true again in the future. But definitely that was not why I went the first time, nor most of my classmates. (Second time I did post-secondary, sure, 100% -- but I was almost 30, not an average student)

Re: Failing grades soar with AI usage, dwindling math skills in Berkeley CS classes

#352

I have some sympathy for these kids. If LLMs were around when I was a student, I would've also used them to "speed up" my homework assignments then proceed to fail all my tests. Now I work mostly with PhDs who were at the top of every academic environment they've ever been in. And yet I can see their thinking skills rapidly declining as well; many of them can no longer brainstorm, code, think deeply, or write without…

> If LLMs were around when I was a student, I would've also used them to "speed up" my homework assignments then proceed to fail all my tests. I agree - I would have been toast. I wonder if the teachers/colleges need to change the way they teach and assess. Let the students use the AI tools they like (perhaps guide them how they can use them professionally), but test regularly and early on the skills/knowledge they'r…

> Let the students use the AI tools they like […], but test regularly and early on the skills/knowledge they're meant to be gaining offline and in person.

I very much doubt there is any agreement on what those skills are.

Creating the idea of “what to learn in the new world” is itself IMO an important academic creation, but there’s no reward for doing it and no way to know if you’re on the right track (you just have to wait and see).

Employers are also just adapting.

Wait until companies are paying unsubsidized “list price” for LLM usage. Then we can have a better idea of the worth of the automation and what skills should stay with humans.

Re: Failing grades soar with AI usage, dwindling math skills in Berkeley CS classes

#353

CS Professor here: just yesterday I did the discussion of a course projects' (Parallel Computing), and one of the three groups that I did yesterday have clearly gone the ChatGPT way. They couldn't even understand the choices the LLM made regarding the architecture, etc. The way to "catch" these students is similar to what we did in the past when students copied from other students which is "to give them rope to hang"…

> The other two groups also used LLM but in a high-level and architectural way. Sounds more like the score is 3/3 (100%) Would you have accepted them cooy-pasting code from libraries together to build their project? If not, why is using LLM generated code different?

Using AI to inform architecture doesn’t seem so different from googling architecture in this case. Architectural patterns are mostly well understood and well documented these days and are something that you could piece together via Google search pre AI. The thing that AI brings to the table that wasn’t google able in the past is code generation. Previously you had to understand the architecture patterns to implement them yourself, but now the AI can just do it for you.

Re: Failing grades soar with AI usage, dwindling math skills in Berkeley CS classes

#354
post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If LLMs were around when I was a student, I would've also used them to "speed up" my homework assignments then proceed to fail all my tests. You go to a university because you are deeply interested in understanding the subject that you study. Doing the homework and the tests are just the "goalposts" to check for yourself whether you made progress on this. So, as long as you are not under time pressure (which you in…

> You go to a university because you are deeply interested in understanding the subject that you study. Doing the homework and the tests are just the "goalposts" to check for yourself whether you made progress on this. This is probably not true for majority of people. Most go to school because it is mandatory, pushed by parents and society, and university gives you credentials and better job opportunities. Homework a…

> Homework and tests are a way to get a number grade on 'how well you memorized something', it doesn't really measure a deep understanding of the topic.

As I said: they are goalposts.

Typically homework and tests are sufficiently easy (yes, there are exceptions) that if you fail them, you can assume that you didn't make sufficient progress in improving your understanding.

But I do agree that at least sometimes the difference between being good and exceptional at homework and tests can indeed be rote, "unnecessary" memorization.

Re: Failing grades soar with AI usage, dwindling math skills in Berkeley CS classes

#355
post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If LLMs were around when I was a student, I would've also used them to "speed up" my homework assignments then proceed to fail all my tests. You go to a university because you are deeply interested in understanding the subject that you study. Doing the homework and the tests are just the "goalposts" to check for yourself whether you made progress on this. So, as long as you are not under time pressure (which you in…

> You go to a university because you are deeply interested in understanding the subject that you study. This has not been true for something like 70 years now. People go to university because it is expected that that is what you do after high school.

Rest doesn't make sense either with the parent's tautologies and self-counters. They seem to argue for it and raise the challenges.

~"Speed doesn't matter unless you need it."

~"LLMs can be good, but if you don't use them properly™, then they become a crutch."

It's hard to deny that "cognitive offloading" via LLMs is becoming a more acute problem [0]. The intelligentsia were supposed to be immune.

[0] https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20260417-ai-chatbots-coul...

Re: Failing grades soar with AI usage, dwindling math skills in Berkeley CS classes

#356
post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If LLMs were around when I was a student, I would've also used them to "speed up" my homework assignments then proceed to fail all my tests. You go to a university because you are deeply interested in understanding the subject that you study. Doing the homework and the tests are just the "goalposts" to check for yourself whether you made progress on this. So, as long as you are not under time pressure (which you in…

> You go to a university because you are deeply interested in understanding the subject that you study. This has not been true for something like 70 years now. People go to university because it is expected that that is what you do after high school.

It is really about time we thought about what universities are for in the 21st century, since there has been significant scope creep wrt labour markets, particularly roles which do not actually require university education but do require a degree for CV reasons. It is nonsense in the 21st century to require a bachelor's degree for such roles. Not to mention the huge societal pressure that you have mentioned, which no 18 year old can really be expected to see through.

With CS students this is one thing. Medical students? Air traffic controllers?

That is to say, there is a huge gap in the educational integrity of degrees, and this is probably partly driven by people who do not really want to be at university for educational reasons (and, believe it or not, there are other ways to party in your early twenties) and for whom a degree in XYZ is not rationally connected to 80% of their options after school. And there are many such people.

This really needs to be thought through, because education is expensive, and it is an enormous waste of money to pay for a couple of years of university and end up failing out or being sanctioned for AI cheating, or being educated for something you do not really want or need to be taught. That is true whether or not education is paid for privately or by the public.

ETA that when I graduated from school the idea of not going to university was really discouraged by the guidance counselor. It seemed like vocational courses were not really a worthwhile option unless you were a poor (significantly below average) student. There was a lot of emphasis on ‘getting a degree’ probably related to (nonsense) job requirements. Not a lot on what career you should pursue, or why you should consider university. It was more like why would you not consider university, since it was the de facto default. It was, I guess, unseemly for the school to end up with fewer university entrants and more apprentices.

At the time, there was somewhat of a social stigma with apprenticeships. The people that pursued them seemed to only genuinely have been set on the idea, and there were few if any that were diverted thereto. Now, of course, ‘the trades’ pay much better than a middling office job. Egg on my face.

Re: Failing grades soar with AI usage, dwindling math skills in Berkeley CS classes

#357
post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If LLMs were around when I was a student, I would've also used them to "speed up" my homework assignments then proceed to fail all my tests. You go to a university because you are deeply interested in understanding the subject that you study. Doing the homework and the tests are just the "goalposts" to check for yourself whether you made progress on this. So, as long as you are not under time pressure (which you in…

> You go to a university because you are deeply interested in understanding the subject that you study. Doing the homework and the tests are just the "goalposts" to check for yourself whether you made progress on this. This is probably not true for majority of people. Most go to school because it is mandatory, pushed by parents and society, and university gives you credentials and better job opportunities. Homework a…

Uni grading Brownian-walks around edu trends, but misses the point that improving one's (and humanity's) lot depends on a tiny loop:

- doing - failing - discovery>learning - remembering

With learning predicated on both failing and remembering it's unfortunate uni scores on 100% successful doing but doesn't teach failing well, and scores for remembering but not for learning well.

Re: Failing grades soar with AI usage, dwindling math skills in Berkeley CS classes

#358
post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You go to a university because you are deeply interested in understanding the subject that you study. This has not been true for something like 70 years now. People go to university because it is expected that that is what you do after high school.

> This has not been true for something like 70 years now. People go to university because it is expected that that is what you do after high school. In Germany, many people indeed say if you are not deeply into the topic that you study, you should rather get a vocational training (Ausbildung), or attend a different kind of tertiary education than a university such as - Fachhochschule - Berufsakademie (these words hav…

It's a much more socially beneficial system and I think a large part of this is probably differences in culture regarding education and one's career. The availability of these modes of teaching is downstream from that.

Re: Failing grades soar with AI usage, dwindling math skills in Berkeley CS classes

#359
post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I read a few years ago about a teacher (I think highschool) who put his lectures on YouTube for students to view in their own time and then used the in class hours for interaction, questions, tests. That seems like a smart approach. It reverses the traditional model of "lecture in class, homework outside of class".

I always absolutely hated when a teacher did a reverse classroom and I had to “learn” at home and then practice in the classroom. I think the solution is more engaging lessons and less outside work. I know why homework exists, but homework is a chore that most people want to get done as fast as possible. If kids got to learn something interesting in school and then have their free time after school, there would be le…

[deleted]

Re: Failing grades soar with AI usage, dwindling math skills in Berkeley CS classes

#360

1. The article itself seems like an LLM summary of a conversation. 2. No US educational institution should ever grade on a curve. Your job is not to compare students but to educate them. Grade curves hide the performance of the educators and process of education in actually improving the skills of students. 3. Both AI and the cognitive and emotional overload from social media taking away brain space may be to blame.…

There's often little discussion around incentives. Students cheat because grades are used as a major selection factor in university admissions. Maybe that should change.

Set a reasonable bar for grades or SAT scores and then use other criteria beyond that gate.

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