111–120 of 231 posts
The college system is creating the zombie underclass with AI or without it. The amount of money colleges charge combined with the text book thinking shapes people into thinking there are steps to success, there are right answers, and "getting a job" is the right way to go. Colleges don't teach independent thinking and that is the exact thinking we need in the era of Youtube and AI. You don't need college to teach you…
It does feel like there is an easy solution to this: Have tests. Supervise said tests to make sure people don't cheat. That's how it worked when i was in university. Admittedly maybe that is easier in the sciences than humanities, but still, it seems doable. Cheating isn't a new phenomenon it just got cheaper and easier.
I can't help but wonder if the fundamental problem is just that we spent decades pretending that a university degree was some sort of useful job training in the first place. As a professional software developer, I think my computer science degree is not actually all that important. Sure there are some relevant concepts, but they're ones you'd pick up on the job anyway. I don't regret getting my degree (back in 2009),…
Even though the degree really didn't teach you what you'd do on the job, it was a signal to employers that 1. you were capable of learning stuff when needed, 2. you didn't give up on doing hard things, and 3. they wouldn't have to explain to you what a loop or a class is. With rampant AI cheating it's no longer a guarantee of any of those.
You can cheat as much as you want on homework, but it won't help you on supervised written tests. At some point you have to sit down, unaided, and show that you can solve the problems yourself. So I do not see how AI substantially weakens the signaling value of a degree, at least in systems where the degree is backed by in-person written assessment. It may make take-home coursework less meaningful, but that was already the weakest part of the signal.
To the majority of students, they seem quite laser focused on acquiring the degree with the right grades so that they can maximize their chance of a job after university (apart from the personal element of partying and having a boy/girl-friend etc.). The primary utility of the university to students is the credentialing, and secondarily the structure to the learning program, but otherwise the books themselves suffice to teach.
Perhaps we should move more training to technical institutes and people can come out with the knowledge of how to operate this or that thing. The problem is that everyone will know that the smarter student has gone for the higher-end university. The credentialing then works not because of the program but because of the selection that the university can do. Okay, so the whole thing continues to make sense even if AI zombifies everything.
Overall it’s a very good read, really enjoyed the author voice and style > I don’t think she was laughing two years later when I was TAing the class and we observed a fairly distinct gap of about 40 percentage points between the take-home test and the one administered in-person. 40pp is massive. Take homes are pretty much dead at that point. And not just in schools, but also for interviews. I don’t see how you can ge…
It becomes apparent really fast which students just delegated the work to AI.
Of course it’s also much more effort for the instructor.
Profs can push back on this if they want. Not all of them want to (or want to justify pushback given their pay). For me when I teach, no laptops or phones in class along with in-class handwritten paper quizzes on course readings and concepts has helped a lot.
Clearly not all of them want to do so. My son just finished up his freshman year at college. A couple months ago he called me and told me about an interaction he had with his English composition professor. She asked the class how they were integrating AI into their writing process. When she got to him, he said he didn't use AI, as he wanted to use the assignments to learn to write better. Her response was, "Well, you…
The college system is creating the zombie underclass with AI or without it. The amount of money colleges charge combined with the text book thinking shapes people into thinking there are steps to success, there are right answers, and "getting a job" is the right way to go. Colleges don't teach independent thinking and that is the exact thinking we need in the era of Youtube and AI. You don't need college to teach you…
Ok but I need a job to live. And if I want to do something interesting I need the skills and knowledge which are learned at a college level.
Universities will still act as gatekeepers of prestige and status. There is no AI alternative to the top-20 schools...I remember all the hype from 10-15 years ago about how online learning and "MIT courseware" would upend the universities or threaten credentialism, and nothing even close to that happened. As it turned out, the online version of MIT is not a substitute for the actual thing. Schools will adapt, as they…
They are vouching for the intelligence, knowledge acquisition and work ethic of their graduates. If they lose that signal, they lose the ability to gate keep prestige and status.
If people attend university for certification instead of education I think the battle is already lost. AI is an easy, but possibly high risk approach to gaining the certification without work, but the tried and tested approach is doing the bare minimum, cramming, then forgetting everything after graduation. If you penalize people who use AI but in the process have learned the required information you make the problem…