I did exams for Java and C++ with a pen and a paper. No books, laptops were too expensive, and no one was using this new wifi thing. It should be easy: a sheet of paper and a pen.

Because classes swelled while faculty did not.

People who cheat are always going to find a way, but there's still value in making it less convenient. If nothing else, a person has to learn more about real-world maneuvering if forced to get creative with it.

where I live, supervised exams are still the norm, but if you bother lookibg arround during the test you will quickly notice thwt pretty mcuh everyone is still cheating

The wealthy can afford to have someone else do their work, and you wonder why the institution didn't put a stop to it?

Hi! Nerdy uni student here, it's an 80 people classroom. People just sit in the back and use their phone during paper exams. They then go to class groupchat to boast about how clever they were for coming up with that idea...

Also since professor has actual research to do, exams are proctored by the teaching assistants who frankly don't care. In fact TA's openly use AI to grade homeworks.

May sound slightly biased, but I think the solution is people going "exams were not meant to be part of this system, or at least in the current state they are" and making some reforms.

Have you ever proctored an exam before?

I wish it was that simple, I really do, but when did handwriting get dropped from the curriculum? Ok slightly hyperbolic, that was the US, still on the UK curriculum. But the importance of it has dropped dramatically.

Even 10 years ago the legibility of student answers was sufficiently awful we were doing exam technique training for students and it has degraded substantially since then.

There's the right answer, and then there's the practical answer. This is the former.

They'll just use AI then copy it to paper.

In the pre-AI age, I think take home tests were fine. However they were generally much harder than a similar in person exam on the same material. I remember one professor gave the advice "if you are given the option between a take home exam and an in person classroom exam, always take the latter. Since the former doesn't have as tight of a time limit as the latter does, and will almost always be far more challenging" (or something to that effect)

Even five years ago, these were fine. You couldn't cheat if you didn't know the material.

Take home tests? I didn't read that in the article, take home essays yes. Which is just normal homework

Especially when you can offload to AI like a jock offloading on a nerd. No papers, oral… in person shit.

I like the idea of an oral exam. You come prepared to present a topic and answer questions. You are allowed to reference your notes, cards, etc. on the fly.

Jensen huang style

Another avenue is doing regular screenings, orally or hand-written. Any sus answers, that student gets flagged and further evaluated.

But, the problem is, as I'm sure the article I haven't read points out, that cost-benefit is all fucked up. The benefit to students is they get a degree without having to do any work, so lots of people are going to do it, and the cost to Universities would be having to expel a good chunk of their students, which is going to cost them a lot of tuition money and alumni donations.

The reality is that the value of a university education--outside of STEM--in this bloated labor market is really just a social credit. What we need to tackle is all the poeple who can't get hired for positions they are absolutely qualified for but can't get because they don't have a degree.

There is something called a BONAFIDE QUALIFICATION written into employment law, and "college education" is considred a bonafide qualification even if it's not.

Okay, but here's the situation at the institution where someone I know teaches...

Students enroll with Disability Services (roughly 1/3 of the class) because they tell their doctor they have test anxiety. Doctor then gives them a notes saying "so-and-so has test anxiety". Nevermind the fact that anxiety around a test should be a normal reaction -- particularly tests you never prepared for.

They get presented with a buffet of options for what will help them "succeed". And THE STUDENT picks what they want. Triple time to complete their tests? Unlimited unsupervised bathroom breaks? Flexible scheduling (i.e. taking the test after everyone else got their results back & knows the answers)? Private testing rooms with no proctor? Ability to use AI "just for grammar"? It's all there...

Absolute raging trashfire...

Always has been.

Because you don't get into positions of power with that mindset. You get into position of power with the mindset of "how can I look good today?"

I can also confirm that functionality in Microsoft products is (I think deliberately) being dumbed down and made counterintuitive in order to force people to use CoPilot. This has been especially problematic with Sharepoint.

The last decade makes me feel like we're already living in an idiocratic dystopia on the brink of realising our great filter.

Everything from the rise of fascism, narcissism, dysmorphia and associated mental illnesses, to ignoring climate change, to systemic corruption and collusion, to everyone going all in on stochastic AI. This world is cooked. Our logic is corrupted. There is something fundamentally broken with the average humans brain.

They totally did, and bought massive contracts for AI-detection software at the same time, fucking morons, they were giving the students AI software access. Pissed all over themselves.

The problem is writing good tests and curriculum is extremely difficult. It takes extensive training and a team of people to make it passably decent.

The vast majority of test are written or selected by the teacher with limited to no training on the subject. They have absolutely no clue how absolute shit it is.

This is especially true at the university/college level where the professors are all trained in the field of study and have close to zero training in teaching.

Who cares if they use AI?

Because they are applying to competitive professional programs, with limited entry numbers, so for every cheat would gets in, one person working 90 hour weeks is excluded. Onto grad school and med school, those programs require physical expertise and knowledge at the experimental bench or ER.

You really want a doctor who cheated his way into med school treating you in the ER while you're bleeding out?

This is a huge problem already and frankly, post-secondary cheating should be a criminal offence.

The point of an essay is that a person may, accurately and succinctly, convey a complex idea to a stranger across an ocean using only the written word. Which is half the point of literacy. Where I to hire a college grad who couldn't compose an email about a complex, nuanced subject, i would think real hard about hiring any alums of theirs.

Knowing stuff isn't enough. You have to be able to present it in a communicable fashion.

If you can't articulate why schools use long essays, perhaps you shouldn't suggest scrapping them. One should know how a machine works before one starts tinkering with it. And a course is a machine like any other. Don't start pulling out pieces before you know what they do.

This is the way

I'm all for that, but some people will complain that they get nervous and that's why they couldn't state how they do the things.

The amount of accomodations in US colleges is insane to where some people are allowed to take extra time, or take their tests not in a classroom setting, or have their tests read to them because they're illiterate or a variety of other things that just aren't compatible with the workforce is insane.

So nothing has changed.

I remember. They sell them in vending machines now, which feels a little dystopian when I visit my alma mater, but it's also kind of nice to know that students have to take actual exams still.