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Suspecting AI cheating, Ivy League prof ordered an in-person final; scores fell 50%
(arstechnica.com)
this post was submitted on 09 Jul 2026
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Technology
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What is the point of paying for college when you squander it this way?
tale as old as time, if it wasnt for AI, it would paying for someone to write your papers, or do your take exams(although you need to find it), although people have allegedly done this with degrees with licenses like being a lawyer, MD when the newly hired couldnt even write a letter or prompt they were quickly laid off. if its a take home essay, you would try to find "Writing prompts" with the exact same subject matter you are asking and just changing the words around.
40 years of telling kids a degree is a job ticket rather than explaining the value of a liberal arts education.
Every time I see k12 education discussion focused on "preparing kids for the job market" I cringe. Its the cart before the horse and just as agile.
they mean the job market as the low-wage, medium wage jobs that supplies most of sectors. not the bougie white collar jobs. to the end they also dumb it down enough that people end up joining the military as cannon fodder.
To be fair, jobs and degree value is 90% regional. There are states with less degrees and states with more degrees. The PNW, for example, has a glut of Bachelors degrees, meaning your Bachelors will give you very little if any traction for jobs. Why would it when there’s double digits in those degrees applying for every 1 job requiring one? Many Midwest, flyover states do not. When there’s no one applying to those degrees positions and then That One Guy shows up, he’s almost guaranteed at least a try in that position.
Sometimes you have to take your degree and move or it will hold little value. People don’t like to hear that, and that’s fair, but it’s also the reality.
You’ll have a cheaper house, cheaper COL, and be very competitive in a job in a flyover state, but because you don’t want to leave the city of Seattle or its surrounding beauty, you stay and bitch about it instead. Or San Francisco. Or [next high COL/housing place]. No one really likes Ohio or the ass end of Illinois but there are both job openings and cheaper housing there.
An in-law earned a safety degree. They could stay in their state for $80k or move to a degree bereft state, with cheaper houses even, for $125k. They moved, and on the company’s dime.
Some of what’s happening here is based in the human principle of: I don’t wanna.. “Don’t wanna” rules the day most of the time.
Don’t wanna keeps you in a crowded expensive place bitching about your finances.
that is where most of the jobs are though, nobody wants to live in a rural area or a poor red states, they dont have jobs there at all. you will be hard pressed to find a tech job in misso/ohio that pays you 100-200k tech+job out of college where you can eaisly find one in seattle/cali,,,,etc. you sound like a boomer conservative to be honest
I’ve not voted for a conservative president, ever. Xennial.
Cities have more jobs by the numbers, yes, but do they have more job openings able to accommodate all the people in those cities?
The main point is location matters with degrees.
To put it on your resume I guess
I had a guy who sat next to me when I took some community classes after work he would show up late and from the corner of my eye could see him scroll when I'd scroll and answer a question on quizes when I did.
I imagine he continued on and now makes more money than I do
The amount of scorn for degrees here is spectacular.
Medicine happens, in part, by experience. Even so, would you want your doctor or nurse working on you either of those roles without their degree(s)?
Psychologist?
Your lawyer?
The engineer designing that bridge you cross every day?
Who has scorn for degrees? All I said is I noticed someone cheating their way through some classes and it sucks knowing that people like that usually fair better monetarily
Not you. All the people posting with a shrug saying it’s just a piece of paper that doesn't mean/do much except help getting a job. Like there’s no useful information there they can’t learn all by themselves & that they have the personal discipline of a 4 year dedicated college curriculum in conjunction with using AI to complete everything.
The article is really discussing bachelor degrees, and this is mostly true for those. Masters and doctorate degrees (or med school or law school, etc) are where specialized learning that actually sets you up for specialized roles happens.
The pre-med student who stopped after getting their bachelor's is not meaningfully better prepared to be your doctor or psychologist than someone with no degree. You wouldn't trust either one.
It's mostly just a piece of paper required for most white collar jobs to even pass on your resume to a real person. That's the only reason I got a degree. I already had tons of experience, but couldn't get a decent full-time job because the job postings all had a degree as a requirement and the automated systems take that as a hard requirement because it's objective and thus easy to filter on.
thats not the only thing they want, they have screen out specific keywords too, or look for X amount of experience, in this specific skill. even beyond your general i have "x amount of general experience". plus they also use other metrics like, just looking at 10-20 resumes and trashing the rest.
Fun fact: as long as you're not studying to become a doctor, lawyer, engineer, or other professional with a governing/licensing body, you can just lie about it.
No employer has ever asked to actually see my diploma. No employer has ever requested a transcript from the school. And even if one does, what's the worst that can happen? You just won't get that specific job -- but you can keep on trying and applying to other jobs.
seen people exaggerate or lie on thier resumes for non- license required jobs. and they do seem to have a better chance of getting hired.
resume reasons, especially ivy league schools. ivy schools tend to select students based on historical alumni reasons if they aren't top cut, and people who grew up in wealth usually had better resources growing up to be smart (but it doesn't by default mean they are smart)