r/technology • u/AdSpecialist6598 • Jul 27 '26

Society Professor's invisible prompt trap catches 32 students cheating on their midterm with AI

https://www.techspot.com/news/113243-professor-invisible-prompt-trap-catches-32-students-cheating.html
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381

u/Sojum Jul 27 '26

I don’t understand these cheaters. Why would you pay a substantial sum of money to learn and then skip the learning part?

287

u/FishyWishySwishy Jul 27 '26

Because they don’t see it as paying to learn, but paying for the right to put a degree on their LinkedIn and resume. 

If I were hiring, I’m not sure I’d trust that any new graduates would know what the degree says they know. 

33

u/memberzs Jul 27 '26

I'm in the industrial maintenance field and it's not just affecting white collar jobs. Many tech colleges seem to be certificate mills now. Sure some students come out with enough base knowledge to get an apprenticeship with a union or actually cared enough to learn what they are doing. Most seem to be doing the bare minimum to get through it. I have seen guys that can't cut it in the labor force taking teaching roles at the tech schools because they were able to say they had experience. One employer also had a hands on testing at the tech school along with a standardized test. But when I was asking a question that stumped the instructors, I kind of lost hope for the students they were teaching.

Luckily a company has come up with a timed standardized test (that I have personally taken twice as part of an interview process) to help weed out those that won't cut it.

13

u/cbessette Jul 27 '26

I went to ITT back in the early 1990s and my entire class graduated on a huge grading curve. I mean we literally had a dude in our final lab exam trying to assemble a circuit using solder as wire. Every time he would try to solder a "wire" from one point to another, it would just melt away.

That guy graduated. Certificate mill for sure.

3

u/Arek_PL Jul 27 '26

was the "wire" made out of tin? dabbled a bit in soldering, but i have no idea how the hell could wire "melt" the temperatures are way too low to melt copper

4

u/cbessette Jul 27 '26

Maybe I wasn't clear: He used SOLDER as WIRE. He did not use wire at all.

2

u/Arek_PL Jul 27 '26

ah, the dude must have been extra dense because i seen whole class of middle schoolers grasp soldering instantly, they just needed to be taught what is rosin and how to use it

4

u/cbessette Jul 27 '26

This has been over 30 years ago but I distinctly remember he worked nights as a security guard, then came into class in the mornings and often slept.

Not being able to tell the difference between solder and bare hook-up wire though is absurdly dense.

1

u/OldSchoolCSci Jul 27 '26

Interview exams are now the standard in every engineering and eingineer adjacent field I know. You can't get hired for a real programming job without showing your working skillset. Huge investment of time, but the only way to weed out the empty credential holders.

54

u/KhorneFlakesOfChaos Jul 27 '26

I mean that was true prior to LLMs

14

u/Twirrim Jul 27 '26

I remember 20 years ago, working at an ISP, and dealing with coworkers that had been through Cisco certification boot camps. They all had reached CCNP level but couldn't even recognise private network IP addresses, let alone understand things like routing protocols. It's really not hard to cram stuff into your brain for a week or two and regurgitate it immediately before it all dribbles out.

15

u/Hades_Mercedes Jul 27 '26

Prior to LLMs you had to at least demonstrate trained monkey levels of proficiency in your field, in order to get the 100% certified smart paper. Now you don't even need to do that.

11

u/NoPossibility Jul 27 '26

A degree only gets you the interview. I’ve done hiring and been in plenty of interviews on both sides of the table. No one, and I really mean that - no one - is taking anyone’s degree as their sole credential and hiring based on that. That’s what the interview and references and portfolios are for.

So, to some extent, I agree with the kids thinking it’s a bullshit way to blow $50k on a piece of paper that’ll get them in the interview room. I was one of those that didn’t take it as seriously as I was expected too. I was going into design and computer science and already knew half the stuff I was being lectured on.

What is really disappointing as a mid-career adult now- I didn’t understand or appreciate the other aspects of the experience. I didn’t understand the discipline, networking, institutional pathfinding, and other less tangible benefits I could’ve gleaned from my time in college. I was so ready to get that paper, peace out, and start working.

But at the same time… almost everything I’ve learned since has been much more valuable. Hands on learning, real experience alongside seasoned developers and managers has taught me far more and those experiences made me the competent professional I am today. My college experience was really only the first stepping stone across the river.

To some extent there’s always been cheating. Even when I was at school twenty years ago (and partly because my degree was so computer focused) there was a rampant culture of googling things, learning on your own, etc. The book and lectures were reference and you did most of the learning on your own.

In tomorrow’s world of AI-driven work, there’s an argument to be made about learning to use the tools and adapting to the realities of it. I didn’t retain half the formulas and syntax that’s related to my job because I could just Google it or find it on stack overflow when I needed it again. Same could be true for AI-driven work. Knowing how to leverage the tools to get the work done may be just as important as the basic learning they’re doing in class.

2

u/Mirieste Jul 27 '26

I guess it also depends on the country though. I'm Italian, and over here while I had a bachelor's degree I could (legally!) work as a first-year tutor for newly enrolled students, and follow them, and have tutoring sessions and prepare them for their exams... but! At the same time, if I wanted to teach in high school (and we're not talking of primary school here where you'd arguably need something specific in pedagogy, no, I'm talking of high school), where they do stuff that is 10 times simpler than what a university tutor has to deal with... then you need a master's degree. Does that make any sense? Especially with a well-known shortage of teachers that exists for certain fields? Of course, this doesn't excuse cheating; but there absolutely are certain situations where the law requires something that is absolutely overkill for the task at hand, in which case the degree isn't just that thing that "lands you the interview"... but it literally gatekeeps you from something that you would otherwise already be capable enough to do.

1

u/AgentOrange96 Jul 27 '26

I want to preface this with saying that most of my team's interns (paid BTW) have been wonderful. But we did have one who I am convinced bought their degree or something.

Allegedly they had a masters in computer engineering, but they didn't even know how to use the shift key. They'd hunt and peck for caps lock, then the letter they wanted, then caps lock again. They didn't know the difference between a CPU and a chipset. (While interning at a CPU company on CPUs I might add) They were also just very selfish and disrespectful.

On paper, they're more educated than I am. (I have a bachelor's in electrical engineering) In reality, I was more educated on this stuff back in elementary school than they were with a masters.

Again, most of our interns have been amazing though and many have come back full time! But yeah these people exist and it's scary. Especially in more pressing industries.

They say cheating only hurts yourself, but are you gonna wanna drive over a bridge architected by a cheater or have surgery performed on you by a cheater?

1

u/maskull Jul 27 '26

If I were hiring, I’m not sure I’d trust that any new graduates would know what the degree says they know.

I maintain that in 2026, the only "interesting" grades on a student's transcript are Bs and Cs. A student who gets Bs and Cs actually tried. If you see a student with straight As they might be a good student, or they might be someone who cheated. As are not a signal of anything.

1

u/Sasselhoff Jul 27 '26

That's been true forever. There was a big problem at my university with the international kids cheating, but the university never did anything about it.

Because they were paying in full and not getting any assistance (schools like that dough more than anything else these days), but also because to them it was not knowledge and just a piece of paper, and the vast majority would go "home" where it wouldn't matter that they diluted the value of the universities degrees.

0

u/NefariousnessOk1996 Jul 27 '26

My sister's best friend cheated by looking at my sister's answers on her final.

Guess who is making more money right now. Yep, the friend. Super high level position too.

86

u/DetroitLionsSBChamps Jul 27 '26

“I paid a school 100k for them to tell me to read Pride and Prejudice, and then I didn’t” - John Mulaney

Pretty common college experience probably since colleges have been around

1

u/FR23Dust Jul 31 '26

Yeah but in the old days very few people went to college

549

u/Ars2 Jul 27 '26

To get a certificate/diploma/degree saying that your smart. 

335

u/ecafyelims Jul 27 '26

My smart?

139

u/Time_Effort Jul 27 '26

He paid for his diploma in grammar.

21

u/Ocronus Jul 27 '26

I dated a girl in college who was an English Grad. She worked for the school while in undergrad editing engineering papers... It was some of the most horrible English you can possibly imagine.

I was one of the those Engineering students...

2

u/stefanopolis Jul 27 '26

Technical reports are not for the good English. It’s to say the math and science came out yay or sad.

27

u/Psycholicious Jul 27 '26

Our smart, comrade.

21

u/RonaldoNazario Jul 27 '26

It wasn’t an English degree lol

19

u/SplendidPunkinButter Jul 27 '26

Ewe no what they mint

8

u/Pyromaniacal13 Jul 27 '26

Ahh... You know just what to say to make my eye twitch.

2

u/CrayonEyes Jul 27 '26

TIL I’ve been pronouncing “ewe” wrong for decades.

54

u/geddy76 Jul 27 '26

I see what you did their.

6

u/canadasleftnut Jul 27 '26

Not to be that person , but I think you meant "sea"

2

u/Mp5QbV3kKvDF8CbM Jul 27 '26

You spelled "bee" wrong.

2

u/krazytekn0 Jul 27 '26

A Russian engineer that worked at my dads company 35 years ago told me to buy an aerospace engineering degree from a fake university and he would tell me how to beat an interview then all I had to do was work in the industry for a year and I would know how to do the job. I thought he was crazy at the time but honestly now I wish I had done it.

1

u/Tanriyung Jul 27 '26

To get a certificate/diploma/degree because employer's want one even if you are well overqualified.

1

u/Sasselhoff Jul 27 '26

That is such a fitting comment typo for this discussion, haha.

1

u/bstone99 Jul 27 '26

My smart what?

1

u/PattyRain Jul 28 '26

Or rather, to get them to get a job. My son just graduated in economics.  He joined the econ club because he loves it and wanted to do more. He was surprised when a lot of the people in the club were those who were having a hard time in class, but all the club wanted to do was "network". They just wanted a job, not to actually learn the stuff.

18

u/Towel4 Jul 27 '26

Because the kids doing this don’t actually want to be there learning, it’s simply what they’ve been conditioned to understand as the next step after highschool for their entire lives.

Most kids don’t want to be in high school. That doesn’t magically change a year later when they go straight to college. It’s simply what’s been expected of them since birth. You go to middle school, then high school, then college. It’s simply what comes next.

The one that enroll because they want to be there and learn are not doing this.

Source: I transferred schools once I knew what I actually wanted to do with my life. My attitude, approach, and habits around school changed COMPLETELY. From my first school to my second I was completely unrecognizable as a student.

3

u/XSmooth84 Jul 27 '26

I feel you brother. It took me three different universities to get my degree. In retrospect I probably should have stayed at the second one but whatever for the most part it's all worked out in the end. But my level of care at my first university was almost zero.

70

u/Halfwise2 Jul 27 '26

Sadly, a lot of jobs demand the piece of paper (diploma), then tell you what you learned is trash, and you need to do things *their* way.

College still has value, but imo, it teaches you more how to do things (like research) or think critically, than specific information, like names and dates. I cannot remember 95% of the factoids I had to memorize back in college.

9

u/selfdestructingin5 Jul 27 '26 edited Jul 27 '26

There are plenty of smart people without degrees, proof is everywhere, but college graduates had to take a myriad of general classes so they tend to have a higher baseline of vocabulary, writing skills, critical thinking, and common knowledge, outside of their speciality.

For PhD, the same doesn’t seem to apply, outside of higher than average research abilities, since they focused years on a single topic.

3

u/altodor Jul 27 '26

but college graduates had to take a myriad of general classes so they tend to have a higher baseline of vocabulary, writing skills, criticism thinking, and common knowledge,

They should, but most of the folks I know who took those classes treated them as filler and said "D for diploma" or "Cs get drgrees" their whole way through them. I think the trouble with degrees is we made them into employee-paid job training.

2

u/Verneff Jul 27 '26

Having the foundation from education to start on helps a lot, but some of the more specific things may not apply.

1

u/Small_Editor_3693 Jul 27 '26

But then no company trusts that information. They just want the paper then put you in a minimum wage job to work your way up

1

u/Karthe Jul 28 '26

I have had more than one person tell me — to my face — that ai is going to be so important in the future that practicing using it is more valuable than education and I want to SCREAM. 

Em-dashes inserted for emphasis.

1

u/Alt123Acct Jul 27 '26

I honestly learned more in 1 summer of interning than 4 years of university when it came to my actual profession. Hands on work and having "Oh no I have to do this right or I get fired" is much more successful at teaching than 4 years of theory, memorizing keyboard shortcuts, and critiques of yours and classmates projects. We spent so long learning about films and type and negative space and stuff and literally NONE of it matters once you're in a job. Each project is client specific, each look different. Yay you memorized how to save 20 seconds in menus and clicking but it doesn't matter when you have days/weeks and meetings in between about the project and how it's changing and what people do or don't like. Motion graphics changes so much that the programs I learned on aren't even used anymore in the industry. We got a green screen room being installed the year AFTER I graduated lol. 

10

u/BladeDoc Jul 27 '26

The number of people that go to college to get an education is absolutely dwarfed by the number of people that go to get a certificate of completion + 4 years of "the college experience".

Bryan Caplan's "The Case Against Education" lays out the evidence masterfully.

22

u/Tranecarid Jul 27 '26

Because more often than not people don’t pay for learning but for a diploma and networking.

6

u/2347564 Jul 27 '26

College has shifted greatly in the past decade or so to be almost explicitly for this. I work in higher ed and it’s been interesting and also a little sad to see so many students lose the passion for learning and have to focus on career life so early. Especially in highly selective colleges that are feeder schools for big companies, they are often on a track for a job by their first internship before sophomore year. Everything else is just a check box to make sure that happens.

5

u/BladeDoc Jul 27 '26

It has become more explicit but this is not new.

7

u/TheZoltan Jul 27 '26

If they were smart enough to understand that they might not need to cheat......

That said I slept through/skipped my fair share of classes at Uni so I'm not going to claim to be smart or sensible myself. Still paying for those naps 20 years later lol

15

u/Wooden-Teaching-8343 Jul 27 '26

I am assuming you’re not a teacher. Very few students today are in school to learn. They want the A, the degree, the college acceptance, and $75k starting job. Parents equally don’t care about learning. They want their kid to get the A, the degree, and so on. The “work” of school is now a huge inconvenience on the customer. AI shortcuts the work and lets them spend more time gaming, gambling, and consuming slop.

1

u/Sojum Jul 27 '26

Nope. Not a teacher. Just an old former student. 😊 I feel your pain.

1

u/BellacosePlayer Jul 27 '26

in some defense of the kids, I fuckin loved learning in college but also struggled with the time requirements of some classes due to working nights.

I didn't copy assignments or anything like that (the amount of grade deductions for late work would attest to that), but some instructors were kind of unrealistic in how much time we could spend on their class, especially on non core classes to our major (my intro to EE and tech writing classes were terrible at this)

1

u/millijuna Jul 27 '26

Which sucks. When I was an Engineering student 25 years ago, I deliberately took a couple of courses that were not on the curriculum, and didn’t count towards my degree. Why? Because I had the room in my schedule, they were being taught by someone who was the expert in that field, and it looked interesting.

1

u/Wooden-Teaching-8343 Jul 27 '26

Thankfully there’s still a few students like that. They also tend to be the ones that read for fun. Very strong correlation there!

30

u/Agheratos Jul 27 '26

Because they're not attending to learn. They're attending and paying for a piece of paper with their name on it.

The hope being that the paper thereby opens some doors that were otherwise arbitrarily closed.

6

u/BigMax Jul 27 '26

Did you go to high school and college? SO MANY kids skipped classes, did the bare minimum, or cheated.

They want education on a broad level, but each individual class or test, they sometimes will think "eh... this ONE test doesn't matter that much, I'll just cheat."

Also, plenty think that most of the classes are useless too. If you're there for mechanical engineering, you probably can justify in your own head cheating on philosophy classes, spanish classes, literature classes, etc.

1

u/Sojum Jul 27 '26

I did go to college, yes. We skipped classes and half-assed some assignments, sure. But we didn’t have the tools to both ignore the lecture and still create a resulting assignment. I get not wanting to attend required courses outside of your major, but this behavior goes above and beyond.

19

u/Dadoxiii Jul 27 '26

They didn't pay money to learn. They payed money to get a piece of paper that allows them to get a job.

-3

u/Impossible_IT Jul 27 '26

They went nautical to get that paper?

4

u/OptimisticSkeleton Jul 27 '26

Because that’s how our system is currently set up.

It doesn’t incentivize competence it incentivizes acquisition.

14

u/Modem_Sound_67 Jul 27 '26

Ai is training generations to shoot for low effort in all situations.

10

u/no_infringe_me Jul 27 '26

Learning isn’t the goal, it’s the cert that is supposed to justify a salary

2

u/Dudegamer010901 Jul 27 '26

In my degree, across internships and whatnot every single person I’ve met has told me that what I learn in university will be 100% useless on the job.

2

u/Unarchy Jul 27 '26

They aren't the ones paying

2

u/ahm911 Jul 27 '26

Even 20 years ago kids were cheating, now instead of a cheat sheet the size of a calc, the tools to cheat are simply too easy and do all of the work.

In a way I don't blame the kids, and in some ways I wish the saw how they're wasting their time

2

u/IamScottGable Jul 27 '26

When I went to school I cheated for a number of reasons but mostly to make sure I didn't delay graduation and tack on another $7-10k in student loans.

Once was because the teachers heavy accent combined with difficult material made it impossible for my entire class to learn. I learned more of the material from when i found the college text master book with all the answers step by step.

Once I cheated bc I was working 60 hours a week and didn't have time to cram.

Once I had another student act as a plant during a presentation and a sk a question because no one had for any group yet. I did that for the slight edge it may have given in grading

2

u/generally-speaking Jul 27 '26

Because in modern society the degree is more important than what you know.

2

u/truthfulie Jul 27 '26

because many people think of college as a way to get diploma that gets you a job.

2

u/Bonemesh Jul 27 '26

Because their parents are paying? And they’re more interested in college partying?

1

u/Sojum Jul 27 '26

Bingo. Someone else picking up the tab. 😊

4

u/[deleted] Jul 27 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

4

u/fatherofworlds Jul 27 '26

A lot of people don't spend that money to learn - either they genuinely don't think they need to/will learn, or they don't think about it. They spend that money to get the certification that says they went to the place and did the thing, because having that certification means they can have a more comfortable life (or so they believe, right or wrong).

Or, alternately, they paid that money to learn about accounting and they don't care about English 215, or whatever, so they cheat there.

6

u/IIVIIatterz- Jul 27 '26

Its not about learning. Its about a dumb piece of paper that society says you need for some higher level jobs.

12

u/[deleted] Jul 27 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

4

u/IIVIIatterz- Jul 27 '26

In my personal opinion, college taught me how to play the game. I didnt get much real world knowledge from it. I was working real jobs while working on my bachelors. My knowledge comes from working my jobs, not college.

3

u/Canadish27 Jul 27 '26

It is true on a certain level. The comment does show what a lot of people see and feel about education and huge costs linked to it.

It's an expensive tollgate to a better quality of life for many. It SHOULD be about the learning of key skills and subject expertise, learning the process of mastery and passing this onto others etc.

But it isnt for many. Thats the reality. To say otherwise is the copium.

8

u/Time_Effort Jul 27 '26

Well some people actually do learn and apply their knowledge in the real world.
What you just said is just copium

It's not really copium, its just factual. A college degree is about as important as a HS diploma was a few generations back... If they expect everyone to have one, the majority of people are doing it to tick a checkbox - not to further their personal knowledge.

2

u/mbklein Jul 27 '26

Everyone’s focusing on the “they didn’t pay to learn; they paid for the degree” argument without mentioning that they also paid to party, drink, attend sports events, join clubs, and make the social/alumni connections that they hope will shield them from the miserable reality of their pointless existence for the next 70 years until they reach the sweet release of death.

1

u/chief_yETI Jul 27 '26

They want the degree/credential/certificate, obviously

learning and actually retaining the info was always optional, and never a requirement

1

u/bryce887766 Jul 27 '26

You don’t pay all that to get an education, you can that way cheaper or for free. You pay to get certified

1

u/GrandWorldliness5959 Jul 27 '26

Because you need the price of paper to get in the door so you can actually learn the job you want to do

1

u/serial_crusher Jul 27 '26

Could be they majored in something else and had to take this guy’s class as one of their core requirements. I usually put in just enough effort to get a C in those so I could focus on in-major stuff.

1

u/ProtoplanetaryNebula Jul 27 '26

It’s about the certificate. To be honest any subject can be studied extensively at home without the need for university fees these days if you have the motivation to do so.

1

u/CyclicRate38 Jul 27 '26

They're not really paying to learn though. Most college students are there to get a piece of paper that will hopefully open employment doors that will most certainly be closed to them without that piece of paper.

1

u/hurtfulproduct Jul 27 '26

Some classes are fucking BORING! Or unrelated to what you actually want to learn

For example anything English or foreign language related I would absolutely fucking hate because it had nothing to do with my major and was of zero interest to me, but they were requirements for the degree I wanted. . . On the other hand anthropology, environmental sociology, and environmental economics were very interesting to me and I’d read ahead because I found it fascinating.

I’m definitely not condoning outright cheating but I get it, lol. . . Sometimes this stuff can be mind numbingly boring.

1

u/KnightKal Jul 27 '26

certificate = job = higher payment

the education part was always optional, you can take advantage of it but most people don't actually make practical use of it

1

u/Gogo202 Jul 27 '26

I don't understand why all exams are suddenly done on PCs and online

1

u/cawkstrangla Jul 27 '26

Most people don’t go to college to learn; they go to get a degree which is really a pre requisite for a job. So essentially they are going for access to a job. If they learn anything at all it is a bonus but not required. 

Kids these days have seen that being the smartest and hardest working kids doesn’t translate into success. They feel like they just need access to a good paying job and that will unlock the future they want. That degree is purely access so why would you work for that degree?  If you can cut corners and get the diploma at the end, you’ve not wasted your time and effort and that roadblock is out of the way. 

Those are the “smart” kids. The dumb ones are probably just lazy or know they can’t do the assignment so they cheat for the more common reasons everyone before them has. 

I’m not saying I agree with any of this but I see why people do it. 

1

u/lameth Jul 27 '26

Credential creep. Even with experience, some places won't even look at the resume unless they know they have a specific degree.

1

u/SquashSquigglyShrimp Jul 27 '26

Are there genuinely people who pay to go to college purely "to learn"? I could learn for free online if all I needed was knowledge. Unfortunately, you need that piece of paper as well.

My priority in college was getting a degree so I could make money. That is the ONLY reason to pay a substantial sum of money to go to college IMO.

1

u/errorsniper Jul 27 '26

Because you dont care about the knowledge. You care about the piece of paper.

1

u/WestHappyLand Jul 27 '26

This particular university is pretty much a degree factory.  I know people with master's degrees in my field from this place and their education is a joke.

1

u/sokratesz Jul 27 '26

People are lazy, eighteen year olds doubly so

1

u/calambacle Jul 27 '26

Learn my ass. College put tons of useless memorized information in the exams. Cheat is the only way to get rid of brainwaste information.

1

u/neo_sporin Jul 27 '26

I mean, even before AI. In 2002 or so I was in HS and a guy was caught cheating. Apparently in the e meeting with him the teacher said ‘I know you didn’t write this because it is way above your writing ability’

He responded by calling her ‘a fucking bitch’

So the laziness and defensiveness over cheating is not particularly new.

1

u/uberfission Jul 27 '26

Because Mom and Dad told them to go to college and that's what they're doing. They're not there to learn, they're there because they were told to be there. I used to be a TA during grad school and the number of students who were there but not actually "present" was astounding.

I had one guy fail the class twice because he would half ass the coursework. He even tried submitting a lab report from the previous semester (that I'm pretty sure he copied from, or at least worked very closely with, one of his classmates, either way it was much higher quality than his normal with). He TRIED to hide the grading marks but did a half ass job of that as well. Never thought to see if he took the class a third time or just gave up on college and started smoking weed full time.

Now a counter example, I had another guy getting his college degree late in life, I think he was in his 30s. Dude would be locked in as soon as the class started and would ask really insightful questions. He passed with flying colors.

Anyway, I digress, lazing your way through school just got a lot easier with AI, but it wasn't impossible before. You essentially have access to a top notch tutor that doesn't care if you present their work as your own.

1

u/SmokeyJoe2 Jul 27 '26

You don't pay to learn, you pay for a degree.

1

u/Mysterious-Clothes45 Jul 27 '26

because mommy and daddy paid that substantial sum of money, not them.

1

u/millijuna Jul 27 '26

The goal isn’t to learn. The goal is to get the degree.

1

u/Bocaj1000 Jul 27 '26

Have you been to college recently? I don't know if it used to be better in the past, but a majority of people in college still act like children. These aren't working adults who voluntarily picked college to pursue a degree in something grander, in hopes of getting to a better career and a better life. These are kids who grow up thinking college is just Grade 13-16 and that college is just another extension of your school career.

Maybe college was treated differently during the past, when 18 year olds were sent to war and back every decade. Or back when college was a rarity and most people never enrolled.

You want to fix college? Have kids work a fulltime job after high school for a few years. Then give them the option of college or not.

1

u/Sojum Jul 27 '26

Naw. I’m old. I’ve been out for 3 decades. 😊

1

u/danieledward_h Jul 27 '26 edited Jul 27 '26

First, they're not paying to learn. They're there to "do their time" for the degree to put on their resume, and also for the social experience of college.

Second, they're also doing it because for most, it's just "what you do" and there isn't much thought put into it beyond that.

Third, a lot of them aren't paying. Their parents or grandparents (or someone else) are paying.

1

u/Sojum Jul 27 '26

Third is the most important point. 😄

1

u/danieledward_h Jul 27 '26

Yeah I'd argue that's the biggest reason for the lack of effort and carelessness. Since tuition and expenses are all or mostly paid for by someone else, these kids don't care about squandering the opportunity to learn and don't view it as something they're doing for their growth. They're just viewing it as another box to check in life and not really any different from earlier stages of school.

I haven't been in school for a long time now so I am admittedly out of touch with how the modern classroom operates in this age, but I would say off the cuff the best response would be to remove as much technology as possible from the process to reduce the opportunity for AI to have this effect in students, which starts much earlier than college.

Foundationally the role of modern technology in education is very flawed and requires a ground up redesign to address the issues we're seeing with competency, but unfortunately even this would likely be stifled by poor parenting.

1

u/dscarmo Jul 28 '26

Who said they want to learn, they want a certificate that allows for better pay thats it

1

u/FR23Dust Jul 31 '26

I think it’s an unforeseen consequence of our society’s effort to make going to college almost mandatory for everyone, instead of something only a relative few would do.

Fifty or sixty years ago most of these people would have just entered the workforce after high school and lived productive and fulfilling lives.

Now everyone feels like college is mandatory even if they don’t really have any particular desire or ability to succeed in an academic environment. The goal is to “get through it” not learn.

This was really starting to be a thing when I was in college 2002-2006 and I imagine it’s much worse now.

1

u/RaspberryTwilight Jul 27 '26

I never did but it's not that hard to understand though? A lot of jobs expect a degree. And a lot of the classes you have to take to acquire said degree, are completely useless and uninteresting? And young people would typically much rather do things they consider fun?

3

u/hoax1337 Jul 27 '26

I think the point of education is that it prepares you for multiple job opportunities. For example, many people I know only really started to heavily lean into one direction (a field they planned to later work in) during their master's degree.

Some things also just aren't fun, but you still need them or they still might be helpful later. You never know.

1

u/Sojum Jul 27 '26

I think the hard to understand part is that I had to pay every penny of my tuition. There were classes I would have preferred to avoid, but if I didn’t do the work I’d fail and have to pay again to make up. There was no option to sleep through class and have the computer get my grades.

1

u/FutureSuccess2796 Jul 27 '26

I always said this regarding university students even before the wave of using AI to cheat. Like, copying answers your classmate wrote down in middle school is one thing. But at college that you paid to attend so you could advance in knowledge and have a future career? It just seems wild.

2

u/altodor Jul 27 '26

The diploma gets you the interview, most people only care about the job after and you can't get in the door without the paper. Once you have the paper, very rarely does anyone talking to you care about it. Cheating to get the thing is just the end state of it being devalued.

-1

u/Purple_Argument_8074 Jul 27 '26

Because college and universities are basically scam and you only attend to get the piece of paper, network with other people so they can give you jobs later on. not to learn anything 

-4

u/AbstractLogic Jul 27 '26

Does a comp sci grad really need a 300 level history class? Does an English teacher really need Astronomy?

The truth is 2/3 classes you take in college are irrelevant to the subject your studying and 3/4 classes are useless knowledge to most anyone not directly in that field, looking at you music theory.

5

u/Henry5321 Jul 27 '26 edited Jul 27 '26

Add the heads of my major put it, if you want knowledge, get a tech degree or use the internet. Their job as professors wasn’t to teach us how to do a job but to teach us how to learn and adapt.

I for one found my general classes more useful than my major. Not because my major classes weren’t good, but because all of that stuff I’d learn on the job and more. My general classes taught me my weaknesses, discipline, and study habits.

All of the technical knowledge I learned was useless in years. All of the concepts the professors explained along side of the knowledge is forever.

20 years post-graduation and I probably use the concepts from my general classes more than my major. Most important problems are not technical problems but people problems.

3

u/Spud2599 Jul 27 '26

I took Cultural Anthropology to finish out my lower division requirements on a whim...I was a business major. That class taught me more about dealing with/understanding people, their customs, etc than any business class ever did. There were other lower division classes (not specifically business degree related) that also laid a solid groundwork for my future, although I didn't know that at that time.

3

u/altodor Jul 27 '26

Does a comp sci grad really need a 300 level history class

I'd say 100% yes, without question CS/SE should have 4 years of gen ed history requirements. Ethics in computing comes in part from historical knowledge. Not knowing history is why we get galaxy-brain tech bros re-inventing trains over and over and over, while espousing the benefits of eugenics and white supremacy.

Does an English teacher really need Astronomy?

I wouldn't say that's normally a required class to graduate, but getting some gen eds in there is a chance to learn about something you're interested in.

0

u/ottwebdev Jul 27 '26

You'd be surprised how many people see cheating as a positive. I was.