this post was submitted on 28 Mar 2026
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Unpopular Opinion

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I had seen people paying for services to write research for them.

I had seen people translate research papers from foreign languages(Like Russian for example) to English to avoid doing any work.

And even much more methods were used in collages.

The reality is people can't seem to understand how broken are education systems and how science had flows that are only now brought to light and studied.

While AI made fraud more accessible for sure and made the problems worse, it's only a sign of how much education were broken before it.

In my eyes, the last years put a bright spotlight on degrees worth that a lot of companies had started valuing them less and most probably the value of official degrees will keep falling down as the years pass by.

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[–] Alexstarfire@lemmy.world 15 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Just cause it was bad before doesn't mean it's not worse now. It's a lot easier to use AI.

[–] Beep@lemmus.org 2 points 1 day ago

Yes and I mentioned it in my post.

[–] echo@lemmy.today 14 points 1 day ago

What do "collage students" have to do with colleges and science education?

[–] Feyd@programming.dev 9 points 1 day ago

At least the previous cheating took effort. In all seriousness though, university was originally a system where a class was basically a book club directed by an expert. You went to class, discussed the reading, found out what to read for next time.

  • going back to this format, plus tests that you take in class, with no grading of homework which was always stupid in the first place, would solve all the problems with cheating. It is also a better format for learning. Having lectures where students face to take notes in real time to have the material for the tests when it could just be in a book is absurd and massively inefficient
    • but you'd have to have enough professors
    • and professors would have to stop reusing tests
[–] one_old_coder@piefed.social 7 points 1 day ago

Your title is wrong anyway. We had like 10% of cheaters before because it was hard to cheat, you could get caught, and there was some moral barrier to do that. Now, you only need a Google account to cheat, and I'm pretty sure that the rate of 50% of students cheating is pretty accurate.

how broken are education systems

Yes, but it's not an excuse for that huge increase. There was way less cheating before, AI enabled it.

[–] JohnnyEnzyme@piefed.social 7 points 1 day ago

All the Dude ever wanted was a good "collage."

[–] MantisToboggon@lemmy.world 6 points 1 day ago (4 children)

What the fuck is even the point of going to college if you don't want to learn?

[–] rumschlumpel@feddit.org 16 points 1 day ago

A lot of people go to college specifically to get a decent job later on. Companies requiring college degrees for work that really shouldn't are to blame, mostly.

Social network tradition.

They say frats do their hazing as a way of extortion.

[–] DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)
[–] MantisToboggon@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Not being incompetent is more impressive!

[–] rumschlumpel@feddit.org 6 points 1 day ago

Doesn't pay the bills, though.

[–] DMCMNFIBFFF@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

If everyone in college and university is getting easy degrees with AI and similar, why not just bypass the process and give everyone a Phd?

You get a Phd, OP.

I get a Phd.

Everyone on Lemmy gets a Phd.

We all get Phds!

Yaay!!

I gpt a phd, a pretty huge dick

/s

[–] queermunist@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 day ago

College is about accreditation instead of learning, so people will only put in the effort they need to become accredited rather than putting in the extra effort required to actually learn.

[–] PP_BOY_@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago

I had seen people paying for services to write research for them.

I had seen people translate research papers from foreign languages(Like Russian for example) to English to avoid doing any work.

What I see as the main distinction between these forms and AI-enabled cheating is that the university is at least accrediting someone's scholarship (assuming it goes through the system just fine). AI/LLMs output pure, unverifiable, black-box gobbledygook in a way that gums up the whole system. I'm not associated with a university anymore but have several friends who do teach at that level and the amount of opaque muck they're having to trawl through just to try to prove if a human wrote any bit of the essay they've been handed in makes me glad I didn't pursue my own career in education further.

I agree with the gist of your argument, I really do, but I don't think that the current gen of AI cheaters are just a new form of a forever problem in academia.