So the problem here is degree inflation. 20 years ago when I was getting my first master's degree it was a 5 years of in person classes. In the meantime degrees became required for lots of positions. Teachers need to get additional degrees to get promotions, you need a degree to apply for a job in the public sector and so on. So what used to be a proof of your qualifications became just a certificate you need to get. Now I'm getting my second master's degree and it's a year of online classes, without any in person evaluation. We will either start distinguishing between bullshit degrees from online universities and real ones or all of them will lose any value.
this post was submitted on 29 Jul 2026
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The gold standard would be to make each student do an oral defense of their work. Hand-written exams are good too. Both of these approaches are time-consuming to mark, though.
Assessment design can require students to perform analysis of rare and obscure source material, so that there are no published materials for AI to draw on (which can make it struggle). Similarly, asking for a good bibliography that lists the sources used in the text and formats it correctly would show up the hallucinatory tendencies of AI, I think — though I haven’t tried the latest models.
I can think of a couple of rules that could prevent a lot of the more blatant cheating:
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All computer generated coursework must have some form of change tracking enabled, thus the assessor can see the way the essay was written.
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All computer generated coursework must come with an accompanying oral assessment where the student has to discuss their work and research methodology.
The former would make it difficult to copy directly from ChatGPT, as the lack of any editing would leave an obvious fingerprint
... And passing the latter would require a level of understanding that would be difficult to replicate if you hadn't done the research yourself.
As someone who is terrible at project work but great at tests, maybe now is finally my time to get a degree. Because tests seem the only thing you can't cheat on now.
remember these?
Yeah, it’s a made up problem. In my experience, generated by two factors: universities wanting to increase the number of tests for each subject, and wanting students to be experienced with using computers. Thus many tests become at home, with the computer, where cheating is soooooo easy.