4 ms·

I totally agree. I think the neo-liberal university model is the real culprit. Where I live, Universities get money for each student who graduates. This is up t

I totally agree. I think the neo-liberal university model is the real culprit. Where I live, Universities get money for each student who graduates. This is up to 100k euros for a new doctorate. This means that the University and its admin want as many students to graduate as possible. The (BA&MA) students also want to graduate in target time: if they do, they get a huge part of their student loans forgiven. What has AI done? I teach a BA thesis seminar. Last year, when AI wasn't used as much, around 30% of the students failed to turn in their BA thesises. 30% drop-out rate was normal. This year: only 5% dropped out, while the amount of ChatGPT generated text has skyrocketed. I think there is a correlation: ChatGPT helps students write their thesises, so they're not as likely to drop out. The University and the admins are probably very happy that so many students are graduating. But also, some colleagues are seeing an upside to this: if more graduate, the University gets more money, which means less cuts to teaching budgets, which means that the teachers can actually do their job and improve their courses, for those students who are actually there to learn. But personally, as a teacher, I'm at loss of what to do. Some thesises had hallucinated sources, some had AI slop blogs as sources, the texts are robotic and boring. But should I fail them, out of principle on what the ideal University should be? Nobody else seems to care. Or should I pass them, let them graduate, and reserve my energy to teach those who are motivated and are willing to engage?

avhception 1y ago
I think one of the outcomes might be a devaluation of the certifications offered in the public job marketplace.
- throwaway2037 1y ago
  I can say from some working experience in the United States that way too many jobs require a university degree. I remember being an intern or my first job after uni (which I struggled a great deal to complete), looking around and thinking: "There is no way that all of these people need a uni degree to do their jobs." I couldn't believe how easy work was compared to my uni studies (it was hell). I felt like I was playing at life with a cheat code (infinite lives, or whatever). I don't write that to brag; I am sure many people here feel the same. So many jobs at mega corps require little more than common sense: Come to work on time, dress well, say your pleases and thank yous, be compliant, do what is asked, etc. Repeat and you will have a reasonable middle class life.
  - CalRobert 1y ago
    Then there's Europe, where making it easy to get a master's degree just let to jobs requiring people to waste time getting yet another unneeded degree.
    - intended 1y ago
      This entire situation is something that is predictable, and I have personally called it out years ago - not because of some unique ability, but because this is what happened in India and China decades upon decades ago. There’s only so many jobs which have you a good salary. So everyone had to become a doctor lawyer or engineer. Business degrees were seen as washouts. Even for the job of a peon, you had to be educated. So people followed incentives and got degrees - in any way or form they could. This meant that degrees became a measure, and they were then ruthlessly optimized for, till they stopped having any ability to indicate that people were actually engineers. So people then needed more degrees and so on - to distinguish their fitness amongst other candidates. Education is what liberal arts colleges were meant to provide - but this worked only in an economy that could still provide employment for all the people who never wanted to be engineers, lawyers or doctors. This mess will continue constantly, because we simply cannot match/sort humans, geographies, skills, and jobs well enough - and verifiably. Not everyone is meant to be a startup founder. Or a doctor. Or a plumber, or a historian or an architect or an archaeologist. It’s a jobs market problem, and has been this way ever since the American economy wasn’t able to match people with money for their skills.
      - rwyinuse 1y ago
        Yep, it's a job market problem. Only degrees that are somehow limited in their supply will continue to hold value, the rest approach worthlessness. Neither the state nor universities have any interest to limit the supply. In my country doctors earn huge salaries and have 100% job security, because their powerful interest groups have successfully lobbied to limit the number of grads below job market's demand. Other degrees don't come even close.
  - mcherm 1y ago
halgir 1y ago
> Some thesises had hallucinated sources, some had AI slop blogs as sources, the texts are robotic and boring. But should I fail them, out of principle on what the ideal University should be? No, you should fail them for turning in bad theses, just like you would before AI.
- california-og 1y ago
  That's probably what should happen, but it's not what happens in reality. In grading I have to follow a very detailed grading matrix (made by some higher-ups) and the requirements for passing and getting the lowest grade are so incredibly low that it's almost impossible to fail, if the text even somewhat resembles a thesis. The only way I could fail a student, is if they cheated, plagiarised or fabricated stuff. The person who used the AI slop blog for sources, we asked them to just remove them and resubmit. The person who hallucinated sources is however getting investigated for fabrication. But this is an incredibly long process to go through, which takes away time and energy from actual teaching / research / course prep. Most of the faculty is already overworked and on the verge of burnout (or are recovering post-burnout), so everybody tries to avoid it if they can. Besides, playing a cop is not what anybody wants to do, and its not what teaching should be about, as the original blog post mentioned. IF the University as an institution had some standards and actually valued education, it could be different. But it's not. The University only cares about some imaginary metrics, like international rankings and money. A few years ago they built a multi-million datacenter just for gathering data from everything that happens in the University, so they could make more convincing presentations for the ministry of education — to get more money and to "prove" that the money had a measurable impact. The University is a student-factory (this is a direct quote by a previous principal).
  - halgir 1y ago
    That sounds horrible. Thanks for the insight.
  - throwaway2037 1y ago
    > The person who used the AI slop blog for sources That phrase is so utterly dystopian. I am laughing, but not in a good way.
ninetyninenine 1y ago
Fail them. Only let the ai generated text that has been verified and edited to be true to pass. If they want to use AI make them use it right.
intended 1y ago
You should fail them. The larger work that the intellectual and academic forces of a liberal democracy is that of “verification”. Part of the core part of the output, is showing that the output is actually what it claims to be. The reproducibility crisis is a problem Precisely because a standard was missed. In a larger perspective, we have mispriced facts and verification processes. They are treated as public goods, when they are hard to produce and uphold. Yet they compete with entertainment and “good enough” output, that is cheaper to produce. The choice to fail or pass someone doesn’t address the mispricing of the output. We need new ways to address that issue. Yet a major part of the job you do. is to hold up the result to a standard. You and the institutions we depend on will continue to be crushed by these forces. Dealing with that is a separate discussion from the pass or fail discussion.
gr4vityWall 1y ago
> Some thesises had hallucinated sources, some had AI slop blogs as sources, the texts are robotic and boring. But should I fail them, out of principle on what the ideal University should be? I don't think you should fail them - instead, give them feedback on how to improve their thesis themselves, and how to make better use of tools like ChatGPT. If instead of flat out failing to turn in their thesis, instead they are submitting work that needs more iteration due to bad use of AI, that sounds like a net win to me. The latter can be turned into something useful.

avhception 1y ago

I think one of the outcomes might be a devaluation of the certifications offered in the public job marketplace.

throwaway2037 1y ago
I can say from some working experience in the United States that way too many jobs require a university degree. I remember being an intern or my first job after uni (which I struggled a great deal to complete), looking around and thinking: "There is no way that all of these people need a uni degree to do their jobs." I couldn't believe how easy work was compared to my uni studies (it was hell). I felt like I was playing at life with a cheat code (infinite lives, or whatever). I don't write that to brag; I am sure many people here feel the same. So many jobs at mega corps require little more than common sense: Come to work on time, dress well, say your pleases and thank yous, be compliant, do what is asked, etc. Repeat and you will have a reasonable middle class life.
- CalRobert 1y ago
  Then there's Europe, where making it easy to get a master's degree just let to jobs requiring people to waste time getting yet another unneeded degree.
  - intended 1y ago
    This entire situation is something that is predictable, and I have personally called it out years ago - not because of some unique ability, but because this is what happened in India and China decades upon decades ago. There’s only so many jobs which have you a good salary. So everyone had to become a doctor lawyer or engineer. Business degrees were seen as washouts. Even for the job of a peon, you had to be educated. So people followed incentives and got degrees - in any way or form they could. This meant that degrees became a measure, and they were then ruthlessly optimized for, till they stopped having any ability to indicate that people were actually engineers. So people then needed more degrees and so on - to distinguish their fitness amongst other candidates. Education is what liberal arts colleges were meant to provide - but this worked only in an economy that could still provide employment for all the people who never wanted to be engineers, lawyers or doctors. This mess will continue constantly, because we simply cannot match/sort humans, geographies, skills, and jobs well enough - and verifiably. Not everyone is meant to be a startup founder. Or a doctor. Or a plumber, or a historian or an architect or an archaeologist. It’s a jobs market problem, and has been this way ever since the American economy wasn’t able to match people with money for their skills.
    - rwyinuse 1y ago
      Yep, it's a job market problem. Only degrees that are somehow limited in their supply will continue to hold value, the rest approach worthlessness. Neither the state nor universities have any interest to limit the supply. In my country doctors earn huge salaries and have 100% job security, because their powerful interest groups have successfully lobbied to limit the number of grads below job market's demand. Other degrees don't come even close.
- mcherm 1y ago

halgir 1y ago

california-og 1y ago
That's probably what should happen, but it's not what happens in reality. In grading I have to follow a very detailed grading matrix (made by some higher-ups) and the requirements for passing and getting the lowest grade are so incredibly low that it's almost impossible to fail, if the text even somewhat resembles a thesis. The only way I could fail a student, is if they cheated, plagiarised or fabricated stuff. The person who used the AI slop blog for sources, we asked them to just remove them and resubmit. The person who hallucinated sources is however getting investigated for fabrication. But this is an incredibly long process to go through, which takes away time and energy from actual teaching / research / course prep. Most of the faculty is already overworked and on the verge of burnout (or are recovering post-burnout), so everybody tries to avoid it if they can. Besides, playing a cop is not what anybody wants to do, and its not what teaching should be about, as the original blog post mentioned. IF the University as an institution had some standards and actually valued education, it could be different. But it's not. The University only cares about some imaginary metrics, like international rankings and money. A few years ago they built a multi-million datacenter just for gathering data from everything that happens in the University, so they could make more convincing presentations for the ministry of education — to get more money and to "prove" that the money had a measurable impact. The University is a student-factory (this is a direct quote by a previous principal).
- halgir 1y ago
  That sounds horrible. Thanks for the insight.
- throwaway2037 1y ago
  > The person who used the AI slop blog for sources That phrase is so utterly dystopian. I am laughing, but not in a good way.

ninetyninenine 1y ago

Fail them. Only let the ai generated text that has been verified and edited to be true to pass. If they want to use AI make them use it right.

intended 1y ago

You should fail them. The larger work that the intellectual and academic forces of a liberal democracy is that of “verification”. Part of the core part of the output, is showing that the output is actually what it claims to be. The reproducibility crisis is a problem Precisely because a standard was missed. In a larger perspective, we have mispriced facts and verification processes. They are treated as public goods, when they are hard to produce and uphold. Yet they compete with entertainment and “good enough” output, that is cheaper to produce. The choice to fail or pass someone doesn’t address the mispricing of the output. We need new ways to address that issue. Yet a major part of the job you do. is to hold up the result to a standard. You and the institutions we depend on will continue to be crushed by these forces. Dealing with that is a separate discussion from the pass or fail discussion.

gr4vityWall 1y ago

> Some thesises had hallucinated sources, some had AI slop blogs as sources, the texts are robotic and boring. But should I fail them, out of principle on what the ideal University should be? I don't think you should fail them - instead, give them feedback on how to improve their thesis themselves, and how to make better use of tools like ChatGPT. If instead of flat out failing to turn in their thesis, instead they are submitting work that needs more iteration due to bad use of AI, that sounds like a net win to me. The latter can be turned into something useful.