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Damn that's crazy. Guess the take home test is dead now. I never understood this behavior from undergrads though, you're paying so much for an education and th

Damn that's crazy. Guess the take home test is dead now. I never understood this behavior from undergrads though, you're paying so much for an education and then you just skip the education part? Why bother?

thereitgoes456 3mo ago
Because it's an important aid to getting to a high-paying job in the US, not just a means to learn. One need only look at the resume filtering process, a once manual bias that has now been codified into algorithmic bias with AI. A degree from a good school boosts your chances immensely, and other facets such as coursework don't matter much. If you have ever seen someone filter applicant resumes, you will understand instantly. There are too many, you have to filter them somehow and the allure is irresistible.
- DANmode 3mo ago
  If any hiring managers are reading this: make your directions super specific, or require a cover letter.
stackskipton 3mo ago
>you're paying so much for an education and then you just skip the education part? Why bother? Because you are viewing the motivation of college wrong for most people. For most people, the purpose of college is to get piece of paper that will open up higher salary opportunities. Ergo, they are just doing whatever required to get said piece of paper with least amount of effort. Until degrees, in particular, degrees from well-regarded universities stop being that method, this behavior will continue.
- onemoresoop 3mo ago
  Sadly this is true. Another take is that if you don’t use AI but everybody outperforms you on exams using AI at some point you’re forced into it as well.
- bmitc 3mo ago
  That motivation isn't necessarily inherent in the attendees though. That has been formed by corporations increasingly placing pressure on universities to be their personal training grounds, without any actual investment. Corporations don't want to train anymore. They want universities and other companies to do their training for them. It's why we're seeing the death of the liberal arts majors. It's sad, because usually the smartest and most creative people I've worked with in the field of engineering and software have been liberal arts majors. But corporations don't want intelligent people. They want people who have been molded to whatever the soup du jour is.
  - aleph_minus_one 3mo ago
    > That [motivation] has been formed by corporations increasingly placing pressure on universities to be their personal training grounds, without any actual investment. Corporations don't want to train anymore. They want universities and other companies to do their training for them. I don't think so. The problem rather is that corporations very often want some very different knowledge of employees than what universities teach to the students. If what the universities teach was very important for the job, applicants who have not invested serious effort into getting a deep understanding of the topics of the courses would nearly all fail in the job interviews. The problem rather is that for many jobs the knowledge that you could have gotten from the university typically does not matter, and thus investing minimal effort into the courses does not get you rejected in a job interview.
    - Avicebron 3mo ago
      If only they could communicate with each other and explain their reasoning. Corporation A "Hi University, here is what we hire highly paid people to do, and what we need to improve as a company." University B, "Hi Corp A, here is our educational mandate to create well-rounded, highly educated people, we can probably fit your needs into the curriculum in the last couple of semesters, let's work together to make sure you have good employees and we have people who aren't struggling to pay back loans because they have an engineering degree but can't make more than 50K at a dead end job."
- ghostly_s 3mo ago
  > For most people, the purpose of college is to get piece of paper that will open up higher salary opportunities More true at an Ivy than anywhere else. > This year, the economist decided that both the midterm and the final exams for his course would be of the take-home, closed-book type (there is a certain tradition of this at Ivy League schools). If this guy thinks AI is motivating his previously guiless student body to start cheating on these tests, rather than simply changing the way they are cheating, he's been sniffing too many of his own farts.
- userbinator 3mo ago
  Until degrees, in particular, degrees from well-regarded universities stop being that method, this behavior will continue. This is already starting to happen, at least for software engineering positions. There have been plenty of stories of candidates with degrees from prestigious institutions failing to answer the simplest of questions correctly. FizzBuzz is a famous example, but there are many others.
DANmode 3mo ago
They’ve been taught that not having the piece of paper will keep them from having even a menial job, so you have a huge population of people bullshitting their way through to the piece of paper.
deleted 3mo ago
[deleted]
TrackerFF 3mo ago
Because for many a college degree is a pure formality to land a job. My first job out of college, I worked with veterans at the company who all got in with a HS diploma. Now you realistically need a masters degree to be competitive, for no other reason than that where I live (Norway) most applicants have a 5-year masters degree. It is basically academic inflation. Here we have a tongue-in-cheek word "Mastersyken" which translates to "Master's illness/disease", a word for the phenomena that too many people are pursuing a master's degree for the sake of the diploma alone, trying to become more attractive in the search for a job, but with the side effect that suddenly "everyone" has a master's degree, and in the end everyone is stuck at the same place as before, but with extra student loans. The worst part is when you start working, and indeed discover that this is a job you could have done just fine straight out of HS.
- musicale 3mo ago
  A master's in CS can teach you interesting and very useful things, like how OS kernels, distributed systems, networks, and microprocessors work. A master's in EE will teach you things like signal processing and analog circuit design as well. Knowing these things helps you to design, build, and evaluate systems that are reliable and efficient. A master's in science helps you understand how the physical world works and how to reason quantitatively as well as qualitatively. A master's in humanities gives you knowledge and understanding of human culture, such as literature and the arts, and history - subjects that can be deeply enriching and can provide insights that transcend disciplines. A master's in social science will teach you about how humans behave in groups and how they interact with their environment, and about statistical analysis. Writing a master's thesis will also teach you a lot and make you a better writer - if you actually write it yourself and don't rely on AI. Any of these degrees will certainly qualify you to be a more interesting, knowledgeable, and insightful barista or Uber driver.
  - alex43578 3mo ago
    There should be no reason you have to jump to a master’s for that. A bachelor’s in CS or EE would be a joke if it didn’t (doesn’t) cover those things. Arguably, even the current 4 year bachelor’s is a waste compared to a focused 2 year program: looking at my college’s requirements, many classes are wasted. Business majors taking a physical science with lab component, entry level English classes being taught by a TA that doesn’t speak English natively, etc.
musicale 3mo ago
Apparently some students aren't actually interested in learning and view the diploma as a meal ticket rather than a meaningful credential. Or perhaps the university is just seen as a networking opportunity. If students don't want to be there in the first place and/or don't see any value in learning, it is unsurprising that they'd take the easy way out. Or maybe they cheated their way into Brown and are just continuing. But I was always interested in learning, and understood that cheating was a method of learning avoidance. Why waste the amazing learning resources - faculty, teaching assistants, courses, labs, libraries, studios, rehearsal spaces, interesting speakers, arts and culture events, computing facilities, maker spaces, etc. - that are available at a place like Brown?
watwut 3mo ago
When it costs a lot of money, the failure itself costs a lot of money. And you cant afford it. Because failure means you paid a lot of money for nothing. An expensive education comes with higher temptation to cheat.
IshKebab 3mo ago
> then you just skip the education part? Why bother? You've never put anything off in your life or taken the easy short term route? Come on this is not difficult to understand. You aren't different either.
throawayonthe 3mo ago
i mean, even if you are truly there for learning, doesn't it make sense in a low risk setting to try and boost your grade? it's different if you're cheating on your homework or other learning, but there isn't much learning left to do on the exam, that's for the grade
mrkeen 3mo ago
* I am in the state of not knowing about something * This is brought to my attention by an exam question * I have an oracle in the form of a textbook, an LLM, the internet, or all of the above Which action is skipping the education: looking up the answer, or not looking up the answer?
- hidroto 3mo ago
  Not understanding the answer.
energy123 3mo ago
Take home tests were always rife with cheating, although it's probably worse now. Teachers really need to stop doing it, it's so destructive to create a metric that tracks how well you can cheat and lie, and basically forces you to cheat and lie (because everyone else is) if you want to get a job.

thereitgoes456 3mo ago

Because it's an important aid to getting to a high-paying job in the US, not just a means to learn. One need only look at the resume filtering process, a once manual bias that has now been codified into algorithmic bias with AI. A degree from a good school boosts your chances immensely, and other facets such as coursework don't matter much. If you have ever seen someone filter applicant resumes, you will understand instantly. There are too many, you have to filter them somehow and the allure is irresistible.

DANmode 3mo ago
If any hiring managers are reading this: make your directions super specific, or require a cover letter.

stackskipton 3mo ago

>you're paying so much for an education and then you just skip the education part? Why bother? Because you are viewing the motivation of college wrong for most people. For most people, the purpose of college is to get piece of paper that will open up higher salary opportunities. Ergo, they are just doing whatever required to get said piece of paper with least amount of effort. Until degrees, in particular, degrees from well-regarded universities stop being that method, this behavior will continue.

onemoresoop 3mo ago
Sadly this is true. Another take is that if you don’t use AI but everybody outperforms you on exams using AI at some point you’re forced into it as well.
bmitc 3mo ago
That motivation isn't necessarily inherent in the attendees though. That has been formed by corporations increasingly placing pressure on universities to be their personal training grounds, without any actual investment. Corporations don't want to train anymore. They want universities and other companies to do their training for them. It's why we're seeing the death of the liberal arts majors. It's sad, because usually the smartest and most creative people I've worked with in the field of engineering and software have been liberal arts majors. But corporations don't want intelligent people. They want people who have been molded to whatever the soup du jour is.
- aleph_minus_one 3mo ago
  > That [motivation] has been formed by corporations increasingly placing pressure on universities to be their personal training grounds, without any actual investment. Corporations don't want to train anymore. They want universities and other companies to do their training for them. I don't think so. The problem rather is that corporations very often want some very different knowledge of employees than what universities teach to the students. If what the universities teach was very important for the job, applicants who have not invested serious effort into getting a deep understanding of the topics of the courses would nearly all fail in the job interviews. The problem rather is that for many jobs the knowledge that you could have gotten from the university typically does not matter, and thus investing minimal effort into the courses does not get you rejected in a job interview.
  - Avicebron 3mo ago
    If only they could communicate with each other and explain their reasoning. Corporation A "Hi University, here is what we hire highly paid people to do, and what we need to improve as a company." University B, "Hi Corp A, here is our educational mandate to create well-rounded, highly educated people, we can probably fit your needs into the curriculum in the last couple of semesters, let's work together to make sure you have good employees and we have people who aren't struggling to pay back loans because they have an engineering degree but can't make more than 50K at a dead end job."
ghostly_s 3mo ago
> For most people, the purpose of college is to get piece of paper that will open up higher salary opportunities More true at an Ivy than anywhere else. > This year, the economist decided that both the midterm and the final exams for his course would be of the take-home, closed-book type (there is a certain tradition of this at Ivy League schools). If this guy thinks AI is motivating his previously guiless student body to start cheating on these tests, rather than simply changing the way they are cheating, he's been sniffing too many of his own farts.
userbinator 3mo ago
Until degrees, in particular, degrees from well-regarded universities stop being that method, this behavior will continue. This is already starting to happen, at least for software engineering positions. There have been plenty of stories of candidates with degrees from prestigious institutions failing to answer the simplest of questions correctly. FizzBuzz is a famous example, but there are many others.

DANmode 3mo ago

They’ve been taught that not having the piece of paper will keep them from having even a menial job, so you have a huge population of people bullshitting their way through to the piece of paper.

deleted 3mo ago

[deleted]

TrackerFF 3mo ago

Because for many a college degree is a pure formality to land a job. My first job out of college, I worked with veterans at the company who all got in with a HS diploma. Now you realistically need a masters degree to be competitive, for no other reason than that where I live (Norway) most applicants have a 5-year masters degree. It is basically academic inflation. Here we have a tongue-in-cheek word "Mastersyken" which translates to "Master's illness/disease", a word for the phenomena that too many people are pursuing a master's degree for the sake of the diploma alone, trying to become more attractive in the search for a job, but with the side effect that suddenly "everyone" has a master's degree, and in the end everyone is stuck at the same place as before, but with extra student loans. The worst part is when you start working, and indeed discover that this is a job you could have done just fine straight out of HS.

musicale 3mo ago
A master's in CS can teach you interesting and very useful things, like how OS kernels, distributed systems, networks, and microprocessors work. A master's in EE will teach you things like signal processing and analog circuit design as well. Knowing these things helps you to design, build, and evaluate systems that are reliable and efficient. A master's in science helps you understand how the physical world works and how to reason quantitatively as well as qualitatively. A master's in humanities gives you knowledge and understanding of human culture, such as literature and the arts, and history - subjects that can be deeply enriching and can provide insights that transcend disciplines. A master's in social science will teach you about how humans behave in groups and how they interact with their environment, and about statistical analysis. Writing a master's thesis will also teach you a lot and make you a better writer - if you actually write it yourself and don't rely on AI. Any of these degrees will certainly qualify you to be a more interesting, knowledgeable, and insightful barista or Uber driver.
- alex43578 3mo ago
  There should be no reason you have to jump to a master’s for that. A bachelor’s in CS or EE would be a joke if it didn’t (doesn’t) cover those things. Arguably, even the current 4 year bachelor’s is a waste compared to a focused 2 year program: looking at my college’s requirements, many classes are wasted. Business majors taking a physical science with lab component, entry level English classes being taught by a TA that doesn’t speak English natively, etc.

musicale 3mo ago

Apparently some students aren't actually interested in learning and view the diploma as a meal ticket rather than a meaningful credential. Or perhaps the university is just seen as a networking opportunity. If students don't want to be there in the first place and/or don't see any value in learning, it is unsurprising that they'd take the easy way out. Or maybe they cheated their way into Brown and are just continuing. But I was always interested in learning, and understood that cheating was a method of learning avoidance. Why waste the amazing learning resources - faculty, teaching assistants, courses, labs, libraries, studios, rehearsal spaces, interesting speakers, arts and culture events, computing facilities, maker spaces, etc. - that are available at a place like Brown?

watwut 3mo ago

When it costs a lot of money, the failure itself costs a lot of money. And you cant afford it. Because failure means you paid a lot of money for nothing. An expensive education comes with higher temptation to cheat.

IshKebab 3mo ago

> then you just skip the education part? Why bother? You've never put anything off in your life or taken the easy short term route? Come on this is not difficult to understand. You aren't different either.

throawayonthe 3mo ago

i mean, even if you are truly there for learning, doesn't it make sense in a low risk setting to try and boost your grade? it's different if you're cheating on your homework or other learning, but there isn't much learning left to do on the exam, that's for the grade

mrkeen 3mo ago

* I am in the state of not knowing about something * This is brought to my attention by an exam question * I have an oracle in the form of a textbook, an LLM, the internet, or all of the above Which action is skipping the education: looking up the answer, or not looking up the answer?

hidroto 3mo ago
Not understanding the answer.

energy123 3mo ago

Take home tests were always rife with cheating, although it's probably worse now. Teachers really need to stop doing it, it's so destructive to create a metric that tracks how well you can cheat and lie, and basically forces you to cheat and lie (because everyone else is) if you want to get a job.