> You go to a university because you are deeply interested in understanding the subject that you study. Doing the homework and the tests are just the "goalposts" to check for yourself whether you made progress on this. This is probably not true for majority of people. Most go to school because it is mandatory, pushed by parents and society, and university gives you credentials and better job opportunities. Homework and tests are a way to get a number grade on 'how well you memorized something', it doesn't really measure a deep understanding of the topic.

It is really about time we thought about what universities are for in the 21st century, since there has been significant scope creep wrt labour markets, particularly roles which do not actually require university education but do require a degree for CV reasons. It is nonsense in the 21st century to require a bachelor's degree for such roles. Not to mention the huge societal pressure that you have mentioned, which no 18 year old can really be expected to see through. With CS students this is one thing. Medical students? Air traffic controllers? That is to say, there is a huge gap in the educational integrity of degrees, and this is probably partly driven by people who do not really want to be at university for educational reasons (and, believe it or not, there are other ways to party in your early twenties) and for whom a degree in XYZ is not rationally connected to 80% of their options after school. And there are many such people. This really needs to be thought through, because education is expensive, and it is an enormous waste of money to pay for a couple of years of university and end up failing out or being sanctioned for AI cheating, or being educated for something you do not really want or need to be taught. That is true whether or not education is paid for privately or by the public.

> You go to a university because you are deeply interested in understanding the subject that you study. This is a bit of a naive or maybe affluent take? Like, theoretically, I agree. And I myself was curious. But most people, by and large, are going to university because they know they need a degree to get a job, unlike their parents or grandparents. And even "the degree" is quickly becoming devalued in this current AI age. I would guess that if all basic needs were met through UBI, the fraction of individuals going to school would drop and the makeup of subjects they pursue would change. Probably more cooking and art classes and less stem. Although, if UBI existed and AI did not, we'd probably see more educated individuals in the first place so maybe there would be an uptick in stem attendance and general curiosity in such a utopian world.

The problem with AI in an educational setting is when one is graded versus their students on things and things genuinely depend on those grades. Group projects also force those willing to do things without AI to go along with others in their group who'll use it regardless.

I wonder if AI or something else changing (developing anxiety, etc) has made the pay-off of the degree less certain. If you're confident that your years of effort will pay off, it's probably easier to see it through. If you're worried that AI will wreck your industry before you hit the workforce, maybe the equation changes and you're more inclined to gamble with shortcuts?

Yes, and this is going to hurt everyone. If everyone knows that you can skate through a college degree without doing any work, it is not going to have much value as a credential.

>In addition, the guidelines state that “a typical GPA for a lower division course will fall in the range 2.8 – 3.3.” In spring 2026, both classes’ average grades were C-pluses, according to Berkeleytime, corresponding to a 2.3 GPA. As a Cal alum, I am actually really glad to see they are holding the line on grade inflation. I worked my butt off to achieve the GPA I did, and it would really suck to see my labor devalued if Cal went the direction of e.g. Yale and started handing out 79% A's and A-minuses: https://yaledailynews.com/articles/professors-face-grading-d...

This is valid, and I would add that these academic hunger games are a result of College Degrees being needed to get what remains of well paying jobs. Maybe we can use AI to create new exams that grade people on professional capability, and then gate entry into other professional degrees? Hmm, Where would the teachers come from, and how good would the education actually be?

Back in the university, I took both math and CS courses and a significant percentage of students seemed interested in neither math nor programming but rather in the jobs they would get afterwards. I didn't notice the same thing with math majors.

AI has a way of exposing people. In this example, students who are there to get a degree from a prestigious institution, rather than to learn, are prone to take perceived shortcuts and proceed to come unstuck when their AI isn't there to do their work for them, such as in an exam.

“I’m a strong, strong opponent of what Harvard is doing to say that only a fraction of students can earn A’s,” Garcia said. “I think you should have clear standards for what an A means, and then give tons of opportunity for people … to get to that A bar without lowering the standard. So everybody who’s curving is hiding that effect. It’s completely hiding that effect, and it’s pretending as if nothing’s wrong, and something is definitely wrong.” To do this, you have to be a professor who has a strong idea of what subject mastery looks like. Not available to most. But ... It is exactly the right idea IMO

Grades only matter as much as being able to transfer just to the real world. People can use AI to outsource their learning, but if they use ai to outsource their understanding they just set themselves up to fail even more. From what I’ve seen, how students are using ai (not that they are using ai) is making them less prepared for the real world, which unfortunately is changing faster than ever at the same time to create double impact.

AI is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it's like having a free private tutor who is always available. It's a great learning tool. On the other hand, students can use it to do all their homework for them, and skip learning altogether.

Professors suddenly realized everyone was cheating and started paying attention, but the cheating isn't new ... A lot of faculty are happy when their students get good grades because they interpret it as I'm such a good teacher instead of I should pay more attention to how they cheat . AI woke some of them up to reality.

I read something interesting yesterday on the subject of AI in education (though, it has consequences to broader society too): The goal of education is to impart knowledge in the student, preferably correct knowledge. The goal of an LLM is to produce an output that is convincingly human. It's not even that they're opposed, as much as they're ships for whom Polaris is in a completely different direction. "Hallucinations" as they're called, or more plainly stated when the machine makes some shit up, are perfectly understandable in this context, as are the struggles of every single AI firm to get rid of them. Namely: the machine is functioning exactly as it is designed to, so how can you possibly fix it? It's working. The goal of an LLM is to produce text that passes for human, and apart from the obvious LLM tells, it largely does. Like say what you will about their lack of intelligence, the writing is solid. It's grammatically correct, spelling is dead on, what have you. It reminds me of the famous phrase from Chomsky: Colorless green ideas sleep furiously. A sentence which is perfectly grammatically valid but is also completely devoid of meaning. An LLM would write that sentence, and it would be working correctly. All of that to say: for all the things they CAN do and CAN be used for, I think we have to draw a hard line at education. I just don't think AI has a place in it. Of course that presumes that the goal of education is to, well, educate people, and especially here in the States but also abroad, we have been putting other interests, especially capital, far ahead of that for decades. I expect no different here. And before someone comes in to go "WELL HOW DO YOU THINK YOU'RE GONNA STOP IT LUDDITE IT'S THE FUTUUUUUURE" yes, I'm sure as long as these exist and are available to people tech literate enough to access and use them, whatever that means into the far flung future, they will be a factor. Just like cheating, just like plagiarism, just like everything else that will get you kicked out of school. And the answer is the same: it will be stopped by institutions, imperfectly, and it will also happen anyway and with the same consequence: those responsible will mostly be harming themselves for short-term gains.

"According to Berkeleytime, 35.3% of CS 10 students and 10.6% of CS 61A students received F’s in spring 2026" Alternatively, more students are taking CS10 and CS61A irrespective of aptitude. Anyone can code, but not everyone can become an employable SWE. Anyone who has first or second hand experience with Cal or any other university knows how impacted CS majors have become, and how everyone is attempting to become a CS major because it's the easiest path to multiple high paying white collar careers. And in all honesty, it's not like CS@Cal never had weedout classes (I remember CS70, CS61B, and Math54 had reputations of being the L&S weedout classes).