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Do AI detectors work? Students face false cheating accusations

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461 points JumpCrisscross | 8 comments | 20 Oct 24 17:26 UTC | HN request time: 1.941s | source | bottom
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skhunted ◴[21 Oct 24 13:34 UTC] No.41904004[source]▶
I’ve been teaching in higher education for 30 years and am soon retiring. I teach math. In every math course there is massive amounts of cheating on everything that is graded that is not proctored in a classroom setting. Locking down browsers and whatnot does not prevent cheating.

The only solution is to require face-to-face proctored exams and not allow students to use technology of any kind while taking the test. But any teacher doing this will end up with no students signing up for their class. The only solution I see is the Higher Learning Commission mandating this for all classes.

But even requiring in person proctored exams is not the full solution. Students are not used to doing the necessary work to learn. They are used to doing the necessary work to pass. And that work is increasingly cheating. It’s a clusterfuck. I have calculus students who don’t know how to work with fractions. If we did truly devise a system that prevents cheating we’ll see that a very high percentage of current college students are not ready to be truly college educated.

K-12 needs to be changed as well.

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SkyBelow ◴[21 Oct 24 13:54 UTC] No.41904186[source]▶
>If we did truly devise a system that prevents cheating we’ll see that a very high percentage of current college students are not ready to be truly college educated.

Isn't it to either do that now, or to lose the signaling value of college degrees as indicating knowledge.

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pdonis ◴[21 Oct 24 14:23 UTC] No.41904509[source]▶
> the signaling value of college degrees as indicating knowledge

I'm not sure knowledge is what a college degree signals to prospective employers. The alternative hypothesis, which AFAIK has a fair bit of support, is that it signals a willingness to do whatever it takes to fulfill a set of on paper requirements imposed by an institution, by hook or by crook.

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1. ericjmorey ◴[21 Oct 24 14:47 UTC] No.41904772[source]▶
I think you have a clearer understanding of the signalling that colleges have been providing for centuries than others who have been sold the lies that have been perpetuated by school administrators and those trying to justify their social advantages to those that didn't have similar advantages.
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2. sevensor ◴[21 Oct 24 15:25 UTC] No.41905192[source]▶
In a weird paradox, students who believe the lie and actually study to learn the material get more value from their education.
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3. pdonis ◴[21 Oct 24 15:34 UTC] No.41905277[source]▶
> get more value

If actually learning is valuable to them, independent of whether it will actually help them with prospective employers, then yes. But I don't think we can assume that all students value that.

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4. sevensor ◴[21 Oct 24 21:27 UTC] No.41908682{3}[source]▶
I’m thinking about the long term here. I don’t care about grades, I think they’re a poor signal. What I care about is whether the engineer I’m working with fifteen years and four employers later actually learned the fundamentals. Some did, some didn’t, and I can tell the difference.
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5. pdonis ◴[22 Oct 24 15:23 UTC] No.41915205{4}[source]▶
> What I care about is whether the engineer I’m working with fifteen years and four employers later actually learned the fundamentals.

For professional engineers, at least, the degree is not what tells you whether they have learned the fundamentals. The license is.

Even for engineers in domains where there is no licensing (such as software, for example), I would expect them to have learned the fundamentals on the job, not in college. I think most employers expect the same; they don't view the college degree as a signal that the prospective employee knows the fundamentals, they expect them to learn that on the job. What the degree signals to the employer is that the prospective employee will comply with their corporate process.

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6. sevensor ◴[22 Oct 24 21:17 UTC] No.41918807{5}[source]▶
> What the degree signals to the employer is that the prospective employee will comply with their corporate process.

While this is true, I’ll take the engineer who studied diligently with an aim to learn the material over the one who was just in it for the credential. I don’t agree with your implication that you will learn the fundamentals equally well on the job. It certainly happens, but from what I’ve seen it’s usually people who never had the opportunity to learn in school who are aware of their gaps and seek to fill them in. The nonchalant attitude towards theory tends to persist in the workplace.

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7. pdonis ◴[22 Oct 24 22:04 UTC] No.41919207{6}[source]▶
> I’ll take the engineer who studied diligently with an aim to learn the material over the one who was just in it for the credential.

The former engineer will learn on the job just as well. The latter one won't learn well in either environment.

You appear to believe that the crucial factor is the person's attitude towards learning, and I agree with that. I just don't agree that a person with that attitude towards learning is necessarily any better off going through college instead of getting a job and learning there. Particularly now, with so much good material available for free online, someone who wants to learn can do it without spending anything more than the cost of Internet access. So the opportunity to learn through college is even less beneficial for those who really want to learn than it was in the past. It might be enough of a benefit to justify college for some, but I think that number is much less than the number who actually go to college.

From the employer's perspective, if you think you can evaluate someone's attitude towards learning well enough, I don't see why their having a college degree would matter much one way or the other. If you think they have the right attitude towards learning, hire them! Whatever they don't know yet, they'll learn.

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8. sevensor ◴[24 Oct 24 12:08 UTC] No.41934713{7}[source]▶
Oh certainly. It’s not about university versus no university; I’ve worked with electrical and mechanical engineers who didn’t have degrees, and programmers as well of course. Generally non credentialed engineers make up in ambition and raw intelligence what they lack in schooling. It’s the credentialed engineers who spent four to six years at university and didn’t learn the foundational material that I avoid. The disregard for systematic knowledge they pick up in school stays with them in the workplace, even decades later.