Do AI detectors work? Students face false cheating accusations

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.

> 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.

In Germany, all exams are like this. Homework assignments are either just a prerequisite for taking exam but the grade is solely from the exam, or you may get some small point bonus for assignments/projects.

> But any teacher doing this will end up with no students signing up for their class.

The main courses are mandatory in order to obtain the degree. You can't "not sign up" for linear algebra if it's in your curriculum. Fail 3 times and you're exmatriculated.

This is because universities are paid from tax money in Germany and most of Europe.

The US will continue down on the path you describe because it's in the interest of colleges to keep well-paying students around. It's a service. You buy a degree, you are a customer.

Germany isn't special, (almost) all exams work like that in the US as well. I don't know why he was implying otherwise. Almost all degrees have required courses in the US as well.

You point to a true failure in incentives. And yet, the US has the highest density of renowned universities.

For online courses it is no longer the case that exams are proctored in person. Most higher education in the United States is done at community colleges and regional state universities.

Once you have an online class with no proctored exams (or even biometric ID check) you don't know who took the class anyway. Frankly, that makes any "online degree" certification basically worthless without a proctored exit exam. That doesn't mean the education or study aren't valuable, they are to whoever is actually doing it.

I didn't realize that so many community colleges and state universities were basically online diploma mills.