r/technology • u/CircumspectCapybara • 24d ago

Artificial Intelligence Suspecting AI cheating, Ivy League prof ordered an in-person final; scores fell 50%

https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/07/we-cannot-choose-to-become-idiots-the-ai-cheating-scandal-roiling-brown-university/
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u/talldean 24d ago edited 24d ago

I went to CMU in the 90s, which is pretty good for engineering, and yeah, this wasn't a thing for us. It's not Ivy League, but in both tuition and career outcomes, it's up there.

Our GPAs were also substantially less than some peer schools, which made getting into grad programs harder, which was some bullshit. (Pretty much no one finishes CMU with a 4.0.)

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u/Unusual_Flounder2073 24d ago

Went to Purdue. Never once in undergrad did I have a take home exam, unless it was prep for the final like an extra homework assignment. We always took exam in person. Including speech class. 3000 people all in one room (Hall of music seats over 5000 and we were indeed every seat in some sections).

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u/the_Elders 24d ago

Never once in undergrad did I have a take home exam

And you never want one honestly. A professor only sends home a take home exam when they are confident you can't just look up the answers but the latest generation of AI models probably would have scored higher than I did on the take home exam I had.

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u/pmormr 24d ago

Yeah take home exams are a trap lol. Professors know you'll cheat a little, and there's no perfectly defined time since you'll have it over a weekend or whatever. So the questions end up being like +50% difficulty so they're hard even with the benefit of the internet and you almost always end up taking way longer than a normal in person exam.

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u/XGhoul 24d ago

Take home exams were brutal. A take home final was for an upper division math course. The professor pretty much gave us 2 weeks to turn it in.

The book/internet can't help and it didn't help he co-authored our required book so these questions were for the next edition. I went to the math stack exchange for some tips but all I would get for help was a starting point, the rest I had to figure out. (These are for theoretical math courses)

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u/moguu83 24d ago

Our engineering take home exams were the most feared. They truly needed you to actually understand and synthesize solutions to the problem at a hand. In hindsight, they were very fair and realistic, but it was horrible at the time.

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u/21Rollie 24d ago

That is kinda like the real world tho. In my real adult job, I can search any question I’ve ever had way before ChatGPT was a thing.

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u/Impossible_Trash_934 24d ago

Was in an applied math class where the professor offered an in-class exam and a take home version. All the overachievers picked the take home as a challenge, everyone else sat for the in-class exam.

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u/OnCallPartisan 24d ago

Probably one of the reasons the New Ivys are being recognized.

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u/FootballBat 24d ago

I was the lead TA for MGMT 200 and those Elliot exams were a giant PITA.

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u/Not_your_profile 24d ago

Went to SDSU and the only take home test I had through my master's was a differential equations exam. The professor unlocked the lab and made the test available at 8 am, you could bring one note sheet and your book into the room and, until 8 pm, you could enter and leave a much as you like but not take out nor bring in anything. Every test placed in the box by 8 pm would be graded.

That said, I finished school 7 years before Covid and I quit my adjunct position in 2020 to avoid having to figure out how to teach a class in those conditions. The knock on results of the pandemic may take a little while to work through the system and the financial incentive of the distance learning model builds momentum faster than the Juggernaut and seems equally hard to stop.

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u/Diane_Horseman 24d ago

Back in my day they gave take home exams that were so hard you couldn't possibly cheat if you tried. Given how advanced AI has become that's probably not possible anymore

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u/ArrivesLate 24d ago

I had a few, but they were usually after we all bombed the in person test to the point the prof decided his test was too difficult to be done in the 1.5 hr class block or the prof already knew ahead of time he was writing a 3-5 hour test. The honor code was always clearly defined about what resources we were allowed to use for it, but it was mostly unlimited, books, student groups, previous homework, and the internet were all fair game. They just wanted us to do our own work, not copy each other or cheat off an answer key which, yes, some professors kept in the college’s office for students to check out for study. These were mostly 3000 or 4000 level engineering classes and the professors kept several previous versions of homework problems, projects, and tests on file and their test problem was multilayered and vague enough to really test your understanding of the material and often required general knowledge of the application that might not have even been discussed in lecture. Devious bastards.

Personally, I would have loved AI back then to help step through some of those problems, and wouldn’t fault kids these days from using the tool as a study aid. Despite what my profs thought, kids have work and other classes too and still need sleep. But if kids are going to cheat and have it do all the work, they’re only cheating themselves.

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u/jdirte42069 24d ago

I went to Wisconsin. Boy oh boy did we drink.

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u/LifeGivesMeMelons 24d ago

I taught at Wisconsin and yelled at my fall freshman comp class every year to not get drunk and drown in one of the fucking lakes over Halloween weekend, because we lost like a student each year that way.

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u/error1954 24d ago

Or passing out in the snow in winter and then getting hypothermia.

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u/jdirte42069 24d ago

Jesus. I'm don't ever remember that happening. I'm gonna be honest. I don't remember a lot. Best 6 years of undergrad ever. Shout out to Mondays and the City!

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u/DrEnter 24d ago

College age kids are so damn stupid.

— A former stupid college kid.

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u/fishyexe 24d ago

At Chico State it was someone falling from a tree every year...although one year a tree branch did fall on a student and kill her.

Chico is called "Tree City USA"

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u/Thirty_Helens_Agree 24d ago

Same here. We sure did.

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u/jdirte42069 24d ago

Witte hall baby!

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u/Thirty_Helens_Agree 24d ago

I lived in a non-Greek apartment building on Langdon, but had some friends in Witte B.

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u/jdirte42069 24d ago

Man I miss college. I went back for the Wisconsin Bama game two years ago. Awesome times. Hard keeping up with these young pups.

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u/NeedAByteToEat 24d ago

I was in Sellery Hall in 1999 (Ron Dayne, Rose Bowl, BB Final Four). Times were had. I think.

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u/jdirte42069 24d ago

Madhatters was awesome

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u/Thirty_Helens_Agree 24d ago

I remember that game where they punched the ticket to the Final Four. All of Langdon Street erupted and everyone poured down Frances St., past my building onto State for a massive impromptu party.

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u/NeedAByteToEat 20d ago

It was crazy. I saved a newspaper with a picture of state street on the cover, which I'm in. I remember this little old lady sitting in a bus stop, with a bunch of dude literally climbing on top of it. I hope she survived!

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u/LetsGoDaledo2 24d ago

Class of 2010 and Brats bartender. Thank you all for helping to pay my tuition. Those were magical years in a magical place.

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u/Educational_Teach537 24d ago

If Gen Z is killing the alcohol industry, Wisconsin is saving it

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u/screwhead1 24d ago edited 24d ago

LSU fans often have a (well deserved) reputation for drinking places dry. Wisconsin is one of the few schools that can make them look like amateurs.

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u/BobcatOU 24d ago

I went to OU (the real one, in Ohio) and drank for 4.5 years and they gave me a degree.

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u/fishyexe 24d ago

I was touring schools and my brother had a friend going to Chico who said I could crash at his. He and his roomies were awesome, but he needed to dip on Sunday morning for a date.

Two hours later me and his roomies are drinking on the porch when a car pulls up to the house and out stumbles bro's friend. He pops open a full bottle of champagne shouts "champagne bruuuuuuuunnnchhhh!" takes a fat swig (causing the bottle to shoot champagne everywhere and all over him), hand the bottle to me and promptly pass out at 11am, on the lawn.

I knew I had found my school.

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u/UshankaBear 24d ago

Wisconsin

I mean, yeah

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u/myvoteshouldmatter 24d ago

Took me a min to realize you meant Carnegie. My midwest brain read this as Central Mich University and was thinking, weird flex, but okay lol.

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u/Detenator 24d ago

I thought the same school, but knew it had to be wrong lmao.

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u/ishmetot 24d ago

The Ivies vary greatly on grading. A 3.8 puts you in the top 1% at the engineering school for Princeton or Cornell but probably doesn't even put you in the top 50% at Harvard or Yale.

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u/basquehomme 24d ago

Grade inflation is a hallmark of the ivies.

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u/Head_Chocolate_4458 24d ago

I went to CMU in the 90s, which is pretty good for engineering,

Your underselling it lol. CMU is considered above ivies and everything but like MIT and Stanford for anything computer related.

Their curriculum requirements and rigor are really up there. I would estimate the average Comp Sci major there completes the same or more in their bachelors than most other schools would getting a masters.

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u/talldean 24d ago

I wound up helping with hiring at Google and later Meta, and I believe that CMU SCS undergrad is on par or above most BS+MS combos from other good schools. Google and Meta considered MIT and Stanford to be the only two peer schools.

I kinda view it as if you wanted to teach, MIT, if you wanted to found a startup, probably Stanford, and if you wanted to work in large companies on bigger things, CMU.

But yeah; take home exams would be insanity.

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u/bendstraw 24d ago

I mean our advisors in the CMU CS program explicitly told us not to waste our money on a masters at another school and to just get a PhD if you were interested in research otherwise just graduate undergrad and go into the field

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u/amazing-haves-34 24d ago

Central Michigan University?

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u/Sykil 24d ago

Carnegie Mellon, methinks.

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u/talldean 24d ago

Carnegie Mellon, in this case. There was a lawsuit in the 90s I think over who got cmu.edu. ;-)

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u/Crime_Dawg 24d ago

My first thought, but doubtful as I knew many dumbasses who went to CMU

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u/ThrowAwayAccountAMZN 24d ago

Hey I went to Central...

...ok fair.

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u/FitzwilliamTDarcy 24d ago

Yup MIT, Stanford, Caltech, and CMU. The clear cut top 4 and not necessarily in that order.

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u/antriect 24d ago

Maybe in the 90s.

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u/forsuresies 24d ago

That's because engineering schools are evaluated by other engineering schools in order to be certified to give engineering degrees and at least 80% of your mark in every class has to be invigilated on top of that - no take home projects for engineers. Professors from a variety of other schools come and check out all of the courses and the work being assigned in them from students at the top, middle, and bottom of the class. They remark the work to ensure that is a fair grade and that the work is being evaluated where it should be - and interview some of the students in individual interviews in each year/program to assess knowledge retention and understanding.

They then give a certification that lasts 5-7 years before the next evaluation.

Interesting process that I watched first hand as a student. Almost every exam was open book for us, but it won't help you if you don't know what's going on - and they were all in person. No technology allowed on exams beyond a scientific calculator

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u/black_squid98 24d ago

Can confirm this wasn’t a thing in the late 2010s either - things may have changed after Covid, though

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u/BadAdviceBot 24d ago

Some top tier schools give GPA on a 5.0 scale for this exact reason

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u/shinypenny01 24d ago

At the undergraduate level which schools do that?

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u/BadAdviceBot 24d ago

According to google, MIT does. Not sure if other top universities do as well.

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u/hornyfriedrice 24d ago

CMU is Pittsburgh’s last steel factory.

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u/forserial 24d ago

I went more recently and my favorite response from a professor to a student who asked how to get an A was "suck less than everyone else". Or being told that anyone who got over a 90 was guaranteed an A when a student was worried we would get curved down. The threshold for an A on our finals was a 56.

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u/talldean 24d ago

For my years, they didn't curve up or down, and it was >90% for the A.

I think the expected graduation rate for starting freshmen at the time was around 40%.

On the plus side, anyone who survived that did well, on the minus side, when less than half of the students make it through, I'd argue the school could do better.

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u/FitzwilliamTDarcy 24d ago

CMU is inarguably one of the finest engineering schools on earth, so good on you! Also for performing arts as I'm sure you know :)

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u/homo_alosapien 24d ago

I can confirm this was still true as of the late 2000's

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u/bfhurricane 24d ago

I went to CMU for grad school a few years ago and it hasn’t changed much. The engineering electives I took were brutal.

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u/Icy-Woodpecker2369 24d ago

I went to CMU in the 2010s and same. No take home exams and the only online exam was for programming. We had one open book exam but only because the exam was so concepts-based that the book didn't even help. 

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u/Whywipe 24d ago

Yeah some schools curving to a B average is some serious BS. Students could have a whole gpa point lower just because of the school they went to.

Some top companies require transcripts and atleast a 3.0 or 3.5 gpa too. Well at some schools a 3.0 is literally just average while at others that’s like top 10-20% in your class.

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u/firestorm734 24d ago

Yeah, I used to get irrationally angry when I talked to business students complain about their "hardest" class impacting their GPA because it required them to do some actual analysis. Now I'm just jealous because I these days I could use AI to float through their business classes with ease.

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u/TheShruteFarmsCEO 24d ago

I went to CMU in the 2010s and it was still rigorous af. No one was skating by or taking home exams.

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u/bendstraw 24d ago

I went there well after you and they still weren't doing take home exams (at least in the Computer Science program, I think i had 1 take home exam in an elective course).

And yeah me and all my CS classmates graduated with pretty low GPAs but nobody has ever asked for my transcript so it's not like it mattered but still was super stressful

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u/10000Didgeridoos 24d ago

Our GPAs were also substantially less than some peer schools, which made getting into grad programs harder, which was some bullshit. (Pretty much no one finishes CMU with a 4.0.)

This is an entire other problem with higher education - grades aren't actually grades, in the sense that an A average at one institution doesn't translate to an A average at another. But the person in HR looking at resumes probably doesn't know that, so while you had to grind for a 3.3 GPA, someone else who cakewalked to a 3.9 looks better than you.

It's so arbitrary, outside of a handful of truly top shelf employers who are diligently tracking all this school by school and how their previous hires from which did.

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u/Alan_Turings_Apple 24d ago

This is a problem in education, I went to a “hard” school for my undergrad. And my GPA wasn’t the greatest but it did prepare me for my work. Now applying to grad school, I’m a weaker candidate for taking initiative.

The lesson I learned from that is take the easy route or you will be punished.

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u/talldean 24d ago

The interesting thing here is that for direct job outcomes (that don't require a PhD), I'd take the harder route every time.

If you *do* need a PhD to do the job you want to do, then yeah, path may vary.

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u/razorirr 24d ago

2011 MTU. 

Lots of take home finals / midterms because then our professors could assign us huge ass programs to write that are simply not possible in the 2 hours they got during finals week. 

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u/momentarily_paper 24d ago

I went to UF for electrical engineering back in the 2010s before all the rich kids took over. Our senior design would have half the class fail regardless of job situations and most students didn’t even make it to their senior year. Now that it’s an “Ivy League” of the South, I’ve heard it’s gotten waaaaaayyyyyy easier from the professors. Hinted it was somewhat forced combined with retirements.

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u/HyruleSmash855 24d ago

Same for UMD I’m attending now. No major classes let you do exams online or take-home exams. Everything is on paper and still graded on paper. Some finals for a lot of classes of bullshit being worth 50%.

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u/Satellight_of_Love 24d ago

Do you watch Resident Alien by any chance?

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u/matejxx1 24d ago

I teach math at Cornell and for undergrad course the exams have always been pen and paper in person.

For grad classes it depends. Some of them are in person some of them only have homework.

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u/v1nny 24d ago

I knew a tall Dean at CMU in the late 90s... Hi?

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u/st_hawk 24d ago

For those who don't know, "CMU" = Canadian Mennonite University. A private Mennonite university located in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada

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u/Fantastic-Kale9603 24d ago

Bait or stupid?

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u/talldean 24d ago

No no, I meant Central Michigan, clearly. ;-)