No Change?

From the Daily Cal: A study released by UC Berkeley’s Center for Studies in Higher Education found a correlation between the release of ChatGPT in 2022 and an increased share of A grades for classes with take-home assignments at a selective public university in Texas. However, Berkeleytime data collected by The Daily Californian found no equivalent trends at UC Berkeley. Between 2019 and spring 2026, A’s at UC Berkeley consistently stayed between 30% and 35%, with a dip during the COVID-19 pandemic likely due to increased pass/no pass courses.

The study, authored by Igor Chirikov, a senior researcher and director of the Student Experience in the Research University Consortium at the Center for Studies in Higher Education, analyzed 500,000 grades from 2018-25 and found that the share of A grades increased by 13 percentage points at the Texas university. “The pattern shows grades rising mainly where students can use AI on unsupervised take-home work,” Chirikov said in an email. “This strongly suggests that AI is substituting for student effort rather than improving underlying skills.”

While the study found that grades have been increasing in classes with lots of take-home assignments, grades across UC Berkeley have remained relatively stable. The Daily Cal scraped more than 30,000 course grades beginning in the summer of 2019 from Berkeleytime to assess grade trends at UC Berkeley compared to the university in the study...

Josh Hug, a professor in the electrical engineering and computer sciences department, has found that the amount of AI-generated work submitted by students has increased considerably, but said grades have decreased. In EECS and computer science courses, some classes’ failing grades have more than doubled in the spring 2026 semester. Professors attributed the increase to an increased reliance on AI, a lack of math preparedness and understaffing within classes.

“The reason is that they’re still getting full scores on the assignments, but they’re doing much worse on exams,” Hug said. To adapt to AI, Hug has been incorporating frequent in-class quizzes, oral check-ins and “diagnostic questions” on exams. Hug reuses questions from past exams and compares the performance between the two groups of students. “I have found that students do far worse on these problems than they used to, which is my biggest piece of evidence that they don’t quite know what they’re doing in the way they used to,” Hug said.

...History professor Mark Brilliant has run into similar challenges, with students especially struggling with writing...

Full story at https://www.dailycal.org/news/campus/academics/uc-berkeley-shows-no-signs-of-ai-grade-inflation-as-professors-adapt/article_6da85b38-889f-4f80-835a-88cc54a81662.html.

Straws in the Wind - Part 397

From the Spokesman-Review: Nine Eastern Washington University majors – including urban and regional planning and gender, women’s and sexuality studies – will be discontinued following two unanimous votes by school leadership... The decision, made by the board of trustees following recommendations from the provost and president, comes after months of petitions, public testimonies and official faculty recommendations in favor of continuing the degrees, including a visit from Spokane Mayor Lisa Brown in February in support of the women’s studies program.

The programs discontinued include master’s degrees in interdisciplinary studies and applied math; and bachelor’s degrees in data science, English as a second language, applied technology, gender, women’s and sexuality studies, international affairs, urban and regional planning, applied technology, and early childhood and special education... Provost Lorenzo Smith initially identified the nine programs for review based on their graduating an average of under 10 students annually over the past five years (or, five graduates, in the case of master’s programs)... Smith recommended to President Shari McMahan that all nine programs be discontinued, citing consideration of stewardship, resource allocations, strategic value, student demand, course demand and institutional mission...

Full story at https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2026/jun/26/ewu-trustees-vote-unanimously-to-end-gender-studie/.

Avoid Hacking: Just say no

The New York Times recently ran an op ed titled "It’s Inevitable — You’re Going to Get Hacked." Here is an excerpt:

I run a public relations company, and there is one type of crisis no amount of planning can allay. It might start like this: One of my clients — imagine the founder of an A.I. start-up — receives notice that her iCloud account is about to be deleted because the payment method is no longer valid. Her assistant, who has access to her devices, calls her so he can update the payment method, and asks for her two-factor authentication code. The founder reads off the code. Moments later she’s locked out of her iCloud. Her text messages, photos, her videos, voice memos and notes-to-self — all stolen. The founder calls me in a panic.

How could this happen? The founder’s passwords could have been compromised and listed on the dark web. With the help of artificial intelligence, the hackers can send the fake nonpayment notice, clone her assistant’s voice using videos posted on Instagram and enter the two-factor authentication code to break into her iCloud account. Then, they could demand a Bitcoin ransom to return the trove of personal musings, sexts and photos, perhaps some sans clothes.

This scenario is not as far-fetched as it sounds. Apple has some of the strongest security measures in tech and is constantly innovating new defenses, but in recent months it has repeatedly warned its customers of sophisticated scams. Gmail break-ins are proliferating. Hackers are subjecting even everyday people to embarrassing leaks. Once they get into your iCloud account, they could have access to your entire digital history dating back to your first iPhone...

Full op ed at https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/02/opinion/hacking-ai-leaks-shame.html.

These scenarios involve people giving away information. If you get an email, text, or phone message asking for anything - such as a password - DON'T GIVE IT, no matter how urgent the request seems to be, or how trustworthy the messenger seems to be. DON'T DO IT. Just say NO. And use multifactor authentication where it is offered.

Good Health to You

From the Daily Bruin: UCLA will offer a minor in health humanities starting this fall. The minor, housed under the comparative literature department, is an interdisciplinary program that examines how health and medicine are shaped by literature, culture, history and social experience, according to the department’s website.

...Whitney Arnold, an assistant professor in the Department of Comparative Literature, said the department created the minor in response to students’ interest in narrative medicine. The minor requires students to take seven courses, Arnold said, including three electives. There are 78 available electives across about 45 departments... Students must take either Comparative Literature 1H: “Introduction to Health Humanities,” or Cluster 73: “All in Your Head? Brain, Bodymind, and Society,” before formally declaring the minor... The minor will also include a research capstone, which will allow students to work with faculty experts to study broader topics in comparative literature or health humanities...

Full story at https://dailybruin.com/2026/06/25/ucla-comparative-literature-department-to-offer-health-humanities-minor-in-fall.

Note: The minor was originally announced as an option for students in March. See: https://humanities.ucla.edu/news/health-humanities-minor-human-stories/.

Straws in the Wind - Part 396

From Inside Higher Ed: The Florida Board of Governors... took a step toward barring undocumented students from admission to the state system’s 12 public universities. A proposed rule, discussed... by the board’s academic affairs committee, would block these students from enrolling, unless institutions already admitted “all academically qualified applicants,” starting in the 2027–28 academic year. The committee adopted a version of the proposal, but the rule still needs approval from the full Board of Governors. The rule would be a blow to thousands of noncitizen students in the state. An estimated 8,000 undocumented students graduate from high school in Florida annually, and over 49,000 undocumented students are enrolled in Florida colleges, according to the Higher Ed Immigration Portal.

While current students wouldn’t be affected, new students would be blocked form enrolling if they’re “present in the United States unlawfully,” according to the current proposal. The committee lightly tweaked the proposal’s language to clarify students studying online at Florida universities from other countries would be permitted to do so...

Full story at https://www.insidehighered.com/news/government/state-policy/2026/06/26/florida-universities-could-ban-undocumented-students.

Our Quarterly Reminder

There is an alternative way to read the blog. Each quarter, we preserve pdf files of the blog which can be read and/or downloaded. In the pdf format, however, video and audio files cannot be seen or heard directly, although you may find links to the sources. But the pdfs do provide a kind of backup to the blog.

At one time, there was a program available that put the quarterly files in a book format. Unfortunately, that option no longer is available.

You can find the second quarter of 2026 files at:

https://archive.org/details/ucla-fac-assn-blog-2nd-qtr-2026/0-content%202nd%20qtr%202026/.

Will Harvard Continue to Lead the Charge? - Part 178

From the Harvard Crimson: Harvard plans to install additional security cameras around academic buildings and undergraduate residential areas, expanding a campus security push that administrators privately linked to the fatal shooting at Brown University and to possibly enforcing Harvard’s rules on campus protests.

Faculty of Arts and Sciences spokesperson James M. Chisholm confirmed... that Harvard plans to add cameras around academic buildings and in the River and Quad residential areas. In a statement, Chisholm wrote that planned installations are part of Harvard’s “regular process” of assessing and updating its security infrastructure. But in an April 30 email to members of the Student Services Undergraduate Advisory Board — a group of students who provide feedback to College administrators on the undergraduate experience — Dean of Student Services Michael P. Burke directly tied the planned camera installations to security concerns raised by the Brown shooting... Burke wrote that the new cameras may also be a response to “crime investigation and possibly even campus use rules enforcement.”

Harvard enacted University-wide campus use rules in summer 2024 after months of pro-Palestine student protests across the College and graduate schools, including a 20-day encampment in Harvard Yard...

Full story at https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2026/7/6/harvard-to-add-security-cameras/.