From the Chronicle of Higher Education: Before she returned to teaching last spring after a leave of absence, Amy Clukey braced for the possibility that her students might cheat with ChatGPT. She’d heard complaints from her fellow professors and thought, sure, that’s not good. But plagiarism had never been much of a problem in her English classes.
“I was always, like, I’ll create unique assignments and they will be somewhat plagiarism-proof, and some students will get by me,” said Clukey, an associate professor at the University of Louisville. “But that’s fine because most of them will be doing their own work, and it’ll be great.”
It wasn’t great.
“I was just hit,” she said, “by a student army of cheating.” Students cheated on informal discussion-board prompts. They cheated on essays. A few weeks ago, she emailed a student to say that she knew the student had cheated on a minor assignment with AI and if she did it again, she would fail the course. Clukey also noted there were several missed assignments. The student replied to “sincerely apologize,” said she was “committed to getting back on track,” and that she regretted “any disruption [her] absence or incomplete work may have caused in the course.” But her next paper was essentially written by artificial intelligence. Curious, Clukey asked ChatGPT to write an email apologizing to a professor for plagiarism and missed work.
“And what did it do?” she said. “It spit out an email almost exactly like the one I had gotten.”
Talk to professors in writing-intensive courses, particularly those teaching introductory or general-education classes, and it sounds as if AI abuse has become pervasive. Clukey said she feels less like a teacher and more like a human plagiarism detector, spending hours each week analyzing her students’ writing to determine its authenticity.
But it’s not AI that has a lot of professors worried. It’s what lies behind that willingness to cheat. While the reasons vary by student and situation, certain explanations surface frequently. Students are working long hours while taking full course loads. They doubt their ability to perform well. They arrive at college with weak reading and study skills. They don’t value the assignments they’re given. They feel like the only way they can succeed is to be perfect. They believe they will not be punished — or not punished harshly — if caught. And many, it seems, don’t feel particularly guilty about it.
“When it’s that widespread, it’s a culture. It’s not just an individual student. It is so many. And when I talk to some undergrads, they’re like, ‘Everybody does it.’”
Some institutions, including Middlebury College, in Vermont, and Stanford University, are reconsidering elements of their honor codes because they’re simply not working. At Middlebury, the percentage of students who admitted on an annual survey to violating the honor code rose from 35 percent in 2019 to 65 percent in 2024. The most common self-reported violations were using unauthorized aids, such as SparkNotes or a friend, cheating on a test, and misusing AI.
In an online course, Clukey estimates that more than half of her students have plagiarized with AI. “When it’s that widespread, it’s a culture,” she said. “It’s not just an individual student, one out of an entire class or two out of the entire class. It is so many. And when I talk to some undergrads, they’re like, ‘Everybody does it.’”
When so many students admit to cheating, what does academic integrity mean anymore? Middlebury has been wrestling with this question as it undergoes an examination of its honor code, which states that students have a “moral obligation” to turn in classmates who cheat and largely does not allow professors to proctor exams. Those parts of the code could eventually be removed.
An interim report released in May by an honor-code-review committee found that, while campus culture generally affirms the value of academic integrity and that cheating is wrong, “the reality of daily practice suggests that the honor code has ceased to be a meaningful element of learning and living at Middlebury for most students.”
Along with pointing to the sharp rise in students who admit to violating the honor code, the authors note that few students report others for cheating; there is widespread confusion about how violations are adjudicated; and many professors want to proctor exams. Widespread use of generative AI adds another layer of complexity, but the report makes clear that problems with the honor system go far beyond what’s made possible with ChatGPT.
Many students, the report says, feel tremendous pressure to get A’s; anything less is seen as a failure. As a result, grades matter more than integrity. In the student survey, only 34 percent of students said they felt guilty violating the honor code. Other reasons students say they cheat include confusion over what their professors define as cheating; the ease of cheating through phones, AI, and unproctored exams; and the pressure to cheat when you see your classmates doing so...
Full story at https://www.chronicle.com/article/cheating-has-become-normal.
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