From the Daily Cal: The percentage of failing grades in multiple UC Berkeley computer science classes in spring 2026 is significantly higher than past semesters and marks a departure from the department’s grading guidelines. Instructors point to students’ increased reliance on AI, lack of mathematical preparedness and understaffing as potential contributing factors.
According to Berkeleytime, 35.3% of CS 10 students and 10.6% of CS 61A students received F’s in spring 2026. In spring 2025 and spring 2024, the percentage of F’s did not exceed 10% for either class. The electrical engineering and computer sciences department’s grading guidelines state that 7% of students in lower division courses, including CS 10 and CS 61A, should receive D’s and F’s...
UC Berkeley teaching professor Dan Garcia taught both CS 10, “The Beauty and Joy of Computing,” and CS 61A, “The Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs,” in spring 2026. Garcia believes the “primary driver” of these abnormally high failing rates is due to a “vast increase in academic dishonesty” due to students’ usage of large language models, such as Claude, ChatGPT and Google Gemini.
“Some of the numbers that you saw from the number of students who receive failing grades were because we caught them (cheating) and prosecuted them and are sending their cases to the center for student conduct,” Garcia said. “But in other cases, it’s students who are leaning a little too hard on LLMs to do their work for them, and then at exam time just really aren’t ready.” ...
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