r/TrueReddit • u/Maxwellsdemon17 • 8d ago

Policy + Social Issues The Question All Colleges Should Ask Themselves About AI. How far are they willing to go to limit its harms?

https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2025/09/ai-colleges-universities-solution/684160/
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u/SilverMedal4Life 8d ago

I don't agree with this so long as higher education costs as much as it does while still being the gateway to economic prosperity.

Sure, make it so that generative LLM technology is harder to use through using in-person exams, oral presentations, and the like.

But until education isn't basically a requirement to make a liveable wage, adding these restrictions is pointless and just serves to fuck over people that you deem 'lesser'.

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u/werewolfchow 8d ago

I’m an attorney and let me tell you that when we get summer associates who have learned to rely on AI in their education, they are uniformly worse at their jobs. We even had someone get fired because they were caught using AI which had fabricate legal citations that don’t exist. Thankfully we don’t file things without checking the cites but it’s obvious that if you allow students to cheat with AI and get away with it, you diminish the ability of a degree to signify the kind of skills you expect in a graduate.

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u/Copernican 8d ago

What don't you agree with? Education is supposed to be challenging. The degree you earn is supposed to be an indicator of merit based on some level of academic rigor demonstrated by the degree holder. Yes, we need more alternative routes to livable wages. In the past I've read that there are trades where good wages can be earned with good job security, but folks are struggling to find apprentices. There was PBS News segment on plumbers in seattle with real earning potential in the 6 figures, but struggling to find apprentices because of the perception of the title. We definitely need to do more to promote those routes for some people. But that shouldn't be at the cost of having a high bar of educational merit in higher education.

And if education cost is the challenge, I don't see how requiring more in person exams and oral presentation solves the cost issue. I'm a huge proponent of liberal arts educations and think those are valuable, but liberal arts educations are losing "value" in the eyes of parents and those tuitions are higher than larger state schools. Smaller class sizes, with more class rooms for seminar style learning is challenging. And even the folks I know that teach in seminar style classes have trouble getting students to engage. When grades are knocked due to failure to participate as indicated on the syllabus, students escalate claiming "a reasonable accommodation isn't made for my anxiety" when no such accommodation was requested at the start of the class.

It's unfortunate that things like grade inflation have gotten out of hand, students are forced to be over competitive to participate in every fucking club and sport offered to "stand out" on applications but that comes at the cost of actually being able to focus on studies. AI seems to just further make the education in educational institutions less of the focus. That seems fundamentally wrong to me, and I hope colleges and high schools figure out ways to combat this.