Top grades at universities have increased for years, with a further jump of about 30% since ChatGPT appeared in 2022. The rise is concentrated in courses with heavy writing or programming workloads, where AI use is easier, while oral-presentation courses show a smaller effect. Evidence comes from data on about half a million students across 319 courses at a Texas university. Average grades have risen overall and grades have become more skewed upward. The largest movement toward top marks occurs for students already in the middle-to-high range, not for those near failing. Separate findings based on 2024 data report that 9% of students cheat using AI, with higher rates suggested in later data. Cheating is most common in economics and journalism and least common in biology.
"The number of top grades at universities has been rising for a long time. But since 2022, when ChatGPT appeared, that figure has jumped by 30%. The increase is concentrated in courses with heavy writing or programming workloads, where using AI is easier. In contrast, in classes that rely on oral presentations, the effect is smaller. That pattern emerges from a study based on data from half a million students across 319 courses at a Texas university."
"The research also finds that average grades have risen overall and that grades are increasingly skewed upward. One curious detail: the marks most likely to turn into top grades are the ones just below them. The biggest jumps aren't among students on the verge of failing, but among those already in the middletohigh range, says Igor Chirikov, the study's author and a researcher at the Center for Studies in Higher Education at the University of California, Berkeley. AI does not rescue those who were going to fail so much as it nudges upward students who were already doing fairly well."
"On Thursday, Science published another study showing that, based on 2024 data, 9% of students cheat using AI. That figure reflects only the first full year of ChatGPT's existence. It is now higher: The latest evidence suggests it has continued to grow. We're currently finishing data collection for 2026, and preliminary results from several universities show a significant increase in students' use of AI, Chirikov says."
"The gradeinflation study, which includes data through fall 2025, shows that courses exposed to AI especially those built around homework have seen substantial increases in top marks. The fields with the most cheating are economics (17%) and journalism (16%), while biology students are the least likely to use AI to cheat, at just 5%. The authors, who gathered data from a survey of more than 95,000 students at 20 U.S. institutions, d"
#grade-inflation #generative-ai-in-education #academic-integrity #writing-and-programming-coursework #student-cheating-rates
Read at english.elpais.com
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]