People I know at universities are going back to paper tests written by hand, and what they are finding is the students are doing markedly worse under that system. Previous "good" grades were actually students using AI to write their exams and papers. Without AI, those students are helpless.
It's probably partly that these are COVID students, who got passed during the pandemic even if they did no work at all -- so they did no work. (One of my students told me they took a job during school hours, and just left Zoom open on their laptop.) And when students can pass without doing the work in classes they don't care about (for many, many students, that is every single class) then they don't do the work.
Why would that be? They're paying for these classes, why would they not make at least some effort to learn what's being taught?
Possibly it's because these students come from Red States, where for the past two decades their parents and their governments have been saying that teachers are mindless liberals, that everything they're teaching is woke propaganda, and that education is worthless.
Education is a meaningless credential, their parents and their pastors and their governments say. Education is hoops to jump through so that you can get a job. Education is a scam, a Ponzi scheme. That so many of these students then treat university classes like something they can cheat their way through is no real surprise.
This is despite, or I guess maybe because of, their massive ignorance. (I could tell you stories....)
I'm glad I'm retired for two reasons: having to fail most of my students would be too depressing; and going back to paper exams and writing essays in class means I would have to read their appalling handwriting.
Ugh. No thanks.
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