Will online degrees become worthless because of AI?

[blablablox]

I'm a student a U of the people, and I've seen a heavy use of AI generated content  It's so blatant that it's honestly becoming both frightening and depressing.
If you look at the uopeople subreddit, you'll see that even instructors use AI to respond to discussion forums and even grade students. So basically, bots are doing assignments, and bots respond to them and grade them, in the end it feel as if it's the bot that is going to graduate.

Is this prevalent in other online universities or are we just the worse of the bunch? will online degrees become worthless? is there no solution for that?

[LevelUP]

I'm a student a U of the people, and I've seen a heavy use of AI generated content  It's so blatant that it's honestly becoming both frightening and depressing.
If you look at the uopeople subreddit, you'll see that even instructors use AI  to respond to discussion forums and even grade students. So basically, bots are doing assignments, and bots respond to them and grade them, in the end it feel as if it's the bot that is going to graduate.

Is this prevalent in other online universities or are we just the worse of the bunch? will online degrees become worthless? is there no solution for that?

Quite a few of the colleges we recommend, you can't tell if they were done online or on-campus.

For a lot of employers, a degree is sort of a checkbox. 

In the end, you need the skills to do the job, so if you take shortcuts, you are cheating yourself down the road.

[bjcheung77]

For UofPeople, since they're NA and the transfer of credits aren't viable to many other places, I would recommend either sticking with them to complete the degree or transferring to another institution that accepts NA credits, you usually want to make sure the institution you end up with is RA at the undergrad and graduate levels. If you're at the doctoral level and can only find NA alternatives, then that's fine... generally if you can find a Masters or lower at a comparable RA institution, stick with RA for now...

[Hotdogman1]

I’m fine with students using AI. In my experience, ChatGPT 4.0 has 70% accuracy on multiple choice questions and writes like a robot cosplaying as a below average 8th grader who is scrambling to finish an assignment before a pending deadline. Students who solely rely on AI for assignments will never be able to compete against you academically or influence your career.

As for instructors, they are volunteers that get a stipend of around $400-$700 for a 9-week course. Assuming the best-case scenario of $700 per course and 10 hours of work per week, this would equate to a $7.78 hourly pay. Rather than lamenting the instructors that blatantly use AI, you should commend the professors that don’t use AI.

As for whether online degrees would become useless, I proctor at my local community college’s testing center once a week. Last month, I caught 3 students using phones, 2 calculators with answers on the back, and 1 student who had math formulas written on the back of their hand. Like LevelUP mentioned:

a degree is sort of a checkbox. 

In the end, you need the skills to do the job, so if you take shortcuts, you are cheating yourself down the road.

[NotJoeBiden]

Chat GPT is very poor at solving word problems or making any sorts of extrapolation out of data. I suspect professors will have to adjust their methods of assessing competency. As is, some students pay others to write their essays, so this isnt a new issue, it is just easier now.

[sanantone]

The problem isn't specific to online programs. Students can turn in AI-generated papers in on-ground programs. For a long time, on-campus students have been paying people to write papers for them. The only difference is on-campus testing, but online proctors exist to prevent cheating during remote testing.

[ss20ts]

The problem isn't specific to online programs. Students can turn in AI-generated papers in on-ground programs. For a long time, on-campus students have been paying people to write papers for them. The only difference is on-campus testing, but online proctors exist to prevent cheating during remote testing.

So many students cheat when testing in person. I used to see so many students cheating at one university I attended in person years ago. When there's 300 students and 1 TA it's not hard. I have wondered if this is why some professors moved to open notes for exams. You still had time limits so you had to have great organized notes for it to help you.

[davewill]

If anything, I think that online programs may end up being more resistant to cheating. Individual professors' ability to detect cheating will always be a bit spotty, while online programs will be more likely to put in place uniform detection methods.

[LevelUP]

AI Won’t Replace Humans — But Humans With AI Will Replace Humans Without AI
https://hbr.org/2023/08/ai-wont-replace-...without-ai

Basically, if you don't learn how to use AI, you will soon become a caveman and obsolete.

The same thing happened with computers and the Internet.

[Hotdogman1]

So many students cheat when testing in person. I used to see so many students cheating at one university I attended in person years ago. When there's 300 students and 1 TA it's not hard. I have wondered if this is why some professors moved to open notes for exams. You still had time limits so you had to have great organized notes for it to help you.

For in-person testing at my testing center, we have 25 testing stations per lab, 1 camera above every testing station, and at least 4 different camera angles for each desk: left, above, right, and behind. From the proctor's desk, we can access the cameras, view student's monitors, and take control of their computers at any time. We can rewind the videos a week and the camera can zoom in. We also periodically walk around the lab to make sure students aren't hiding anything below their desks. If MLB had the camera coverage we have, challenges would last 30 seconds. Even with a proctor in the lab and a supervisor monitoring the cameras, people still try to cheat.

If anything, I think that online programs may end up being more resistant to cheating. Individual professors' ability to detect cheating will always be a bit spotty, while online programs will be more likely to put in place uniform detection methods.

We manually review the videos of every remotely proctored test regardless of the subject. When we find someone cheating/suspicious, we escalate it to the professor for them to handle. We get complaints from professors at least once a week that our standards are unreasonable. Some professors never respond or don’t care enough to take disciplinary action. A contributing factor is probably pay. For some reason, my proctor hourly pay is likely at least 3 times higher than the average adjunct hourly pay.