Editorial: Does college still have a purpose in the age of ChatGPT?

For a great number of college students these days life is a breeze Assignments that once demanded days of diligent research can be accomplished in minutes Polished essays are available on demand for any topic under the sun No need to trudge through Dickens or Demosthenes all the relevant material can be instantly summarized after a single chatbot prompt Welcome to academia in the age of artificial intelligence As several contemporary reports have shown outsourcing one s homework to AI has become routine Perversely students who still put in the hard work often look worse by comparison with their peers who don t Professors find it nearly impossible to distinguish computer-generated copy from the real thing and even weirder have started using AI themselves to evaluate their students work It s an untenable situation computers grading papers written by computers students and professors idly observing and parents paying tens of thousands of dollars a year for the privilege Incorporating AI into college curricula surely makes sense in countless respects Selected evidence suggests it may improve engagement Already it s reshaping job descriptions across industries and employers will increasingly expect graduates to be reasonably adept at using it By and large this will be a good thing as productivity improves and innovation accelerates But much of the learning done in college isn t vocational Humanities in particular have a higher calling to encourage critical thinking form habits of mind broaden intellectual horizons to acquaint students with the best that has been thought and announced in Matthew Arnold s phrase Mastering Aristotle or Aquinas or Adam Smith requires more than a sentence-long prompt and is far more rewarding Nor is this merely the dilettante s concern Synthesizing competing viewpoints and making a considered judgment evaluating a work of literature and writing a critical response understanding by dint of hard work the philosophical basis for modern values Such skills not only make one more employable but also shape character confer perspective and mold decent citizens For schools the first step must be to get serious They must clearly articulate when enlisting such tools is acceptable and what the consequences will be for misuse There s plenty of precedent Honor codes for instance have been shown to reduce cheating in particular when schools take them seriously Another obvious step is more in-class assessment Requiring students to take tests with paper and pencil should not only prevent cheating on exam day but also offer a semester-long incentive to master the material Likewise oral exams Longer-term innovation may be part of the key As a Bloomberg Businessweek assessment determined last year tools for detecting AI-generated text are still imperfect simultaneously easy to evade and prone to false positives But as more schools crack down the region should mature the tool improve and the temptation to cheat recede College kids have inevitably cheated and constantly will The point is to make it harder impose consequences and crucially start shaping norms on campus for a new and very strange era The future of the university may well depend on it Bloomberg Opinion Tribune News System Editorial cartoon by Steve Breen Creators Syndicate