UC Berkeley introductory CS failure rates spike to 35%, prompting 1,300 faculty to demand SAT and ACT reinstatement

college is not over. i have a few academic friends in universities and the things they are now doing with codex + pro models will shock you

Pre- and post-Claude Code:

the credential value of a college degree is dropping like a rock rn. unless the school has totally reworked their class structure and invested significant effort in preventing ai cheating there's just no reason to expect graduates learned *anything*

https://www.dailycal.org/news/campus/academics/failing-grades-soar-as-professors-see-greater-ai-usage-dwindling-math-skills-in-uc-berkeley/article_16fad0bf-02cb-4b8c-8d88-888ffd9f8608.html

but college as like, a notch in your belt to get your assigned do nothing job is over yes

@tkanthh 🤷‍♂️ heavily proctored in-person exams worth 90-100% of your grade?

both ends of the pipeline eroding simultaneously is the part nobody is talking about. companies cutting senior engineers while junior engineers graduate without foundational skills because AI did their coursework is not a temporary disruption, it's a structural gap in the workforce that compounds every year the pattern continues

@HedgieMarkets we're about to have a generation of engineers who can prompt but can't think for themselves

@HedgieMarkets My failure rates are going up as well. However, students who want to cheat have always found ways to cheat. AI lowers the barrier so perhaps there is some marginal propensity to cheat being accessed here, but I don't think it can explain a move like this.

@ishaansehgal 🦔And when the pricing changes or the tool goes down, there's no fallback. You can't troubleshoot what you never understood in the first place.

@tenobrus Definitely need to rework assessment (e.g. for me assessment is now based on in-class/oral exams). Big challenge for students to understand you’ll fail the exams if you have AI do the (not-for-credit) HW. That said so far this strategy seems to work in upper-level math classes.

@HedgieMarkets The impact of AI on learning

@Dr_Gingerballs 🦔The difference is friction. Copying an answer key took effort and carried risk. Pasting a prompt takes seconds and feels like studying. That drop in effort probably unlocked a whole tier of students who wouldn't have cheated otherwise.

When I went to Cal in the pre-AI era, exams were already worth 60-80% of your grade. And they were handwritten coding exercises.

Maybe in the interim they switched to machine proctored versions, but it seems like you can simply switch back and there would be enough back pressure.

@tenobrus “College is over” because we have no clue what white collar work will look like in 10 years. What should CS students even be learning right now?

@HedgieMarkets This is catastrophic for humanity, rather than augmenting our intelligence, it is stripping us of it. It is an utter disaster.

@tenobrus How do you even prevent ai cheating?

@_vish_k only at schools where the failing grades actually go up

@HedgieMarkets cutting seniors to fund AI, graduating juniors who can't code without it. nobody's mapped those two decisions onto the same org chart yet

@tenobrus If failing grades go up doesn’t the credential get more valuable