Most American College Students Say Using AI is Cheating, Many Are Using it Anyway

Plus, ChatGPT may be squeezing essay mills. Plus, a sad note. Plus, International Quick Bites.

Mar 23, 2023

Issue 198

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Majority of US College Students Say Using AI for Academic Work is Cheating

In a recently released survey of 1,000 American college students, a slight majority (51%) said “using AI to complete assignments and exams constitutes cheating or plagiarism.”

To me, the “to complete” is insightful. They don’t use “represent as your own” or similar verbiage. They say, “to complete” - to do the work. Interesting.

Anyway, in that headline question about whether using AI is considered cheating, 20% said it was not.

Other interesting data points from the survey:

While 51% of students said using AI was cheating, only 41% said using AI “to help complete” work was “morally wrong.”
Just 27% said AI tools should be banned in academic settings.
Keeping in mind that self-reported conduct that is considered illicit or wrong is under counted, about 22% of students acknowledge using AI on school work. To that point, about 40% of students say they’ve used AI “out of curiosity or just for fun.” Sure.
And though just 22% of students said they had used AI for academic work, nearly a third (32%) said they intended to use AI for school work or would continue to do so.
Nearly half (47%) of those who said they used AI on school work said they either turned in the AI content with “no edits” (17%), or they used AI to complete “a majority of the work” (30%).
40% of students said using AI in school “defeats the purpose of education.” Or maybe 40% here deserves the descriptor: “only 40%.”
Students are not sure whether AI work can be detected by their instructors - 31% said it was “virtually undetectable” and 33% disagreed, which I think means they think it can be detected. It can be, by the way.
A surprising 43% of students said ChatGPT can “generate accurate and reliable results.” Only 20% thought otherwise. A majority (51%) say AI content can “pass as human.”

There are more data in survey, including whether schools or teachers are addressing the AI issue.

For me, this is a good news/bad news thing. Good news: students largely know using AI is wrong and that it undermines education. Bad news: AI is being used often and egregiously to cheat on academic work.

It’s worth another note that many students think the quality of AI content is good and can’t be spotted by teachers. They’re wrong on both counts. If schools or teachers want to detect AI-generated content, they can.

Generative AI May Indeed be Squeezing Essay Mills

Late last month, Business Insider reported on a question many have been asking - will AI tools such as ChatGPT take business away from contract cheating essay mills?

And according to the article - probably.

This great reporting interviews two paid essay writers who, it says, “both get paid to help college students cheat,” adding:

They're both well qualified. Austin, 26, majored in computer science at the University of California, Berkeley. Taylor, 46, holds a doctorate from a prestigious US university

To the central question: Taylor told Insider that demand for custom essay work has “dropped considerably” after the launch of free AI-generated content:

She said demand had "cratered quite a bit" since ChatGPT was launched in November. She said that while she used to consistently find at least 50 hours of work a week, over the past two months she's struggled to find half that amount.
"I'm currently looking for other types of writing work, because there's really no way to see where this is going to go," Taylor said.

Austin echoed, saying:

business had been "really slow" since "ChatGPT went mainstream."
Austin, who advertises his services on Reddit, said he completed 26 assignments in December and January, compared with 58 in October and November, a 55% decline.

For those following the industry, this section is insightful:

Taylor said she'd played around with ChatGPT but ultimately found it to be more labor-intensive than writing the essay herself. "I think it takes more work to fix what ChatGPT produces," she said.
Austin agreed. If you want ChatGPT to produce a high-quality assignment, he said, you have to do lots of research yourself, feed in lots of sources, carefully structure your prompts, and proofread the output intensively — because ChatGPT may make up facts.

Interesting to me that skilled, paid essay writers find it more challenging to fix AI content than to produce their own. I’ve always found editing to be easier than writing. But the making up facts issue - I can see that being a time-consuming challenge.

I’ve said before that I think the future of contract essay mills and writers is in this clean-up role - using AI, editing, fact-checking. But based on this, I may be wrong.

Further:

Taylor said she's hoping some of her former clients might return once they realize they're getting a worse product from ChatGPT or when software can reliably detect artificially generated text.

Software can reliably detect artificially generated text. I’m just not sure schools will use it quickly enough or consistently enough for it matter. Or whether students care. For many, fast and free and completely anonymous may outweigh the risks of detection - especially if schools don’t bother and the risk is essentially zero.

Finally, and though it’s not directly, directly related to cheating, I feel compelled to share this section from the Insider article as well:

Taylor, who's been writing students' assignments full time for almost nine years, told Insider that the work — at least before the rise of ChatGPT — was far less precarious than her previous work as a college lecturer, where she faced contracts and low pay.
She first found out about the so-called essay-for-hire industry in 2014. "I began my professorial career as a one-year lecturer at a flagship state university," Taylor said. "I had some students who were barely literate, judging by the content in their in-class written exams, and then they would turn in out-of-class essays that were just brilliant."
She said these essays weren't flagged by plagiarism-detection software. After she shared her confusion, colleagues told Taylor about the bespoke essay-writing business

I’ve also said for a long time that short-term, at-will, adjunct teaching contracts were fueling cheating. Not as much as Chegg and massive essay mills, but plenty. I never wanted to imagine that actively down-paying teachers would lead to cheating in this way. I’m sad. I am even more sad that I am not surprised.

Of Note

Aaron Ogletree, the student plaintiff in the Ohio remote proctoring “room scan” case (see Issue SE2 and Issue 188), has passed away unexpectedly. The pending appeals related to his case have been dismissed.

Oman held its first national symposium on academic integrity. The events were hosted at Majan University College and by several officials and dignitaries.
A teacher in South Africa has failed to overturn a dismissal that resulted after he was found to have given 11th grade students exam answers. The test was - wait for it - a “life orientation exam.” Yikes.
It seems that Australia’s High Commission in India “inadvertently directed prospective students to a company that could prepare essays, assignments and project reports on a fee-for-service basis.” My goodness. The company is based in the U.S. and the article is worth a read.
Some TOEFL and GRE scores from at-home tests in Iran have reportedly been canceled. It may have something to do with “unauthorized software” being detected.
A school principal in India is facing charges after being accused of helping his daughter cheat an exam in a test center. There’s video, though it does not seem to show much.
Also in India, a state board has said that 68 students were expelled for “using unfair means” on a state exam on the very first day. Two “impersonators” were also arrested, the report said.