Artificial intelligence and university degrees

The answer may be to return to the old style of unseen examinations. It pains me to write this, after all it is a reversal of what we campaigned for all those years ago.

But at least with unseen examination questions there can be no question of AI assistance.

There will be the restitution of the integrity of the degree.

Yes: this will be a return to the era of stress and risk of nervous breakdowns. But it will also eliminate the "impostor syndrome".

This syndrome will emerge from students who have used AI to do their essays and obtained a good result for the essays. Will they feel like imposters knowing that the credit for their work lies not with their own ability but that of AI?

It will also reassure their eventual clients or customers that their credentials have been earned by the students themselves and not by AI.

This will also bring integrity into the assessment process. Students writing essays are usually obliged to sign a form of undertaking that this essay is their own work.

But students using AI are actually making false declarations because they have received assistance from AI. It is not their own work. Thy are making a false declaration. This is not a good basis upon which to begin a career.

From a university marketing point of view, the unseen paper replacing take-home essays may be used to demonstrate the vigour of the university's education. As the use of AI erodes the value of university degrees, so a university can boast of its use of the unseen examination paper as its restoration of the integrity of its own degrees.

By implication, universities still using essays may be seen as permitting students to obtain easy – and less worthwhile - degrees.

The arrival of AI is forcing us to reconsider a great deal of contemporary life. For those of us who campaigned for "continual assessment, that era is now ending. We need to go back to the era of the unseen examination paper to maintain the integrity of a university degree.