First Student expelled for using AI

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The University of Minnesota expelled a PhD grad student for allegedly using AI. Now that student, who denies the claim, is suing the school.




The higher education sector across the world is watching what the outcome of this investigation

I saw that. My personal experience with the disciplinary proceedings at college is that there's a lot of room for them to put their fingers on the scale to get the result they want. It certainly does look rather thin here, and it also looks like they didn't bother to actually contact the student before issuing the failing grade to see if he at least knows the material he was claiming on the exam.

(Side note, this is one of the reasons why I object so much to forcing colleges and universities to handle certain crimes in house, sometimes it makes sense, but often it doesn't)

That being said, whether he cheated or not, it's an absolutely damning indictment of the university to have such an important exam taken without proctoring. I remember when I was working on my masters that I either had to go into a professional proctoring location for some, or I had to be at home, in a room that was largely empty of anything that could possibly be used to cheat. I'd have to show the proctor all corners of the room with my webcam, point the webcam how they requested it and move it if the proctor later asked to see something. And, my cellphone had to be turned off and shown to the proctor that it was being turned off. There was also a program installed on my computer that was monitoring for processes that indicated barred software from being run until I clicked the final button to submit my test.

And, in this case, there appears to be no way of actually preventing somebody from using AI as it's not even proctored even though it's one of the last tests to be taken before being awarded the doctorate.

My understanding in the US is that many universities use some type of honour system for take home exams which is used currently in many Australian universities whereby students are told not to use AI. Of course we all know every student uses AI to draft take home exams/essays or learning system hosted quizzes.

For that reason I am interested in how this case pans out.

There are take home exams, but it's unusual for something this high stakes to be unsupervised. That may not have been the case around the time of the Pandemic and a bit afterwards, but the only times I ever had unsupervised exams was doing a 2 year degree, and the tests themselves were just a small part of the actual grade.

I definitely share the curiosity as to what happens here because the disciplinary process at a lot of American colleges and universities leaves a lot to be desired in terms of the normal protections that the accused get in court. They can definitely put their thumbs on the scale to get whatever result they like and failing to actually evaluate whether or not he had the knowledge that was expressed on the exam is may cause them some problems in court. Universities do have some latitude in terms of policies, but if the process wasn't handled properly, they may well be forced to settle and to let him back into the program.

Proctoring and eye tracking software is used for online tests/exams (a byproduct of COVID lockdown) but its not perfect, especially for large cohorts of students. I think a simple solution for this type of cheating is go back to paper and pencil exams on campus.