A Brown University professor suspected his class used AI to cheat after a take-home midterm averaged 96%, prompting an in-person final, which averaged 48.6%

Inside Higher Ed 2026-07-09 Emma Whitford

Context & Ripple Effects

Related coverage has documented a widening academic-integrity problem: instructors struggle to detect AI-assisted work, reported violations have risen in surveyed institutions, and students are using tools intended to make AI-generated text harder to identify.

The Brown result matters because it offers a stark within-course contrast between an unsupervised assessment and an in-person one. It does not establish individual misconduct, but it sharpens the question of whether take-home work can still serve as a reliable measure of unaided learning.

First-order effects

The professor has shifted the course’s high-stakes assessment toward an in-person final, producing a much lower class average than the take-home midterm.
Students’ take-home submissions now face greater scrutiny as evidence of mastery; the score gap may prompt review of how course grades and future assessments are weighted.

Second-order effects

Other instructors and institutions may place more weight on supervised exams, oral defenses, drafts, or process-based work where the provenance of student work is easier to assess.
Demand for AI-detection and “humanizer” detection tools may persist, but the related coverage suggests an escalating verification problem rather than a dependable technical fix.

Third-order effects

If similar discrepancies recur, colleges may redesign assessment around demonstrable in-person performance and documented learning processes, reducing the centrality of unsupervised take-home assignments.
That shift would deepen a trade-off already visible in proctoring coverage: institutions seeking credible credentials may adopt more monitoring or controlled testing, while confronting fairness and privacy objections.

The trend: Generative AI is pushing higher education from detecting questionable finished work toward redesigning assessment to verify learning and authorship by design.

Discussion

@paulg Paul Graham on x
A Brown professor gave his students a take-home midterm exam. After suspecting many cheated using AI, he made the final in-person. The orange dots are the midterm scores and the gray dots are the final scores. Looks like all but 3 cheated on the midterm. [image]
@dynamicwebpaige @dynamicwebpaige on x
oof this is an indication that (1) traditional university exam administration methodologies are straight-up cooked, and (2) we need a more interesting, reliable way to teach students and to measure what knowledge / skills they've retained 100 to literally 0? come on, y'all:
@danprimack Dan Primack on x
Brown University professor gives midterm. Avg is 96%. Professor suspects AI-enabled cheating. Gives new, in-person. Some students drop class immediately. Those who take it, the new avg is 49%. https://www.insidehighered.com/ ...
@ralph_grabowski Ralph Grabowski on x
Well, duh. Of course take-home exams are flooded with cheating. The aim is to pass the course; learning the material is incidental. Open book, in-class exams are the best. 'Course, it looks bad on profs if half the class fails: his teaching method becomes suspect. [image]
@rcolvile Robert Colvile on x
All exams at schools and universities should be in person at this point. Can't understand why they aren't already.
@neildotobrien Neil O'Brien on x
Time to deploy a cool new anti-fraud technology called “pen and paper”
@scottbelsky Scott Belsky on x
also a sign of how stale traditional education is. I wonder how these assessments that prohibit the use of modern methods of remembering and querying things are actually correlated with the intelligence or initiative that makes someone successful?
@alonso_gd Alonso Gurmendi on x
This looks to me like an issue with the teacher, not the students. Essentially, they could not get most students to learn in class.
@predict_addict @predict_addict on x
Any degree in pre LLM era is x1000 more than a degree obtained in post LLM era.
@hquarterma43504 @hquarterma43504 on x
Every American accusation is a confession. You could probably guess what Americans would be saying if this came out of an Indian or Chinese University. The latter have entirely in person examinations.
@ettingermentum @ettingermentum on x
The guy who did dogshit on both exams is a lion
@hamptonism @hamptonism on x
Yea, we're cooked.
@hsu_steve Steve Hsu on x
I structure my classes with many (possibly online) quizzes during the term, and an in-person high stakes final. I tell the students to consider the quizzes as diagnostic, to help them prepare for the final, which mostly determines their grade.
@hissgoescobra John Jackson on x
The loss of character reflected in the below is startling. I dealt with severe ADHD throughout my academic career. I never once even consider cheating, even though everything was twice as hard for me. I can't even imagine what is happening here.
@alexfeinberg Alex Feinberg on x
One of my smartest yet Ivy League educated colleagues at Google mentioned that fabricating productivity metrics was par for the course at the company because Google only hired Ivy League students who were admitted because they were the best at cheating
@mnwsth Manu Awasthi on x
We need to bring back pen and paper assessments. Not if, when. Or at least something that can closely resemble those scenarios. Assuming the goal of assessments is to assess if the students can think for themselves.
@dilanesper Dilan Esper on x
the baseball steroids problem. if your cohorts are all cheating, you have to cheat. if you don't you finish at the bottom. this is why there were no non-PED users with great stats in the steroid era, and why all of Ben Johnson's opponents were using PED's too.
@austinjpark Austin Park on x
I have no doubt in my mind that people cheat on take-home tests all the time but I think this is a poor way to gauge this. The final could simply be harder! Even if the final is the same difficulty it covers more content! I've done far worse on finals than midterms all the time
@perbylund @perbylund on x
My experience as well. Any exam or quiz or whatever that students do at home, whether or not online, is all AI nowadays.
@sfrantzman Seth Frantzman on x
If this is accurate...Big respect to the ONE student who performed better in class than on the take home. Basically all the students here are suspected of cheating in some way and getting almost 100% on the test, while in reality it seems about half would have failed or gotten a
@cargoshortdad64 @cargoshortdad64 on x
Why does it matter than he's brown??? Literally has nothing to do with the story
@jparkjmc @jparkjmc on x
student 22 is failing exams purely for the love of the game 😂😂 [image]
@swipewright Colin Wright on x
Honestly, given how easy and widespread AI cheating has become, professors who still give take-home exams are being negligent. They're failing their students, even if the students are the ones doing the cheating. It would be like a sports tournament refusing to test athletes for
@jerrydunleavy Jerry Dunleavy IV on x
Some people don't realize how unbelievably pervasive cheating now is in college. It is a near-universal scandal.
@alt_w_v_g Ethan Brooks on x
Interesting philosophical question here and I genuinely don't know the answer: > The goal of college is to prepare you for the real world > In the real world you use every tool at your disposal to gain a competitive advantage > No employer has ever asked anyone to solve a
@joshuasteinman Joshua Steinman on x
Everybody is talking about bout the people at the top but I want to meet these two legends. [image]
@owroot O.W. Root on x
On the very long arc those who don't take the shortcut will ultimately win. Shortcuts and cheating work in the short term but it's always a house built on sand. Hard to see that the real work pays at the time when it feels like it doesn't, but at scale we will see it eventually.
@uncledoomer @uncledoomer on x
sorry but this is a failure by the teacher. teaching a course on microeconomics and market failures and not being aware that giving a take home exam would result in rampant AI cheating by your students? force the professor into retirement and throw his ass in a nursing home [imag…
@jrichlive Jeff Richards on x
And of course all will use AI in their future careers...
@honoranddaring Michael Sebastian on x
Here are your future leaders: Virtually all cheaters. This won't stop them from becoming senators, judges, presidents and CEOs.
@rpondiscio Robert Pondiscio on x
Who the heck gives a take-home midterm?
@ideacasino Tom Mitchelhill on x
LLMs can be one of the best educational tools if you're not a spiritually inert retard that sees it as a quick oneshot solution to blindly generate the correct answer and “win” high scores on standardized tests > if you outsource your cognition process (what makes you valuable
@alexiskold Alex Iskold on x
This is basically a catastrophic part of AI proliferation. This and loss of understanding of how things actually work.
@robertmsterling Robert Sterling on x
In the age of AI, this is what integrity looks like [image]
@second_sailing Matt Dinan on x
“We Cannot Choose to Become Idiots” is a good, succinct slogan for educators in the algorithmic age [image]
@pdmcleod Paul McLeod on x
Many takeaways from this story of an econ prof catching almost his entire class using AI to cheat but maybe the scalable solution is telling students they will be re-tested on a random section of the take home and if the results don't line up, well https://www.insidehighered.com/…
@sullycnbc Brian Sullivan on x
Hire S1 and S22. Maybe S2 if desperate.
@mccannsportslaw Michael McCann on x
The widespread use of AI by students to cheat has to be among the biggest pressure points in higher ed. Be sure to check out Professor Nyhan's post and the article on a Brown professor who made his final exam in-person after giving a take-home midterm: https://www.insidehighered.…
@michaelsocolow Michael Socolow on x
As this article makes clear, AI is fundamentally degenerating the teaching + learning dynamic in university classrooms around the world. Every professor knows this. Every one has experienced it. Yet: Their employers insist on fully embracing the new tech. https://www.insidehigher…
@rebeleducator @rebeleducator on x
A Brown professor suspected his students of cheating on their exams using AI He ran the final exam in-person, in the classroom 27 students dropped out or declined to take the test Only one student (circled) scored higher on their final exam than they did on their midterm
Norman Moore Norman Moore on linkedin
The Brown story reflects what happens when AI output is mistaken for human capability. Enterprises are RIGHT NOW facing the same problem. …
Thomas Pepinsky Thomas Pepinsky on linkedin
This is the appalling consequence of the mass rush to introduce the plagiarism and cheating machine into higher education. …
Jake Shapiro Jake Shapiro on linkedin
Fascinating piece here that touches on the challenges AI poses for higher education, for student integrity and administrative processes, and for society more broadly. …
@carnage4life Dare Obasanjo on bluesky
On one hand, it seems rough to hear that companies are no longer interested in hiring for entry levels but on the other hand, cheating due to AI is so rampant in schools that it seems like the safest bet instead of hiring people who have no understanding of the work. *sigh*
@dannygroner Danny Groner on bluesky
“Dozens of students in the class likely used artificial intelligence to cheat and earn perfect or near-perfect scores on their midterm, he said. Serrano in turn made the final exam in-person, which led more than a dozen students to drop the course and even more to fail it.”
@gemko Mike D'Angelo on bluesky
R.I.P. education. (Except for student 1 in the graph who's a beast.) www.insidehighered.com/news/ faculty...
@rikefranke Ulrike Franke on bluesky
God this is bleak. Almost everybody cheated and learned less than in previous years — www.insidehighered.com/news/ faculty... [image]
@mariabustillos.com Maria Bustillos on bluesky
Why AI needs to be removed from higher ed now, not later. — Riveting, heroic actions of econ prof Roberto Serrano. Reads like a thriller. Fantastic story. — www.insidehighered.com/news/ faculty...
r/technology r on reddit
Suspecting AI cheating, Ivy League prof ordered an in-person final; scores fell 50%
r/qualitynews r on reddit
Suspecting AI cheating, Ivy League prof ordered an in-person final; scores fell 50%
r/antiai r on reddit
Suspecting AI cheating, Ivy League prof ordered an in-person final; scores fell 50%
r/technology r on reddit
Brown Professor Suspects Most of His Class Used AI to Cheat
r/BrownU r on reddit
Brown Professor Suspects Most of His Class Used AI to Cheat

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