Another academic year is almost under wraps, and that means another year of writers, professors, and pundits wrestling with AI use in the classroom. A widely read report from New York Magazine, “Everyone is Cheating Their Way Through College,” offers a deep dive into the stories of students who admit to using ChatGPT to make it through school. Students confess to using AI to either write their papers or to provide the bulk of the assignment while they go through the material afterward to make it sound more human. As a college writing professor myself, I came across multiple instances of AI plagiarism while grading final papers. Not all my students used it, but enough of them did to lead me to conclude that the issue isn’t marginal. It’s pervasive.

Not every professor sees AI as a threat, however. Many simply incorporate it into their syllabi or even encourage students to embrace the technology, as if they weren’t already. So, while the pushback is substantial, is there something fundamentally wrong with how Americans tend to think about higher education in the first place?

John Warner, author of Why They Can’t Write, thinks students use of ChatGPT to skate through school is a symptom of a deeper problem — what he calls a “transactional model of school.” Warner writes, in response to the story of a student featured in the NY Magazine article,

I’m more worried about the Wendys of the world, the students who have internalized a transactional model of education that has turned students into customers, where the exploration and development of the self is secondary to doing whatever the transaction demands to continue to progress through the system. Wendy exists in a system predicated on what I call “indefinite future reward” where there is no reason to do something in the moment. All of the payoff is at some future point. Get good grades in high school to get into college. Do well in college so you can get a good job. Get a good job — meaning high paying — so you can insulate yourself from the uncertainty of the world as much as possible.

For Warner, if going to college is just a matter of jumping through some hoops in order to get a job to get a house to get a comfortable, insulated life, then ChatGPT is a logical tool to use along the way. It fits well within the pre-established code of higher education. On the other hand, if college is about genuine learning and becoming a more holistic human being and citizen, AI is the damaging shortcut that will handicap students in the long run. It falsifies the entire point of going to college.

Alan Noble, an English professor at Oklahoma Baptist University, believes that the schools who still strive to educate the “whole person” will be in greater demand as AI advances. Colleges that reject the AI-pocalypse will also produce the kinds of people who others will depend upon to make society function, because they’re the ones who will actually be able to think and solve problems. Noble writes,

In the coming years, students who desire wisdom will look for schools that still meet in person, still have traditional courses, still teach from physical books, still hold a high standard of excellence, still value wisdom, still teach the humanities, still require students to write papers themselves, and still mentor students holistically. They will cost more than the free skills-training A.I. bots, but they will carry the fire of civilization in a time of darkness, graduating wise humans rather than skilled cogs.

I agree. The tragedy about AI is that those who depend on it to “think” for them won’t have the work ethic, skill, or wisdom to offer value to the world. A college education is valuable insofar as it helps students genuinely learn, develop, and grow. AI undercuts that goal.