By Jacob Perron

Publié le 17 juin 2026

I remember the time I opened the five-page document that was given to me by the teacher and just froze. My memory, gone. My knowledge, gone too.  

The basis of academic criteria is talking, listening and reading. Since the beginning of school, students have been evaluated, and teachers focus on educating them specifically. But the era of five-paragraph essays, research papers, and reading responses has been revolutionized because of Artificial Intelligence (A.I.). Cheating has become too easy.  

Colleges need to change the way they evaluate understanding because of the A.I. cheating crisis; it only shows who is good at taking the test, and it does not evaluate real problem-solving and creativity. 

In colleges, students started using A.I. to save time. Lazy high schoolers found that A.I. could do anything for them, and they started using it. This working method provides more and more inertia, and exams are not evaluating students' works, but real plagiarized works.   

In Students Hate Them. Universities Need Them. The Only Real Solution to the A.I. Cheating Crisis, Clay Shirky presents several points why essays and exams aren’t an effective way to evaluate college students; they are outdated. She outlines the different solutions, like using more direct methods of evaluation, asking questions and debating with the students on the topic instead of writing a boring five-paragraph essay, (like the one you are reading now). 

"Ninety-eight…” “Seventy-five...” In college hallways, those numbers are common to hear; there is always a competition over who got the best grades. The hard truth is that most of the time, the better student is not the harder worker. It is a random game whether you are good or not at taking tests. 

College tests only show which ones are the best at taking the pressure off a Thursday afternoon science exam. On any particular day, the knowledge of a student could have disappeared and caused their bad grades. Every aspect of life affects your result, stress, hunger, tiredness, the way the teacher looks at you… Anything. 

In short, exams only show who is the best at preparing and taking the exam, not necessarily the one who understands the subject that the test is covering.  

I interviewed ChatGPT to find some solutions for the bad way colleges are evaluating the knowledge of students, and it presented some interesting ones.  

It began by promoting oral examination, which is more precise for understanding the concepts. In a college class, it is also easier to produce and develop your idea while talking instead of writing. 

ChatGPT also insisted on evaluating the students with real-world problem-solving. I agree with this idea because throughout the year, students learn loads of things but don’t even know what their use in the world is. In exams, teachers must add a real-world problem that students can resolve so they have more clues on why they are learning those things. 

ChatGPT has shown many ways to adapt college evaluation to the future world, like resolving real financial problems or just asking questions in real person instead of writing an essay, because the boring paper-and-pencil exams era is over.  

Colleges must immediately change the way they evaluate students’ understanding. This is not funny anymore. High schoolers are tired, exams are the past, now we need to move toward the future. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

In Students Hate Them. Universities Need Them. The Only Real Solution to the A.I. Cheating Crisis, Clay Shirky presents several points why essays and exams aren’t a good way to evaluate college students (Aug. 26, 2025) 

In Authentic Assessment, the author (unknown) clarifies what a real and relevant test is and can be used in college. (1998) 

In Standardized Tests Do Standardized Tests Improve Education?, The Editors of ProCon argue that exams are not the best way to educate but not the worst either by giving some example and analysis them. (Nov 08, 2024) 

In Four Reasons Exams are Ineffective in Measuring Learning, Eisha presents some reasons why exams are not the best way to evaluate the students understanding. (February 14, 2023)