Provost’s endorsement of report on protecting the value of a degree in the age of AI

This useful and timely report from Policy Exchange highlights an important new threat to the integrity of degree standards. The widespread use of unmonitored online exams and take-home essays for summative assessment actively promote the use of AI by students. This is unfair and invidious to students and staff who wish to act with integrity.

As ever, the incentives in the higher education sector are wrong and institutions are too slow to change in response to new technology. AI is having impact at every stage of student life, affecting how universities interview, teach, tutor, assess, examine and grade students. Its implications vary by subject: some disciplines, such as mathematics, are already using it as a useful tool, while its impact on English literature will be very different. But none of the potential uses can justify allowing students to use AI in assessments that are intended to be completed without its aid.

The higher education sector is of immense value and importance to the economy and to employers. Central to this value is its role in assuring qualification standards. If Higher Education bodies are unable to give appropriate assurances that their qualifications are proof against AI-cheating, then employers will go around them and create their own – as we have already seen happening with the Solicitors Regulation Authority, which introduced the Solicitors Qualifying Exam in 2021. Yet a widespread collapse in confidence that a degree qualification means what it purports to would be a tragedy: universities must act now to put their house in order, before it is too late.