Grades dropped 50% when AI was banned — is academia facing a cheating crisis?
a brown university study saw grades collapse from 96% to 48% when proctored exams replaced ai-enabled take-home tests, suggesting widespread academic dishonesty that challenges traditional assessment models.
a brown university investigation revealed that student grades crashed from a historical high of 96% to a record low of 48.6% after an economics professor moved the final from an unsupervised take-home format to an in-person, proctored setting. the professor noted that students utilized the same obscure mathematical proofs as chatgpt rather than standard methods, and data from 26,000 students in china and 500,000 grades at a us university confirm that ai usage inflates homework scores while degrading actual exam performance. these findings expose a growing disconnect between ai-assisted assignments and genuine learning, forcing institutions to rethink grading policies and assessment integrity.