The Compliance Theatre of Online Learning

James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal ^ | November 12, 2025 | James Andrews

[karpov]

Artificial intelligence has democratized knowledge more than any invention in history. Anyone can now solve a problem in physics, medicine, or Greek literature instantly. Yet the safeguards that once verified a student’s mastery of a subject have been replaced by compliance rituals that only simulate it. [...] What once required thought, practice, and time now takes a single click. That isn’t evolution; it’s a breakthrough, disruptive technology doing what it is meant to do: collapsing the distance between skill and result. In higher education, this transformative technology has created a perfect storm where tools that make cheating effortless have collided with an archaic compliance system that guarantees students get away with it.

Financial markets are pouring trillions of dollars into artificial-intelligence infrastructures, expecting nothing less than the greatest economic expansion in human history. AI won’t replace human effort; it will amplify it. A fivefold jump in knowledge-work productivity isn’t a fantasy; it should be the standard. Yet higher education, whose output makes that productivity possible, has been caught flatfooted, and the result is system dysfunction. The promise of AI rests not on faster chips but on stronger minds. Debating access, equity, grade inflation, or free expression while students cheat their way to a degree is like planning the breakfast menu on the Titanic.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Through the Higher Education Act of 1965, Congress set out to protect Title IV funds from the supposed scourge of correspondence courses. In truth, correspondence learning made up only a small share of higher education. I even took such a class as an undergraduate, a political-science course that meant reading a textbook and sitting for two proctored exams at a testing center.

[Brian Griffin]

“Fancy private schools that train the children of the elite, who go on to be leaders in society? Or mediocre suburban schools who train workers?”

“leaders...workers”

There are more jobs for workers than leaders, ask the CEOs of the Fortune 500.

[Languager]

Here’s a nice quote from C.S. Lewis for you:

“You see at once that education is essentially for freemen and vocational training for slaves. That is how they were distributed in the old unequal societies; the poor man’s son was apprenticed to a trade, the rich man’s son went to Eton and Oxford and then made the grand tour.”

[ProgressingAmerica]

Oh, that's true. Wouldn't the world be a much different place if that Colony of the United States Government known as Virginia didn't establish slavery in the year 1619?