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 Yet the safeguards that once verified a student’s mastery of a subject have been replaced by compliance rituals that only simulate it.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.

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TOPICS: Computers/Internet; Education
KEYWORDS: college

[ProgressingAmerica]

Its dependent entirely upon the teachers indoctrinating.

When students ask bad questions of the AI, the AI will return a bad answer. So the students are taught to ask bad questions by teachers.

You can test this, go ask an AI if the U.S. inherited slavery from the British Empire. The AI gets it right.

[Uncle Miltie]

With AI, I have found the ability to ask a concise and meaningful question is the limiting factor.

Which still eliminates huge swathes of humanity from being able to use it effectively.

[Racketeer]

While our brains become mush and we totally comply.

[LittleBillyInfidel]

You beat me to it!

Currently, I’m creating a workbook on the subject of multi layer prompting for LLM and Generative. Its effectiveness will require actual thinking, memorization, practice, and effort.

We live in a country where too many don’t even know the difference between the words “then” and “than”. Sure, AI can parse around misspellings and most grammar, but the ability to know what to ask will define the level of success - as play into structure and direction of results.

[ProgressingAmerica]

Yeah, however those of us who know about it refuse to act.

Conservatives have been talking for longer than my lifetime about indoctrination in schools, yet so rare is it that there are major movements to try to get directly involved in education and only once in my lifetime was there ever a Tea Party protest movement.

The only thing required for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing. Why is inactivity and sloth and apathy so popular?

I turned to creating audio books free and open source in the public domain due to my isolation. I have no movement to join. Nobody wants to MOVE.

I’m always seeking thoughts on this matter.

[quantim]

With the advent of AI becoming more useful it is going to bring a full-on war with colleges and universities as their usefulness will be paired down considerably. The real war will be battling congress not to spend billions on edgejuhmakashun. Even more reason to close out the DoED.

[dfwgator]

One tactic is to actually use several different LLMs, with one LLM specific tast to verify the answer and flag any wrong answers.

[Brian Griffin]

For health care, bring on market force:
1. Break most hospitals into two highly competitive entities
2. Convert other hospitals into real estate leasing entities with competing surgical suites and nursing wings
3. Separate out drug coverage so hospital systems can run care coverage systems and cut out insurance company overhead and meddlers.
4. Create interstate drug plans that don’t have to cover every drug....Group and exchange plans to offer vouchers at plan set amounts for out-of-formulary drugs.
5. These drug plans would be all the formulary drugs the doctors (and AI) prescribe with co-pays equal to manufacturing cost
....
8. reform medical education, breaking down medicine and dentistry into simpler chunks and start it in the first year of college
9. replace most primary doctoring with AI
(human doctor would confirm AI diagnosis, prescribe ionizing radiation imaging/treatment, and voucher/government co-pay drugs)

[Brian Griffin]

“The real war will be battling congress not to spend billions on edgejuhmakashun.”

I would put high school online ASAP.

[Brian Griffin]

“I’m always seeking thoughts on this matter.”

Politics rarely yields positive results for conservatives.

[Languager]

If you are just looking to train non-thinking workers who do what they are told, and do not think creatively or independently, then this would be a good plan. Otherwise, a real in-person experience with intelligent and enthusiastic teachers is far better.

Which schools do you think are more likely to take this shortcut? 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?

[Brian Griffin]

“The first ship carrying enslaved Africans arrived at Old Point Comfort on August 25, 1619. An English privateer ship captured them from a Spanish slave ship. The privateer traded the enslaved Africans to English colonists in Virginia for food.”

“English privateers attacked Spanish the slave ship São João Bautista in the Gulf of Mexico. They took the enslaved Africans by force. One of the privateer ships, the White Lion, brought the enslaved Africans to Old Point Comfort. The point was part of the new English colony of Virginia. There, the White Lion sold 15 women and 17 men to the English colonists.”

“The Virginia Colony’s laws did not recognize enslavement. It is unclear what their official legal status was. It did not change that they were captives and enslaved against their will.”

“Two of the African arrivals were Isabella and Antoney. A Virginia census lists them along with their son William in the area that would become Hampton. They lived in the home of Captain Tucker, the commander of Fort Algernourne. William is the first known child born of African descent in English North America.”

“The Africans brought skills in farming, herding, blacksmithing, and other trades. Their skills helped the Virginia Colony survive and grow. The Africans also brought their own cultures, languages, and religious beliefs. They made the colony’s food production and trades more efficient. They also enriched the colony’s culture with music and dance.”

https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/arrival-of-the-first-africans-in-1619.htm

[Brian Griffin]

“In 1661, the Virginia General Assembly passed its first law allowing any free person the right to own slaves. The suppression and apprehension of runaway slave labor was the object of 1672 legislation. Additional laws regarding slavery of Africans were passed in the seventeenth century and codified into Virginia’s first slave code in 1705.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_slavery_in_Virginia

[NorthMountain]

Anyone can now solve a problem in physics, medicine, or Greek literature instantly while utterly failing to understand both the question and the answer.

But that's OK.

Brawndo has electrolytes. It's what plants crave.

[Brian Griffin]

“If you are just looking to train non-thinking workers who do what they are told, and do not think creatively or independently, then this would be a good plan.”

What else can we bribe voters with?