Scores Fell 50% When College Professor Made Students Take In-Person Final: Artificial Intelligence Trends

ediscovery today ^ | jul 10 2026 | doug austin

[Presbyterian Reporter]

When a college professor suspected students were using AI, he made them take an in-person final. Scores fell 50% – for those who took it.

As discussed by Nate Anderson in ArsTechnica (Suspecting AI cheating, Ivy League prof ordered an in-person final; scores fell 50%, available here), a blind economics professor at Brown University (Roberto Serrano) decided after a gunman attacked Brown’s campus and killed two people in December 2025 that his spring 2026 section of the quite difficult ECON 1170 would allow take-home exams for both the midterm and the final.

Suddenly, the course received an influx of students. Normally, not more than 30 students are enrolled at a time, and on some occasions as few as eight. This semester, probably because of the new evaluation system, 86 students signed up for the class.

Advertisement KLDiscovery The results of the midterm exam, which was administered on March 5, were extraordinary, with an average score of 96 out of 100. Forty(!) students scored a perfect 100.

Serrano stated: “Historically the average grade in the midterm of this course has ranged between 65 and 80 [percent], and this exam was harder than the exams I wrote in the past, because… take-home is an opportunity to challenge the class a little bit more, given that you’re giving the students unlimited time.”

But it wasn’t just the numbers. Many of the answers, even when correct, felt slightly off. They had a “very convoluted style,” Serrano said. When he and his grad students ran the exam questions through ChatGPT, they received similar results.

So, a suspicious Serrano decided that he would make the final exam in-person; he would see if students did similarly well on it.

Advertisement Lexbe He emailed his class, telling them, “I am not declaring [the midterm] void for now. I am going to give the class a chance to prove me wrong. That is, if the distribution of the final exam is roughly similar to the distribution of the midterm, I will count the midterm. Otherwise, which is of course what I expect to happen, I will declare the midterm void and reweigh the final accordingly.”

Guess what happened? Eighteen students suddenly dropped the course, while nine others didn’t even attend the final exam. 22 of those 27 students “had scored a perfect 100 in the midterm exam.”

Among those who took the test, scores fell 50%—from 96 all the way down to 48.

Given that Serrano had to overcome significant challenges in his life – he went blind from retinal dystrophy at age 17 – and overcame them to attend Harvard and become a college professor, he wants universities as a whole to stand up for human thought.

Sadly, so far, he contends he’s getting a fairly tepid reaction from Brown administrators.

Cheating has existed for as long as schools have existed. But Generative AI is tantamount to cheating on steroids – it’s easy to do and many don’t think it’s even cheating, which is impacting what students are learning. Even in Ivy League schools.

I covered this on PinHawk’s Law Technology Digest yesterday – couldn’t resist covering it here too.

So, what do you think? Are you surprised that scores fell 50% when the students couldn’t use AI anymore? Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

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TOPICS: News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: ai

[Presbyterian Reporter]

I love how the professor smoked out the cheaters.

[Tell It Right]

To be honest, this was a problem before AI. Kids could look up test answers the old-school way with web searches.

[fwdude]

Is there such a thing as a remote “final?” I had no idea.

[bk1000]

Have none of these profs ever seen any of the many sci-fi tales of over dependence on computers? If people are never challenged to think, they will not think. I guess that is part of the plan.

[rdcbn1]

This goes back farther than that - back to the days of programable calculators

People were programming problem solutions into their hand held calculator for exams

[DIRTYSECRET]

I use yahoo to correct spelling on emails and posts. If a dictionary’s the only resource I’d try harder remembering the correction. Is it laziness? It frees up time to do other things. Think Waymo. One can do work without thinking about safe driving.

[xp38]

The world we grew up in doesn’t exist anymore.

[Presbyterian Reporter]

“”””To be honest, this was a problem before AI. Kids could look up test answers the old-school way with web searches.”””

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Long before the web, the really old school way was to a copy of the tests issued by the professor during the previous year.

[Vaduz]

Hat tip to the professor for protecting those who earn their way.

[fwdude]

Neither does intelligence.

[Marko413]

I confess I did that. I brought that up recently and someone defended me saying, well at least you had to make the program work so you kinda knew the formulas. The cheating part was removing the chance of careless math errors.

[ClearCase_guy]

AI can be a tool which helps students learn things.

Or AI can be crutch and a mask which hides the fact that a student cannot operate alone and has not really learned anything.

Oral exams would be labor intensive, but might be a good way to let students understand that they actually have to learn the material. Make every exam face-to-face. Starting at a young age.

[chajin]

Oral exams would be labor intensive, but might be a good way to let students understand that they actually have to learn the material. Make every exam face-to-face

That would essentially be a domestic version of the Mündliche Prüfung

[Glennb51]

I had a statistics instructor who would not allow the use of calculators in the classroom.

There were no take home tests.

[NorthMountain]

Using “AI” is the opposite of knowing something or creating something.

[NorthMountain]

One can do work without thinking about safe driving.

I have always found that argument repulsive. My commute is part of the time I don't have to answer to anybody. I don't have to "work" or "be productive" or whatever. I can just drive and listen to music. It's relaxing.

[Billthedrill]

Eighteen students suddenly dropped the course, while nine others didn’t even attend the final exam. 22 of those 27 students “had scored a perfect 100 in the midterm exam."

(Snicker) - I'm sure there's a perfectly innocent explanation.

My old Classics professor was one of the only ones on campus who still used the old Blue Books and essay questions, all answers written by hand in pen in class. No keyboards, no cell phones. He told me his name was featured prominently in all the professor rating apps but "I don't care. I've got tenure!"

I ran into him not long ago - he's retired now - and he said that the practice had experienced a revival and the book store was stocking a lot more Blue Books these days. For some reason. And that after all those years of slogging through the students' handwriting he was considering a second career in cryptography.

[MayflowerMadam]

“Kids could look up test answers the old-school way with web searches.”

Looking up answers on the web is not “the old-school way”. (How old/young ARE you?

The old-school way is knowing the subject matter and answer the questions based on what’s in your head.

[House Atreides]

FYI, Professor Serrano’s course being discussed is this one:

https://www.coursicle.com/brown/courses/ECON/1170/

[wintertime]

Re: “the old-school way with web searches.”
^^^^

I chuckled a little when I read that. Web searches are “old school”?

I graduated from university when the slide rule was the only tool available. Even adding and subtracting long columns of numbers had to be done in one’s mind.