Free Republic

A UC Berkeley professor has stopped grading students’ homework for correctness after noticing artificial intelligence tools were helping them rack up top marks. Richard Borcherds, a renowned mathematician who received the prestigious Fields Medal in 1998, said widespread student use of AI has undermined the value of traditional homework grading. “Student use of AI for homework is now widespread,” Borcherds told The California Post. “Grading for correctness just adds a huge incentive for them to use AI for homework instead of doing it themselves, and penalizes students for honesty.” Paying graders to evaluate AI generated answers is also a waste...

Percentage has doubled since 2020-21.. Nearly one in five freshmen at the University of California are flunking introductory math classes amid widespread calls from faculty to reinstate standardized testing requirements for admissions. About 18 percent of students either withdrew or received a D or F grade during the 2025-26 school year. This share has nearly doubled from 2020-21, “the last year that the SAT and ACT were required for first-year admission,” . Further, UC students averaged a GPA of 2.7 in introductory math classes in 2025-26. Students averaged a 3.18 in 2020-21. However, “Failure rates vary widely across UC’s nine...

The shelves are absolutely ransacked. Glass jars and other items have been ripped off all the shelves and smashed on the ground. Yet the looters didn't steal (or even touch!) the ham, bacon, or other delicious pork options in the refrigerators. The looters also avoided the toilet paper and tissues on the other side of the store. The truly eagle-eyed might have also noticed that a good portion of the wine was left on the shelves. The media tells me that these riots are being carried out by "French students" who want "better schools" and that the riots are "mostly...

A substantial fraction of the ground troops in the French street riots are genuine students, not just members of the Red-Green alliance. Sure, in the great Venn Diagram of life, there is a lot of overlap in the three groups, but there is actually a grain, or more than a grain, of truth in the complaints that young people are making about the economy of France, the state of public education, and their poor prospects for having a life as good as or better than their parents'. Several things can be true at once: * that the riots are being...

“To the French police officers I say: you are the last bulwark. If you give way, it will be great disorder. It will be the victory of the barbarians. Be proud of your uniform." So said Philippe de Villiers, member of the European Parliament and founder of the Puy du Fou theme park in Vendée, which is centred around the history of France. How much truth in so few words. Thousands of police officers place their bodies between the horde that sets fire to everything it finds, prevents residents from going down into the streets in safety, and forces thousands...

Two weeks ago, students in the impoverished Seine-Saint-Denis area of northern Paris decided they were fed up with the conditions they had to endure to get an education in France. The buildings were dilapidated and infested with rats and roaches. The kids had to share textbooks because there weren't enough to go around. There weren't enough chairs for kids to sit. There also weren't enough teachers or support staff. The bathrooms were appalling. And school hours were excruciatingly long. Some readers on this site and others think it matters that the kids complaining are Muslim or immigrants. I don't know...

A pro-Palestine group at UC Berkeley is proudly hosting Hamas sympathizer and former Columbia professor Mohamed Abdou the day before the 3rd anniversary of the Oct. 7 attacks. The university confirmed to the California Post that Abdou will appear via Zoom before a group of students in an on-campus event space. He’s also set to appear before Claremont College students on Oct. 7. Abdou is infamous for writing on social media, just days after the Oct. 7 attacks, that he is “with Hamas, Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad.” The post led to his firing from Columbia University. The controversial professor is...

ITHACA, NEW YORK — It’s socialist red at Big Red! Cornell University’s lefty crowd gave Democratic Socialist superstar Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez a warm, hate-filled welcome by singing anti-Israel chants at a campaign event meant to gin up support for Democrats ahead of the midterms Sunday. While warming up the standing-room-only crowd of roughly 2,000 people gathered for the congresswoman’s “Students vs. Billionaires” town hall in downtown Ithaca Sunday, Cornell University Young Democratic Socialists of America co-chairs Mina Petrova and Zoe Reisman led the crowd singing “from the river to the sea” and declaring “long live the student intifada.” “Cornell is...

Two University of Mississippi students were found dead Monday in separate incidents – and packaged kratom was found at both scenes, authorities said. The probe into the mysterious deaths is being led by the Lafayette County Metro Narcotics team, who said Tuesday the cases are not believed to be connected. “Law enforcement is currently conducting two separate death investigations. At this time, we have no confirmed evidence indicating that the two deaths are connected,” the agency said. Kratom, a herbal substance that acts as a stimulant in small doses and an opioid-like sedative in higher amounts, was found in both...

Columbia University was crippled almost three years ago by anti-Israrel protesters, who shut down campus with an illegal encampment. And still, all this time later, the campus gates remain closed to the public. “There was a complete time and place where [closing the gates] was justified and was necessary,” Nicholas Baum, a 21-year-old senior studying economics, told The Post. “But now it’s a constant and, frankly, outdated reminder [of the protests]. We’re in a completely different environment.” Current seniors are the only undergraduates on campus who remember a time before their school was sent into chaos by the October 7th...

Disturbing video footage captured the bloody campus brawl that left three students injured and two in custody at Westchester Community College on Wednesday. Several students are seen scuffling on the ground outside the David Swoope Student Center at the suburban college – with one stumbling away and falling to the ground covered in blood as other students repeatedly yell, “Stop!” “They had a knife,” one woman is heard yelling. “I was just on my way back to class and then we see a fight break out,” one student eyewitness said. “The two boys dropped to the floor, and there was...

Colorado state officials on Thursday morning released the results of spring 2023 K-12 achievement tests and the results are mixed -- suggesting that where students were developmentally when their learning was disrupted by the COVID pandemic may play a role in how well they're succeeding academically today. In the English Language Arts portion of the Colorado Measures of Academic Success for example, higher percentages of students in grades 5, 6 and 7 met or exceeded expectations than in 2022, but grades 3 and 4 saw drops or nominal gains. The CMAS tests students in grades 3-8, finding that across the...

(The Center Square) - More than $225 million in fraud was reported by state education departments and school districts from 2019 to 2026, according to a new report. Open the Books, a federal spending watchdog, and the State Financial Officers Foundation, analyzed six years’ worth of reports from the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of the Inspector General. The report found multi-million dollar fraud schemes in school districts across the country and in American territories. OJ Oleka, CEO of the SFOF, said the fraud schemes happened due to a lack of oversight in education departments and the ability of bad...

Gone are the days of university freshmen reading classical philosophers like Plato or contemporary pedagogues like Ta-Nehisi Coates. These days, incoming college students are lucky if they can get through Judy Blume’s “Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing.” According to a new “Survey of Adult Skills” conducted by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development — a forum for 38 high-income, predominantly Western countries — a not insignificant number of adult students enrolled in higher education are now reading and doing math at a level which, in a more functional society, would be alarming for a middle schooler. The survey,...

Schools and colleges should be places where all students can learn, grow, and build their futures -- not traps for deportation. Yet, every single day, immigrant students and families across the country are being forced to live with uncertainty and fear. DACA recipients are facing renewal delays that put their futures at risk. Students are navigating growing attacks on immigrant communities and higher education while ICE continues to threaten the safety of our neighborhoods, colleges and public schools. That’s why Communities for Our Colleges, a project of the National Campaign for Justice, is kicking off the ICE Out of Our...

Immigration and Customs Enforcement has identified more than 10,000 cases of potential fraud associated with a program that allows foreign students to extend their stay in the United States after graduating from college, ICE acting Director Todd Lyons told reporters Tuesday. At a press conference with officials from ICE and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, Lyons outlined some of the findings of an agency investigation into fraud associated with the Optional Practical Training program. OPT allows foreign nationals who enter the United States on a student visa to work in the U.S. for 12, or in some cases 24, months....

Men will be barred from using parts of an on-campus gym at the University of Southern California under a new initiative to make women and non-binary gym-goers feel more comfortable while working out. The Student Assembly for Gender Empowerment (SAGE) pushed for the new rules in partnership with the Lyon Center, a recreational facility controlled by the university. SAGE describes itself as a “programming assembly and intersectional feminist organization under the student government, committed to uplifting all voices oppressed by the patriarchy.” The plan excludes men from working out in portions of the Robinson Room at the Lyon Center on...

School officials in Lee County, Florida have taken sweeping disciplinary action against students who abandoned classrooms to participate in coordinated anti-ICE walkout protests earlier this month. According to district officials, 2,480 students were identified for engaging in disruptive conduct during demonstrations that took place between February 4 and February 6, part of a broader protest movement that involved more than 3,600 students across 14 schools in the county. And now, discipline is coming down. School officials confirmed that dozens of Lee County Public School students have already been suspended for their involvement in the demonstrations, with the district warning that...

The lefty student government at a local California university rejected a proposal that would grant its student body free subscriptions to The New York Times, citing issues with how The Times covered major world-happenings. “The New York Times has historically been a little bit problematic and controversial in their reporting and in their journalism,” student official Alya Hassan, who voted against the proposal, told the Fresno Bee. Hassan referenced its coverage of Israel and Gaza as one example, adding the organization lacked journalistic integrity for avoiding words like genocide, ethnic cleansing and occupied territory in its reporting. The paper has...

College students protested at several universities in Tehran, Iran International reported. At Amirkabir University, students blocked one of the nearby streets. Meanwhile, at Sharif University, students held a protest ceremony in memory of those killed in the previous wave of demonstrations. The protesters chanted, “Death to Khamenei!" The university president addressed the clashes on campus and sided with the Iranian government, claiming, “The enemy is trying to force the university to move to an online format. Anyone carrying out illegal actions must be dealt with." In a Friday speech, US President Donald Trump said that Iran “better negotiate a fair...