Twenty years ago, I was employed at the Modern Language Association (MLA) in New York City. Established over 100 years ago as a non-profit publisher, the MLA has ‘worked to strengthen the study and teaching of language and literature.’ One of my colleagues gave up on teaching at Indiana University because she was tired of the “cheating." She loved language and went idealistically into the field only to find herself grading paper after paper that was clearly fraudulent. The prevalence of cheating was rampant before AI and online tutoring services like Chegg.
I thought of her as I read Ian Bogost’s May 16th story in the Atlantic, The First Year of AI College Ends in Ruin. In his essay, Bogost explores how software is now capable of flagging student papers written entirely by AI. Online tutor Chegg has lost $1 billion of market value as students switch to AI for ‘assistance’ rather than use their service. Bogost quotes several teachers as he weighs the various repercussions of this new version of an old trick. Much like my coworker, one teacher shares: “It’s just about crushed me. I fell in love with teaching, and I have loved my time in the classroom, but with ChatGPT, everything feels pointless.” Bogost also presents the viewpoint of a student, ‘But a milkshake of stressors, costs, and other externalities has created a mental-health crisis on college campuses. AI, according to this student, is helping reduce that stress when little else has.’ Bogost mentions credentialism in passing. However, it deserves a deeper investigation because it is a motivating factor for many students.
Adam Gopnik explores the distinction between achievement and accomplishment in his New York Times Opinion piece of May 15th, What We Lose When We Push Our Kids to ‘Achieve’. He defines them this way:
Achievement is the completion of the task imposed from outside — the reward often being a path to the next achievement.
Accomplishment is the end point of an engulfing activity we’ve chosen, whose reward is the sudden rush of fulfillment, the sense of happiness that rises uniquely from absorption in a thing outside ourselves.
Gopnik extols the virtues of getting engrossed in projects of personal choice, emphasizing how such self-discovery processes contribute to personal development. There is a treadmill of achievement students must walk to be deemed ‘successful’ that never stops. The educational and career fields reward achievements. Personal accomplishments do not have external measurements and rarely result in accolades and financial gain.
High schools and colleges confer credentials on students. While teachers may genuinely aim to cultivate a love of learning, what students perceive as valuable is the recognition society accords to their credentials. The imprimatur of attending an elite school can lead to substantial financial reward and social acclaim. The pressure to notch achievements on the belt is partly to blame for the mental-health crisis washing over youth right now, but the treadmill shows no signs of slowing. As one commentator on Bogost’s article posted, with the cost of college over $100k, there is no room for failure. The weighting towards achievement is so great, cheating has become a logical action to take. Colleges spend hundreds of millions of dollars to ferret out the ‘cheaters’ while society continues to support a system that makes rampant cheating inevitable. Universities benefit from credentialism because it allows them to inflate their tuition, thereby burdening an entire generation with mind-numbing debt.
As sophomores in high school, many students read The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. As the wealthy elite stumble drunkenly across his lawn, Jay Gatsby believes they should recognize his achievements, regardless of their origin. Students have internalized this lesson.
It doesn’t matter how you make your money, only that you have it.