AI is exacerbating the trend of colleges handing out too many A's, Axios' Josephine Walker reports.

AI is exacerbating the trend of colleges handing out too many A's, Axios' Josephine Walker reports.

• Why it matters: Universities and colleges were already concerned about grade inflation. But now they must worry that graduates are leaving AI-proficient rather than knowledgeable about their subjects of study.

The big picture: It isn't a case where A- students get bumped to an A, says Igor Chirikov, a UC Berkeley professor who authored a study on AI and grade inflation.

• "We have a C student who is now an A student," Chirikov tells Axios, citing his analysis of grades given between 2018 and 2025 at an unnamed Texas research university.

What they found: Since the release of ChatGPT in 2022, "excellent" grades rose by 30% in classes where AI is useful, such as English composition and coding.

• In classes where it's not — like sculpture and lab-based courses — grades remained flat.
• Classes where homework was heavily weighted saw a higher rate of grade inflation, suggesting students got an AI-assisted boost.

What to watch: Professors are getting crafty with steps like requiring handwritten or oral exams.

https://www.axios.com/2026/05/16/ai...il&utm_campaign=newsletter_axiosam&stream=top

Source: Axios

So there's this school teacher (high school level) who moolights at my local bar once a week. She's young, in her 20s, and dealing with a bunch of cheating kids. From her point of view the frequency of kids getting an F has gone way up due to AI. She busts them for cheating with AI, and boom, F. She's just old enough to have gotten through college before the AI slop messed everything up. She gets it, and she's going hard core against AI cheating.

Is it just me or does that article 100% look like it was AI written.

Sycraft said:

Is it just me or does that article 100% look like it was AI written.

Click to expand...

Do you realize how much news there is to write about AI? There's no way a human could keep up with that workload. AI is absolutely essential in the AI news world! Anyone not using it is bound for failure!!1!

/sarc

Nobu said:

Do you realize how much news there is to write about AI? There's no way a human could keep up with that workload. AI is absolutely essential in the AI news world! Anyone not using it is bound for failure!!1!

/sarc

Click to expand...

Ya. It annoys me and I'm not an LLM hater, I think they are useful, particularly at summarizing content. HOWEVER I feel that if you are doing that, it is extremely important you make it known that it was done with an LLM. I've used it at work to prepare summaries of things like massive program documentation. Things like "Prepare a short explanation for a technical manager what is required to install and maintain this software" and it does well for that. However I always, always note right at the top that it was generated with Claude. I'm not going to try and pass it off as my own work.

sram said:

AI is exacerbating the trend of colleges handing out too many A's, Axios' Josephine Walker reports.

• Why it matters: Universities and colleges were already concerned about grade inflation. But now they must worry that graduates are leaving AI-proficient rather than knowledgeable about their subjects of study.

The big picture: It isn't a case where A- students get bumped to an A, says Igor Chirikov, a UC Berkeley professor who authored a study on AI and grade inflation.

• "We have a C student who is now an A student," Chirikov tells Axios, citing his analysis of grades given between 2018 and 2025 at an unnamed Texas research university.

What they found: Since the release of ChatGPT in 2022, "excellent" grades rose by 30% in classes where AI is useful, such as English composition and coding.

• In classes where it's not — like sculpture and lab-based courses — grades remained flat.
• Classes where homework was heavily weighted saw a higher rate of grade inflation, suggesting students got an AI-assisted boost.

What to watch: Professors are getting crafty with steps like requiring handwritten or oral exams.

https://www.axios.com/2026/05/16/ai...il&utm_campaign=newsletter_axiosam&stream=top

Source: Axios

Click to expand...

MORE???

Nearly 80% of grades handed out at Yale are A's, study shows

https://fox11online.com/news/nation...east-ray-fair-womens-gender-sexuality-studies


Harvard says it’s been giving too many A grades to students
About 60% of the grades handed out in classes for the university’s undergraduate program are A’s, up from 40% a decade ago and less than a quarter 20 years ago.

https://fortune.com/2025/10/27/harvard-grade-inflation-students-ivy-league-education/

Sycraft said:

Is it just me or does that article 100% look like it was AI written.

Click to expand...

From what I know, AI is being utilized for news and reporting. So yes, it may be AI written. You tell AI your main idea and arguments, and it will generate a good article for you. BUT, you have to read it to make sure nothing is off or hallucinated, and like somebody else here said, you need to acknowledge it.

Sycraft said:

Is it just me or does that article 100% look like it was AI written.

Click to expand...

I didn't click on the article, but that summary is 100% AI written. The second you see any common "emotes"/symbols, especially checkmarks (ie this shit ), you should be 100% suspicious. The EM dashes with peculiar spacing like that just cement it further.

For what it's worth, from the perspective of the elite class, this is ideal. You basically got a working class that just at most needs to oversee what the machines do. That means all labor will slowly be headed down a funnel to the lowest common denominator. You don't need any trade skills if the AI owns all of the trade skills. They just need low paid prompters. Your degree becomes rubbish.

It'll be a long time before the medical profession is outdated at least (granted most of them are just in crippling debt anyway), and some spaces are safer than others, but this is what I've been telling everyone here and everywhere for years. This isn't going to have a happy ending for anyone but the upper crust.