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The Assessment Crisis is Bigger than AI

The last few months have seen my campus scrambling to get back to in-person assessment and to reopen testing centers. Like many universities that quietly had deemphasized such exams during the COVID years, now at UC Irvine there is rising faculty demand to quickly change course. Many worry about the validity of take-home and online assessments, as campus officials search for rooms or even build new ones. Meanwhile, already stressed students feel increasingly desperate over high-stakes tests that can make or break academic success. While the crisis seems recent at UCI, what’s really happening predates the rise of generative AI and won’t be fixed with more exam rooms.

Much of higher education now sees online assessment as an arms race it can’t win, with over 150 institutions planning to end it this year. Earlier this month, the Law School Admission Council (LSAC) announced t it would return the LSAT to in-person testing by summer 2026, citing “security concerns,” “score inflation,” and “the misuse of technology to facilitate cheating.”[1]  All Ivy League schools also are reverting to standardized tests for admissions after eliminating them during the last decade.  Complicating matters further is the reality of cash-strapped schools facing infrastructure bottlenecks because they’ve  repurposed or sold off testing centers.[2]  Driving this frantic backtracking is the logical but incorrect belief that assessment is losing meaning at a time when ChatGPT can generate answers in a few seconds. Hence the current retreat to blue books, testing rooms, and internet-free conditions.

“Generative AI did not create assessment issues. It revealed them,” according to Emma Ransome of Birmingham City University.[3]  Ransome explains that traditional measures like timed exams, standardized tasks, and recall-based tests historically have done poorly in evaluating skills universities claim to instill such as critical thinking, ethical judgement, and synthesizing ideas. Generative AI has made the disconnect between what is being measured and what is being taught even more apparent. If a large language model can successfully complete a multiple choice pharmacology exam, or if an LLM can generate a decent survey essay about the causes of World War I, one shouldn’t be asking how to stop students from using it.  Instead the issue should be what kind of knowledge those conventional measures assessed in the first place.

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AI Thrives where Instruction Falters

Old-fashioned instruction based on the recitation of facts is driving learners to AI tools like ChatGPT.[1]  When learning is reduced to scores and “answers,” students naturally seek the most efficient paths to get them  This has become especially common in courses relying on grade coercion and threats of failure to drive motivation.  Such effects of teacher-centered instruction are particularly harmful to the growing numbers of students working while in school or juggling other responsibilities.

The equity side of this is hardly is incidental at a time when AI competence has become widely recognized as a vital job skill and an key component of civic literacy. Institutions that fear and discourage AI are contributing to growing knowledge gap between those with the intellectual tools to critically assess truth claims and others more likely to accept directives from authoritarian figures.

Not helping matters are latent attitudes that cast suspicion on today’s increasingly diverse population of college students. Amid a rising moral panic within the U.S. academia, recent surveys show an alarming 78 percent of U.S. faculty believing that cheating is on the rise and that AI is to blame. According to Beth McMurtie in the Chronicle of Higher Ed, “Virtually all of those surveyed — 95 percent — fear that students will become over-reliant on these tools. And 83 percent think it will decrease students’ attention spans.” [2]  Early in the 2020s a torrent of news reports warned of an “epidemic” of dishonesty in online learning, with some surveys showing over 90 percent educators believing cheating occurred more in distance education than in-person instruction.[3] New technologies often have stoked such fears, in this instance building on the distrust many faculty hold toward students, some of it racially inflected. [4] Closer examination of the issue has revealed that much of the worry came from faculty with little direct knowledge of the digital classroom.

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Outsourcing Effort: How AI Affects the Pleasure of Learning

A quiet transformation is taking place in higher education. Students now turn to artificial intelligence not only for answers but for motivation. At the same time, a new generation of effort-sensitive technologies promises to monitor engagement, track persistence, and infer whether learners are truly trying. These systems are beginning to redefine what colleges count as effort and, by extension, what they count as learning. The goals behind these tools are understandable. Designers hope adaptive systems will make education more equitable and responsive by giving students insight into their habits and struggles. At Carnegie Mellon University, for example, Conrad Borchers created Effort-Sensitive AI for Learning to help students visualize their study patterns before frustration sets in. The intention is reflection rather than surveillance.

But once activity is translated into data, the data begin to influence the behavior they claim to measure. A brief pause can register as disengagement. Rapid typing can signal focus. Students eventually realize that unseen systems are interpreting their actions and may begin performing for algorithmic approval instead of thinking for themselves. What used to be an exchange between learner and teacher becomes a loop between student and machine. This shift matters because effort is no longer understood through experience but through metrics. In a traditional classroom, effort lived in rereading, revising, and wrestling with ideas. In digital spaces, it gets recorded as keystrokes, session length, and completion rates. These numbers are useful but incomplete. They capture what is visible and overlook what is internal. Confusion, insight, doubt, and breakthrough moments rarely leave a trace.

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Diamantling the Academic Hunger Games

Many of higher education’s conflicting values have to do with competition, as the promise of opportunity often collides with the reality of failure. This dilemma has driven a shift in learner attitudes, with many young people viewing the college experience through a lens focused on grades, rankings, and future earnings potential. The ramifications of this shift extend far beyond individual campuses, resonating throughout society and shaping the fabric of our collective future. The intensification of competition in higher education, viewed by some as the great equalizer, has become a powerful engine of stratification.

Such competition, often unacknowledged in institutional rhetoric, serves to magnify existing disparities, creating a system where success becomes increasingly elusive for those facing challenges and disproportionately attainable for those with abundant resources and support. [i] Consider First Gen learners, navigating a labyrinth of academic expectations and cultural norms sometimes with little familial guidance.

For these learners, the playing field may not be level. While some of their peers might seamlessly transition into campus life, buoyed by generations of accumulated social capital, First Gen students can encounter unfamiliar customs and unspoken rules. Even though present throughout academia, these dynamics get worse at elite institutions.[ii]

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Never Good Enough: Learning in a Culture of Perfection

With the start of classes this fall, it’s become increasingly clear that college students find themselves caught in a perfect storm of social pressures, political upheaval, and economic uncertainty, all conspiring to transform the college experience from a time of intellectual growth and self-discovery into a crucible of anxiety and self-doubt. This transformation, while affecting learners across the board, has cast a particularly heavy shadow over those already grappling with systemic inequities and material difficulties.

Indeed, the modern university campus, with its manicured lawns and ivy-covered buildings, has become a battleground where students wage war not just against challenging curricula, but against stress and the ever-present specter of failure.

Gone are the days when a solid academic performance and a modicum of extracurricular involvement were sufficient to secure a bright future. In their place, learners increasingly feel expected to excel in every conceivable arena, from maintaining a stellar GPA to cultivating a curated social media presence, all while navigating the intimidating waters of an increasingly competitive job market. This pressure cooker environment disproportionately affects students from under-resources schools, who may lack the financial and social capital to keep pace with their more privileged peers.

This pursuit of perfection is fueled, in no small part, by the ubiquitous presence of social media in students’ lives. Platforms like Instagram and LinkedIn have been transformed from mere communication tools into virtual stages where young people feel compelled to perform their best selves 24/7. Every achievement, no matter how minor, must be broadcast to the world, while moments of vulnerability or failure are carefully hidden from view. This constant comparison to one’s peers,  or rather, to carefully scripted versions of their peers, has created a toxic environment where learners feel they can never measure up, no matter how much they achieve.[i]  For those already struggling with issues of belonging or imposter syndrome, this digital landscape can exacerbate feelings of inadequacy and alienation. Continue reading “Never Good Enough: Learning in a Culture of Perfection”

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The Unwritten Rules of College

The syllabus looks simple enough. Standard language about learning objectives, assignments, and grading policies. Nothing obviously threatening or biased. But beneath those neutral-sounding lines is a web of taken-for-granted assumptions favoring some learners over others. This is the realm of what scholars term the “hidden curriculum” to describe the unspoken rules, norms, and background knowledge that institutions use but never explicitly teach.[i]  The hidden curriculum works through everyday academic practices, such as expecting learners to use formal language in essays, prioritizing, punctuality, and meeting deadlines, and assuming learners have access to quiet spaces for studying.

Students who arrive at college already fluent in these unspoken codes (typically those from privileged backgrounds) navigate faculty expectations with ease. Their success appears natural, even inevitable. Meanwhile, anyone lacking this insider knowledge struggles against invisible barriers, their difficulties rarely attributed to systemic flaws.

Take something as basic as class participation. Most instructors value learners who speak up quickly, offer spontaneous comments, and keep discussion moving. These expectations make sense until one realizes how they privilege a narrow set of behaviors. Students who need more time to process information, prefer to write their thoughts first, or engage best through one-on-one exchanges may appear “disengaged” when they are actually participating in ways the structure of the class doesn’t recognize. The hidden curriculum turns learning differences into markers of academic deficiency. The insidious nature of this system lies in its ability to mask privilege as merit and to personalize any successes or failures. When affluent learners do well, their achievements get credited to individual talent, hard work, or “natural ability.” When an under-resourced student struggles, the blame likewise falls on their own lack of motivation, preparation, or ability. This dynamic effectively launders systemic advantages through the language of personal responsibility, making structural inequities appear like natural outcomes.

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American Anti-Intellectualism Fuels the New War on College

American higher education finds itself under siege, facing unprecedented political attacks that threaten its fundamental mission and autonomy. What makes these assaults particularly devastating is not just their intensity, but the fertile ground of public sentiment that has enabled them to take root and flourish. The convergence of deep-seated anti-intellectual currents with a dramatic erosion of trust in universities has created the perfect conditions for opportunistic politicians to weaponize higher education as a cultural and political battleground.

Once seen as sites of personal and social betterment, universities and colleges nationwide now struggle with a profound crisis of confidence. This shift in perception is hardly anecdotal. Recent surveys reveal that but 36 percent in the U.S. feel positively about higher education, reflecting serious concerns over the institution’s efficacy and fairness.[i] Moreover, a growing partisan divide complicates the erosion of trust. While 59 percent of Democrats express confidence in higher education, a staggering 81 percent of Republican voters now view the institution unfavorably. This chasm speaks volumes about the politicization of education in America, with college increasingly seen as a battleground for antagonistic ideologies.[ii]

A pragmatic shift in educational preferences complements this rift. Mirroring student attitudes is the reality that most Americans now regard trade schools and vocational training as equivalent or superior to four-year institutions in delivering practical education. This pivot reflects changing educational values and an indictment of the entire enterprise of higher education. The growing appeal of alternative educational paths suggests a fundamental reevaluation of what constitutes valuable knowledge and skills in today’s rapidly changing job market. The roots of this mistrust are multifaceted, extending beyond mere economic calculations to encompass broader socio-political undercurrents. Often associated with privilege and intellectual elitism, higher education increasingly is viewed through a lens of class-based suspicion.

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Emotional Intelligence in the Classroom

Everyone knows that schools have a problem with feelings. Walk into any classroom and you’ll witness the elaborate dance of affective suppression that defines modern education. Students learn to hide frustration behind blank stares, to swallow anxiety whole, to perform engagement even when drowning in confusion. Faculty become masterful at reading the affective climate while pretending emotions don’t exist unless they become “disruptive,” at which point they’re quickly pathologized or punished. This affective hide-and-seek isn’t merely unfortunate. It’s academically devastating in ways that most educators are only beginning to understand.The recognition that emotion fundamentally shapes learning has deep roots in psychological research, though it took decades to gain educational traction.

Howard Gardner’s groundbreaking theory of multiple intelligences, introduced in the 1980s, challenged narrow definitions of cognitive ability by identifying “personal intelligences” as distinct forms of human capacity. These included both intrapersonal intelligence (understanding oneself) and interpersonal intelligence (understanding others), categories that opened space for recognizing emotional and social skills as more than personality traits.[i] Gardner’s framework provided crucial legitimacy for educators who suspected that success required more than traditional academic skills.

It was Daniel Goleman’s 1995 bestseller Emotional Intelligence that brought these ideas into mainstream conversation, arguing that EQ often matters more than IQ for success in work and relationships.[ii] Goleman synthesized research from psychology and neuroscience to demonstrate what many educators intuitively knew. Emotions are not distractions from thinking but rather integral to how thinking happens. When learners cannot recognize, understand, or regulate their emotional states, everything else becomes exponentially harder. Memory formation falters under affective stress. Attention scatters when anxiety floods the system. Continue reading “Emotional Intelligence in the Classroom”

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Resistance Is Not Futile

The interpretation of student resistance has undergone dramatic transformation over the past century, reflecting broader shifts in how we understand human behavior, learning, and institutional power. This evolution reveals as much about our own assumptions and blind spots as it does about student behavior itself. Historically, educational institutions approached resistance through a distinctly moralistic lens. Students who failed to comply were seen as suffering from character defects and thereby lacking discipline, respect, or proper upbringing. This perspective, rooted in patriarchal authority structures and commodified approaches to knowledge, positioned educators as moral arbiters whose job was to correct wayward youth through punishment, shame, and rigid behavioral expectations.[i] Resistance was seen as willful disobedience requiring forceful correction rather than thoughtful analysis.

The rise of behaviorism in the mid-20th century brought a different but equally reductive approach. Resistance became reframed as a technical problem representing a failure of stimulus-response systems that could be solved through better classroom management techniques. B.F. Skinner’s operant conditioning principles dominated educational psychology, suggesting that resistant behaviors could be eliminated through appropriate schedules of reinforcement and punishment.[ii] This scientific veneer made the approach seem more sophisticated, but it still treated resistant learners as broken mechanisms needing repair rather than human beings with complex inner lives and legitimate concerns about their educational experiences.

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Epidemic Loneliness

From Degrees of Difficulty: The Challenge of Equity in  College Teaching by David Trend, now free of charge from Worlding Books

In the wake of the U.S. Surgeon General’s advisory on the “Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation” in America, college campuses have emerged as critical focal points for this growing crisis.[i] More concerning still have been findings that loneliness doesn’t affect all learners equally, with some demographics often shouldering a disproportionate weight of social disconnection. While overall numbers have surged, with over 65 percent of college students reporting feeling “very lonely” in the past year, these aggregate figures obscure significant disparities.[ii] First-Gen learners, students of color, low-income, and LGBTQ+ students consistently report experiencing loneliness at markedly higher rates. Some may find themselves in environments where few others share their identities or life experiences, leading to feelings of otherness and disconnection.

Here again, money pressures can exacerbate matters. Students juggling multiple jobs often have less time for social activities and may feel out of place among those without such responsibilities. This is especially true on college campuses, where social life frequently revolves around activities that come with a price tag. The Surgeon General’s advisory notes that “social connection is generally not something we can do alone and not something that is accessible equitably.”[iii] In this way –– and contrary popular stereotypes ––collegiate environments are especially prone to stress and isolation for students. Ongoing racial injustice, political tensions surrounding LGBTQ+ rights, and increasing polarization can create environments where students fear they must be vigilant, watch what what they say, or even conceal aspects of their identities in social situations. This persistent state of guardedness can impede the forging of deep, authentic connections. Continue reading “Epidemic Loneliness”