The other week one of my professors started the class by telling us they observed a 300-some-odd percent increase in the number of requests they received for extensions on assignments relative to the previous few years. They asked, somewhat rhetorically, why this was the case, given that the material wasn't 300% harder. I resisted the urge to answer, but had I, I might've said something like this:

  • We've grown old and employed enough to pay taxes just in time to sponsor our country's wars of aggression
  • Food is prohibitively expensive and getting worse
  • Rent is prohibitively expensive and getting worse
  • We're literally on track to run out of oil, which wouldn't be a bad thing if there had been a build out of green energy infrastructure but there hasn't been
  • Water is becoming more scarce
  • Temperatures are getting hotter
  • Wildfires are getting more intense, making it hard to breathe without continuous air filtration which largely hasn't been installed

And perhaps most subtly: everyone's giving themselves and each other brain damage by repeatedly contracting COVID-19 and acting like it's nothing.

All in all, it feels a bit like we're in the early stages of civilizational collapse. In light of that, I don't find it surprising at all that people are requesting more extensions. How are you supposed to stay on top of school, let alone anything, in a time like this?

When I was in my first year, I remember having a conversation with a friend—a science student—who was complaining about the arts. They believed that art degrees were useless, and that people should only study things that'll help them find a job in a real world. The old "liberal arts are a pyramid scheme" mentality, that the only role of an arts major is to create new arts majors. Put another way, the role of the arts professor is to bring up new scholars of the arts, who will then be responsible for growing our collective knowledge and transferring it to others. Contrast this with the hard-science student who's role is presumably to leave after their bachelor's degree and produce value for a corporation. I've always found this kind of thinking frustrating because it seems to spit in the face of the purpose of the University, at least as I see it, which is to expand and share knowledge.

And despite what I want to believe, I think a lot of my frustration comes from the fact that this simply is not what a university is in this year of our Lord. For the vast majority of people, the University is effectively a sort of vocational school. That's not an inherently bad thing, it's just something that's worth understanding, lest you find yourself disappointed because it wasn't what you hoped.

With the amount of people using ChatGPT to write essays or coding assignments, it's hard to escape the feeling that most people are cheating their way through university. The other week I had to go to the library to finish an assignment. I forgot my headphones, so I was just listening to what was going on around me while I worked. I was shocked to hear that pretty much everyone was talking about ChatGPT. As I walk around campus, I keep hearing people talking about it. I see it open on people's computers.

I find that disappointing for a lot of reasons but one of the main ones is again, that it seems to spit in the face of what the University is supposed to be. Aylsworth & Castro (2024) remind us that using an LLM to write your essays for you is principally a harm done to yourself. To willingly forego an opportunity to cultivate your own autonomy is to harm your own dignity. And those who do it have much more time to invest in every other aspect of their lives. If I was cheating my way through university, I'd have so much more time to take care of myself and others, to do the things I enjoy, to live a life not lived through academic papers on endocrine-disrupting chemical contamination in urban waterways. But I don't. I hold myself to a personal commitment not to, because I choose to believe it'll be worth it in the long run.

But it's hard for me to hold other people to that same commitment. If the University was ever truly a place for the mere cultivation of knowledge, it was the cultivation of those who can afford it. If it was ever for the distribution of knowledge, it was for those unencumbered by the need to work for survival. For most people, myself included, the University is a place you go for an opportunity to change your material circumstances. And so, there's material circumstances that drive people to academic dishonesty.

It sucks, but if nothing else, it's worth understanding where it comes from and managing your expectations accordingly.

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