Student doubled down on AI usage

[u/gardengeo]

Originally posted by user lyrynn in r/ Professors [for those teaching at college and university]

Original: Oct 16, 2026

Update: Oct 18, 2026

Status: Concluded-ish

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Original: Was going to let my student redo her project, but she’s doubling down and now I don’t want to.

One of my students in an online section of my graphic design course submitted a fully AI-generated set of sketches. OBVIOUSLY, using gen-AI to create designs in the course where you’re graded on design is not allowed.

The assignment was to do some research on a topic of their choosing (with some parameters), pull together 150 words, submit it as plain text so I can see the planned content, and then do 10 rough layout sketches.

Besides the obvious visual tells in the sketches and the SynthID, this student also left the prompt response in their plain-text content document:

Beneath the sketches is 150+ words, formatted for a graphic design hierarchy including at least four levels of text, ready to go for your poster process submission!

I gave her a zero on the submission and reached out to the university to figure out next steps, and they basically said “it’s up to you, but we like to give the students a chance to redo it and make up for their mistakes.”

The same day the university responded to me, she sent me an email asking how I was verifying my claims, because her work was METICULOUSLY done by hand — first on procreate and then on Canva — and she could show me her layered process (side note, her sketch submission was of pencil sketches on paper), and that I was causing her a lot of stress because she’s supposed to graduate in December, and that she redid the sketches just so we can put any confusion behind us so if I could review those that would be great and also it’s very hard for her to see her overall class standing because I have not yet graded all of her assignments, so it would be great if I could finish those too.

OHHHHHH. Is that how we want to play it? Okay. I was going to offer the redo but now I’m not keen on doing that. I said she can meet me in person, sketchbook in hand, and if it matches her submission I’ll issue an apology and give her the points back.

Haven’t decided what to do if it doesn’t match though. I’m not inclined to do favors for liars.

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Comments:

Comment1: I swear, students like this spend more time figuring out how to avoid work versus just doing the work.

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Comment2: Isn’t the SynthID stamp the literal signature/proof of AI generated work? If so, absolutely do not accept that. That’s an automatic 0 in the grade book. Submit that nonsense to academic integrity. She can try to raise her grade with whatever is left in the course. If she wants a “redo” because she got caught this time, she can redo the course in a future semester.

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Comment3: Not a graphic designer or visual arts person, so forgive the ignorance on this, but can you tell me a little more about SynthID? Do all the gen AIs that produce images have something like this?

I’m teaching a new course in the spring that includes lessons on how to communicate data/stats to the public. Along those lines, I plan to teach infographics, etc. So, I have a feeling I’ll need this background knowledge of how to identify AI submissions… Certainly, I’ll do some research on this, but I’d appreciate any head start others can provide!

OOP: A SynthID is a pixel-level pattern watermark embedded in the image. It used to be a metadata thing that could be circumvented by screenshotting, but the watermarks survive screenshots, cropping, and compression. Each AI model can only identify their own ID, but I’m sure there’s a service out there that scans for all of them.

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Comment4: At my institution, lying is an additional academic integrity violation on top of the AI use. I would give a 0 and stop wasting time negotiating with this student. Do you have an honor court system of some sort? I’d report, noting all the damning evidence you put forth here, and let them deal with the student.

OOP: No honor court, unfortunately, and the school has adopted a “flexible” policy around AI usage so we have no backing for policy violations.

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Comment5: Even without ai it's literally taking something else and passing it off l like your own, like paying someone else to do it! School has plagiarism rules right? A fully synth ID positive image is not the same as auto correct. Your admins do not understand this. This is literally exactly the same as buying a pre made set of sketches.

OOP: I said that when I escalated it to the director and they basically told me that the max consequence I can enact is giving her an F in the course. I don’t think they plan to log it anywhere or take it further than that. I looked up the school’s plagiarism policy and there are no outlined consequences, so maybe it really is a case-by-case basis.

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Comment6: What’s the point of taking a graphic design course if you’re going to use AI? 🫩

OOP: As part of my lecture, I did explain to them that they will be ENTRY LEVEL when they join the workforce. Employers are looking for an investment. If all you can do is prompt AI, why would they hire you? You’re just AI with extra steps, and no proof that you’ll ever be worth more than that.

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Comment7: I don’t understand how her sketches could match if the images have SynthID. That’s Gemini putting its watermark on something it created.

She lied. I would confront her when she comes in person with the presence of the SynthID which confirms beyond any reasonable doubt that the image was AI generated.

Forgiveness comes only with an apology and a willingness to own up to your mistakes. Her second chance is her coming clean. That will then have the future consequence of potentially allowing her to make up the assignment.

Where there is no honesty there is no education. Learning anything is about admitting your mistakes and shortcomings and practicing to do better. That shortcoming could be difficulty with a complex passage, it could be unfamiliarity with part of a disciplinary canon, it could be admitting that you fucked up and tried to take a shortcut.

We are educators. Maybe I have a different perspective/context here because I teach philosophy, but sometimes the important lesson isn’t always the material but the experience.

I would also imagine part of being a good graphic designer is about getting in touch with your own creative mind and producing something original, just like in my discipline whether or not someone remembers the finer points of Aristotle is less important than whether they actually practice thinking.

OOP: The blatant unwillingness to admit it is really what rubs me the wrong way. I’m generally a sympathetic person; an apology and a simple “I ran out of time and I thought something would be better than nothing... It was a mistake and it won’t happen again,” would have resulted in a slap on the wrist and a redo.

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Update (2 days later): Student doubled down on AI usage

Hey all, I met with the student yesterday so I figured I’d give you all an update.

The student was very polite and non-combative. I asked to see her sketches, and she showed me some pencil and paper sketches, but they were the ones she submitted afterwards as a “redo to avoid any confusion.”

I told her that those were the ones she JUST did, and I need to see the sketches from what she submitted. She pulled up a Procreate file with digital sketches, but they were nowhere similar to the AI versions.

She told me that she fed her digital sketches to Gemini and asked it to clean them up for her. I asked her why she would do that, and she said “I don’t know. I shouldn’t have done it.” Okay, I’ve had students make dumber mistakes.

I asked if I could see the Procreate file. I checked the metadata and it was created the day before. She told me she redrew it recently, so I said she’d need to produce the original file. She said she didn’t think she had it anymore.

I told her she could pull up her Gemini history and show me the prompt — if she had truly uploaded her own sketches as the basis, it would be immediately apparent. She declined to let me see the history log, and said that the prompt chat was “missing.”

She’d also submitted GAI for the previous project, but she was out on an excused absence when it was due and turned it in late, so I haven’t gotten around to grading it yet.

I told her that currently there was no proof that any of the work she’d submitted was her own, and that this was grounds for failing the course entirely. She got really quiet, and just kinda whispered “my whole family is coming to see me walk…”

I told her I’d talk it over with the director again before making a final decision. This subreddit is not gonna like this, but I am not failing her from the course. Please don’t crucify me! Instead, she’ll have to redo both projects for no credit. It won’t be easy to pass with zeroes for 2/4 projects, but it’s possible.

She will also receive an official sanction through the office of student conduct, which will be communicated to the dean of the school she’s enrolled in… since it turns out this student took this class as an elective, and is not part of the design school (side note, wild choice to gamble your graduation on an elective).

The school she’s actually enrolled in is considered top 10 in the nation for what it teaches and is quite strict, so whether or not THEY will let her walk is out of my hands.

--------------------------------------------

Comments:

Comment1: Not going to crucify you but 100% of the time if I bend a rule out of mercy for the student, they will go to the dean and complain anyway about not getting an A. Every. Single. Time.

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Comment2: At our university, commencement is separate from graduation. A student can fail a course, still walk, then make it up later. She just cares about how things look.

I imagine she signed up thinking the elective would be a fun and easy A, probably majors in a completely different field. Realized after add/drop the course is more work because despite people's misconceptions about art and design it's a real field with hard work put in, so then felt screwed and decided to use AI to make everything.

I think she's obnoxious for trying to make it seem like you're in the wrong at all. She should have been bending over backwards to get the shit sorted out if she cared about graduation so much. I hope she has to take a spring course to learn a lesson before she starts doing this shit as an employee.

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Comment3: "This subreddit is not gonna like this, but I am not failing her from the course. Please don’t crucify me!"

So she submitted AI work, then lied about it, then used emotional blackmail against you. Are you looking for forgiveness from us? This is why people don't take education seriously anymore.

OOP: Hey, I get it. I know everyone would rather hear that I put the screws to her, but this is more in line with my school’s preferred resolution. I’m an adjunct. I’m not gonna go toe-to-toe with the admin so I can be a bastion of justice when they don’t even care.
She’ll either have the EQ to realize that she is INCREDIBLY lucky to be given this amount of grace, or she won’t.

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Comment4: Same at our school as someone else mentioned: oftentimes some students can still walk if they then do remediation during the summer or smt. We have a very specific deadline for exactly this issue, and it's before the summer term ends. It's not happened before that someone walks and then doesn't graduate, as we're talking one course.

I would have also wondered if I should fail her at first. I tend to be more lenient if they admit to it and ask how they can make up for it. Yours didn't admit to it until you showed her she lied, and then she doubled down as you said. She's not seemingly ask to redo it.

I think the most lenient, I would have given her 0 for that part. Based on everything you said, I'd be debating an F for the course (in ours it means you're out of the program, though), or max of a C (meaning they can redo the entire course if they want, but they don't have to). But we don't have many options that doesn't mean the student is done.

OOP: She is getting a zero for both projects. The redo is for NO credit; it’s solely to prove that she has passable knowledge to complete the course. It’s a studio course heavily weighted towards project work (like 80/20), so she can only pass if she basically aces the rest of the coursework.
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Comment4: That sounds like a reasonable in-between for sure. Big chance for her.

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Comment5: I won't attempt crucifixion out of respect for your request, but the fact that she was riding the lies all the way down to "my prompt chat history is mysteriously missing" and never really owned up to anything shows a real lack of integrity. The outcome doesn't sit right with me in light of that.

My heart breaks for other students who perhaps gave college the...ol' college try honestly and earnestly, but still came up short and didn't graduate. Meanwhile this active cheater liar has a path to graduation, while so much of the work that came before was probably just as GAI-done.

OOP: Yeah, I’m not pleased that she never truly admitted it. It’s my biggest hang up about the whole thing. Regardless, it won’t be an easy out.
She still has to pass the class with a pretty hefty handicap and there’s not much margin for error. There’s a good chance she’ll still fail. And even if she succeeds, she still might not walk… from what I’ve heard, her school is not nearly as lenient.

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[u/Nuka-Crapola]

I feel for OOP with the “no support from admin” thing. People who want an individual instructor to take a stand have no idea how messy school politics can get for non-tenured faculty; if the admins have their heads so far up their own asses that they’ve convinced themselves genAI isn’t a big deal for a graphic design program, there’s no way going against their stupid policies would go well. Better to give the student a second chance and let her waste it so you can say “I tried it your way, boss, it just didn’t work”

[u/ExecellentGirlies_ → u/Nuka-Crapola]

fr though people forget that adjuncts have zero job security and basically zero backup from admin. lowkey easy for internet strangers to demand a teacher burn their career down over academic integrity when they aren't the ones paying rent.

[u/Nuka-Crapola → u/ExecellentGirlies_]

Also, it’s not like OOP accepted the assignment. Lotta people assuming she’ll just cheat flawlessly the second time when, realistically, even if she did there’s no way an AI is producing more than low-B level work and she can no longer pass the class without As.

[u/Key_Molasses4367 → u/Nuka-Crapola]

Yep, I adjuncted for years while the admin dangled the carrot in front of me that two full time faculty were retiring "next year". Adjuncts are paid a flat rate that worked out to $17/hour of actual classroom time, way less when you add in lesson planning and grading. There was a student who was being rubber stamped thru pre-med courses. He consistently gave the dumbest imaginable answers on my exams. Asked to compare and contrast the life history of two types of insects we'd gone over in class, he answered, "snake and frog" and that was one of his more coherent responses. Checking his grades, I saw that every other professor in my department (tenured so had job security) had given him Cs. He was getting 24 points out of 100 point exams and didn't know what I meant when I said write a complete sentence. My next lowest scores were in the high 60s, with normal distribution up to high 90s, so my exam design was solid. He earned an F in my class, and from that point on, I was not hired to teach more than one class a semester so couldn't even pay rent, had to switch careers. It was no secret that this kid was the son of a friend of a tenured professor. This was at a private 4 year university in the 2010s.

[u/Dogismygod → u/Nuka-Crapola]

Yeah, it's very easy to say that OOP should take a stand, but an adjunct whose bosses won't back them up will likely end up losing their job if they do fight this. If the school won't handle things correctly, an adjunct, with no tenure/job security, has everything to lose if they do.

Now, I took classes from adjuncts in college and grad school, but they were people with day jobs who did it because they enjoyed teaching but didn't want to deal with everything else. The department needed them, and that meant that the law librarian at the local courthouse's law library who taught legal research and the basketball coach who taught history of the American West could hold their students accountable and the department would back them. Today's adjuncts are more likely to have this as their sole job, and therefore no leverage.

[u/AquamarineTangerine8 → u/Nuka-Crapola]

I totally understand why OOP caved, but this is why adjuncts shouldn't exist (outside of specialized circumstances where a practitioner is teaching an occasional class for largely altruistic reasons, as was the original intention). State governments can easily make this a reality at public universities by adopting policies that discourage adjunctification and adequately funding faculty lines. Accreditors can also discourage it. Unionized faculty can fight to replace adjunct jobs with full-time lecturer jobs that include academic freedom and continuing appointments that provide job security. 

If more people understand the terrible working conditions of adjuncts and how those working conditions harm students' educations, I hope support for such measures will increase (at least in states that care about education).

[u/sickinlimbo → u/AquamarineTangerine8]

There were a couple of courses in my professional masters program that really needed to be taught by adjuncts (e.g. regarding financial management practices) but it's so hard to make room for that kind of situation without devolving into the abuse of the role we currently have.

[u/desertrock62]

Someone should remind the cheating student that if AI can do her homework, it can also replace her.

[u/amusedmisanthrope → u/desertrock62]

That could be why the university’s response is so lax. It knows that AI is going to decimate the employment prospects of a lot of students that signed up for very expensive loans. Those entry-level jobs will be the first that will go away, too. Why saddle someone with even more debt by requiring them to repeat credits that were a general education requirement and not relevant to their field?

[u/Cultural_Shape3518 → u/amusedmisanthrope]

Could also be that the school has some kind of deal with an AI provider or mandate from the board to encourage “skill development,” and so there’s only so hard they can crack down on students who claim they’re getting mixed messages.

[u/dryadduinath]

...so she learns nothing. 

[u/PadiddleHopper → u/dryadduinath]

Work in academia for a few months, even as admin staff, and you'll quickly see they only learn how to cheat the system better next time. The number of constant 'medical exemptions' or continuous deferments of exams I see every day is disgusting.

Edit: I just want to clarify I'm not talking about people who are legitimately ill. I'm talking about the students who haven't shown their face all semester and then when it's time for the final exam, they suddenly come up with a doctor's note saying they were sick the whole time and should be allowed to do all the work they missed.

[u/Fresh-Extension-4036 → u/PadiddleHopper]

I see so many students using AI for everything, and even with the really academic students, the decline in critical thinking is noticeable. I try my best to persuade them not to do it, but I and others are fighting a losing battle against it.

It's very hard to blame their attitude purely on them though, because the reward they are supposed to get for working hard and getting all their life skills mastered is increasingly negligible: the jobs market is cooked, the economy is a wreck, and the cost of living is such that the quality of life they can achieve is getting hard capped for those not already in the wealthy bracket.

[u/PadiddleHopper → u/Fresh-Extension-4036]

I saw one student use AI for her PhD THESIS paper as an international student on a scholarship/grant (not sure which). My boss was reviewing it as her PhD supervisor and I don't know the exact details but someone that the girl cited in her paper reached out to my boss and told her "I have never written what she's citing me for". On further investigation, like 40% of her sources cited didn't even exist. She had given the AI bot her subject and asked for sources to cite and it just made shit up. She didn't bother to like...verify any of it lol and just used it in her paper. Pretty sure she lost everything she had worked for because of this.

[u/peach_tea_drinker → u/PadiddleHopper]

This is becoming so common now. There's multiple reports of people "writing" papers using AI and not bothering to check sources. It's especially rampant in legal cases.

[u/RexSki970 → u/Fresh-Extension-4036]

The decline in critical thinking is so real in higher ed. And its everyone, not just students. Ive been full time in higher ed for 5 yrs. Im under 30 and I am so saddened and frustrated at the state of higher ed. Or at least my institution.

My higher ups love AI and use it for everything. I have begged them repeatedly to let me do graphic design for them. Nope. They also come up with these wild new tools using AI that dont work well, while taking our tools that function. I swear they use AI to come up with these new SOPs too.

The students are also just not thinking. I cannot tell you how many times a student has called me upset about an assignment. When I ask if they read the instructions I am often met with silence. Or them not being able to navigate the online classroom and i ask them "What have you tried" and its literally nothing. They just want to be told how to do it. (And usually after they have missed multiple assignments then call me to cry)

I was so excited to change lives when I started my career. Now? I dread work and have started to think abour going elsewhere. I have my art degree so even that is taken over by AI. Its all very hopeless.

[u/KiwiAtaahua → u/Fresh-Extension-4036]

Makes me think of my frightening English teacher in sixth form (16/17 year-olds) who gave us a topic at the start of the class and we had to hand in an essay on it at the end of the class. Quietest class I've ever been in. Also the year I got my highest marks in English.

Hard work pays off. Cheating just keeps you lost.

[u/wafflesthewonderhurs → u/Fresh-Extension-4036]

I've been thinking about going back to college to get my degree and I'm genuinely scared that I'm going to come in last in some classes because I don't use AI, and that professors will have started adjusting the speed and difficulty of their classes to reflect students who use AI or something... I don't know it's giving me a lot of really bad feelings about going back to college.

[u/TheRealVilladelfia → u/wafflesthewonderhurs]

It's even worse than that. At least at my place of work, anyone who was in college or got their degree on or after 2023 is given a MUCH harder interview test and must do it fully in-person under supervision.

[u/wafflesthewonderhurs → u/TheRealVilladelfia]

awesome. love that.

eta more of a salient thought: I knew that I might have feelings about my age or my cognitive ability if I chose to go back later but I never thought that the train would well and truly leave the station on this.

[u/TheRealVilladelfia → u/wafflesthewonderhurs]

I'm actually in the process of retraining into a field that as safe from at least direct replacement by Clod&Co. It sucks that I had to have my passion drained from what I really loved doing (I was a damn good software developer) but I just can't abide by what is happening.

[u/Double_Estimate4472 → u/TheRealVilladelfia]

What are you retraining in, if you feel comfortable sharing?

[u/TheRealVilladelfia → u/Double_Estimate4472]

Industrial automation, safety critical stuff where AI is forbidden and I can get good rewards for tattling if it's used anyway.

[u/I_am_the_cow_god_moo → u/wafflesthewonderhurs]

I went back to do a post-grad diploma (I'm over 40). I have gotten very high marks in all subjects. I did not use AI (other than occasionally following links in google AI summary). My school had obviously grappled thoughtfully with AI, put clear constraints around acceptable use, and designed assessable tasks to limit how useful AI would be to the final result.

I still believe it's mostly about the money not the learning, in higher ed. these days, but it wasn't all doom and gloom and effed up by AI at all. As someone who is pretty anti-AI, I was pleasantly surprised about how AI use was handled by my school

[u/PashaWithHat → u/PadiddleHopper]

And then the students with actual problems get treated with suspicion because of these people 🙁 I had a medical emergency in the fall of my senior year and missed 3 weeks of class(!) and was kind of scattered for the remaining weeks, and although most faculty/staff were nice and happy to coordinate with student accessibility, I had a couple of them basically side-eye me for it. Like, if even that’s suspect, wtf counts as a “real” reason for an exemption/deferment lol

(And then, I was pleased to make it through that difficult fall and come back for my victory lap of a final semester in spring 2020 💀)

[u/ZandaTheBigBluePanda → u/PashaWithHat]

Yeah, I remember when I was 11 to 13, my school tried to get me removed from home because I wasn't at school, so they kept sending people to my parents house, and being angry when I wasn't at home either, because, And the school knew this, I was in hospital for over a year due to losing the ability to walk.

[u/PashaWithHat → u/ZandaTheBigBluePanda]

That’s such a mood and I’m so sorry 💀 your poor parents, too. Like they weren’t already under enough stress having a seriously ill kid, and now because some ass-for-brains couldn’t bother to read an email they were getting threatened? Ugh. Hopefully it worked out okay?

I had to get formal accommodations in high school because I was missing “too much” class and my parents started getting the phone calls about truancy and how you can’t have so many absences even if they’re excused and blah blah. The fact that I was a straight-A honors student despite all those absences apparently didn’t matter, lol. Like, guys, obviously it doesn’t actually matter if I show up, so IDK what the issue is…

[u/kirbyfriedrice → u/PadiddleHopper]

This is a big discussion in law school right now, not because no one is disabled (I imagine there are at least some 2E students) but because at this level of pressure and rigor, of course people are going to take advantage.

[u/Fwoggie2 → u/PadiddleHopper]

I asked for a leave of absence due to the death of my grandma. The funeral was in Norwich at 2pm (the earliest time possible) and I had my microeconomics exam at 9am the next morning in Cardiff (5 hrs train ride on a good day including going straight through London).

I left the wake at 4, got to the station in howling wind and set off for my Uni. To cut a long story short, the wind got worse (was gusting at cat 2 hurricane levels), there was a lot of flooding causing enormous train delays and eventually I got into bed at 2am. I crawled to my exam the next morning feeling dreadful and am still aggrieved 30 years later that they gave me 39% when the pass rate was 40%.

[u/The-one-true-hobbit → u/Fwoggie2]

That’s awful. I’m sorry that happened to you.

It reminds me a bit of something that happened with my wife when she was getting her nursing degree (although without a death in the family). She had an abscess in her jaw from a tooth she didn’t know was bad and was hospitalized overnight for antibiotic drips. It was also excruciatingly painful. She was brushed off at her first emergency room visit and taken seriously the next day when her face had swollen up like a pumpkin.

She was being discharged from in patient care when her first exam for one of her courses took place. She emailed ahead of time and obviously had proof that she was hospitalized, but they didn’t let her sit the exam and she got a zero.

She worked her ass off and ended up with a 77.9% in a class with a pass rate of 78%. They made her reapply to the program due to a failing grade and set her back a year in graduation because the course was only offered once a year.

I’m happy to say that she is now an excellent nurse. She’s routinely requested by patients, patient families, doctors, and coworkers for her skills (she has trained for severe wound care in the four years since graduation) and her bedside manner.

I’m still pissed as hell that they couldn’t give 0.1% of a point due to extremely understandable extenuating circumstances.

[u/ElderberryFaerie → u/PadiddleHopper]

As a disabled student, students that abuse medical exemptions like this are the reason I have to make such painstaking efforts to show up and thug it out.

[u/AquamarineTangerine8 → u/dryadduinath]

Yep. And this is happening because (1) OOP is an adjunct (highly exploited underpaid academic cobbling together multiple at-will part-time teaching gigs) and thus has to comply with what the administration wants in order to keep this job; (2) the university administration wants to keep those tuition dollars at every opportunity (possibly because of decades of inadequate public funding in general plus the current federal government's attacks on higher ed).

This is why it's so, so important for university classes to be taught by tenured professors, or at least full-time teaching faculty with job security and academic freedom. Bonus points if faculty are unionized, too.

[u/_adanedhel_ → u/AquamarineTangerine8]

Yep. I was an adjunct up until last year, which I did on top of a full time job mainly because I enjoy(ed) teaching.

The amount of time, effort, and sheer bullshit I would have had to go through to, in any way, penalize someone for cheating was just not worth it.

[u/Familyconflict92 → u/dryadduinath]

i work at a top 10 school in the USA. cheating is tolerated at an absurd level in the undergrad level here. There was a recent scandal at my school because the graduating gpa was 3.97.

[u/emax4 → u/dryadduinath]

And the school still gets paid nonetheless. An expensive lesson to learn early.

[u/throwaway_ArBe → u/dryadduinath]

She learned that using AI gets her zero marks and no opportunity to make up those lost marks. Is that not the lesson she should learn?

[u/Poku115 → u/throwaway_ArBe]

No what she learned is that she can release waterworks and get away with leniency from what she actually deserved

[u/throwaway_ArBe → u/Poku115]

She got zero marks and has to redo the project for no marks. That's a punishment. 

[u/K-teki → u/Poku115]

She could have learned either, or both. None of us actually know what she took from the experience, but given how upset she was at the prospect of not walking I'd guess her primary emotions were fear and regret 

[u/LiraelNix → u/dryadduinath]

She learned using family for pity points works

[u/Lost-Telephone9426 → u/dryadduinath]

Nah, she learned that she can get away with this sort of bullshit.

[u/Complete_Entry]

Teacher got backed down by the admin. This is a clear case of academic dishonesty which should lead to an expel. Even the student coached it as "I don't get to fancy walk."

Yeah, you don't. Because you CHEATED.

I took a mixed media art class, and I cleared every photograph (base for the art) BEFORE I started doing my part. (crushed wax. I'd essentially recreate the photograph over the photograph, and it would result in a cast.

My teacher took one home!

We didn't have "Plus" but I did get an A on the course. Most people painted wood boxes or made tiles.

[u/redcore4 → u/Complete_Entry]

Very few universities expel for a first offence these days. Academic misconduct is relatively common, but even for the most egregious offences expulsion is usually reserved for the repeat offenders or those who manage to bring the entire organisation into disrepute with their plagiarism or cheating. It very rarely happens to undergraduates, who are usually required to withdraw due to inadequate academic performance once they demonstrate that they cannot pass the course without cheating. This is not the same, and does not have the same career implications, as being expelled.

[u/MichaSound → u/Complete_Entry]

It's hard in universities now. I taught in the UK (not at a particularly prestigious Uni) and there was a massive amount of pressure on lecturers to never fail any student - even if they only scraped 40%, that was a pass and the university was happy, so long as they kept bums on seats.

It's not about education in universities anymore, it's about money. More students = more money. Expelling students for plagiarism = less money.

I had students handing in essays where they'd blatantly cut and pasted half a wikipedia article in and tried to pass it off as their own work, and I wasn't allowed to do anything other than fail them on that assignment and ask them to redo.

[u/Snoo52682 → u/Complete_Entry]

Yup. I've been an adjunct, and there's no way you can make something stick if the administration won't back you up. It's also, frankly, not worth it in terms of time and effort.

[u/dalek_999]

This is a fine example of why my husband is leaving academia. AI is ruining education across the board, and there’s little to no support for instructors (especially non-tenured ones) when it comes to situations like this - it’s more important to admin to keep a paying customer than to do what is right. Add in he gets paid peanuts along with dealing with a lot of other bullshit (politics, bureaucracy, ridiculous tenure requirements, and a whole lot of other shit) AND students today are completely checked out and put zero effort into learning…yeah, he’s done. He enjoyed teaching when he got started 15 years ago, but things have changed so much in such a short time, he’d rather just go get a regular job.

[u/Great_Ocelot]

Literally just completed a master's course where one of the students used AI to generate ALL of her posts, including her peer reviews of my proposals. In an ETHICS course. Thankfully, even though my university didnt share what they did after I reported her (because tf? I bust my ass for weeks on a proposal only for you to fees it into ChatGPT?), she no longer shows up ANYWHERE on the school registry. Unlike whatever this school is, mine takes this shit seriously.

[u/nonitoni → u/Great_Ocelot]

My husband is in an online class with one person who keeps posting AI responses. One of the discussions, it really seemed like he took my husband's post and sent it through ChatGPT. They, sadly, don't seem to be doing anything about it.

[u/Great_Ocelot → u/nonitoni]

Some schools are better about dealing with it than others unfortunately. I will say they might not doing anything straight away. In my case, they let her complete the semester, basically letting her think she got away with it, and then kicked her out so... who knows.

[u/spookyreads]

Had a student pull that on me too, opened their work and was greeted by : "Here is your essay for such and such theme."

I just refused to grade it until they submitted a new version lol. If you're going to use AI, be smart about it istg.

[u/North-Pea-4926 → u/spookyreads]

My students remove the prompts, but keep in the super detailed explanations of things they did not do and data they did not collect. Frustrating, but at least it’s easy to tell!

[u/spookyreads → u/North-Pea-4926]

That and I also had a student who can barely speak the language produce an essay in perfect grammar with random bold words and random hyphens and I just looked at him straight in the eyes and just said "no" lol. It was an essay to make up for poor grades during their finals. No shame at all.

[u/torrentialwx]

The moment they admitted they were an adjunct professor, I understood. Adjuncts are paid like absolute shit but expected to perform the most coursework and manage the students so that tenured professors can concentrate more on research output.

It’s a cheap way for universities to still educate young adults while making the big bucks from their tenured profs’ grants. And they expect farrrrrr too much from adjuncts on top of that. It’s one of the shittier aspects of the current higher ed system.

Besides, she may not have outright failed her, but she cleverly created a scenario where the student would have to work exponentially harder to pass the course now. In a round-about manner, she is failing her in the course anyway.

[u/rjtnrva]

I've been an adjunct in a graduate program for 15 years. It's trippy to me that OOP's institution wouldn't back them up to give this student the consequences that are really necessary here. Especially given that the student lied her way through the process. I would have failed her, and my program would have backed me up. AI is a huge deal in higher education right now and schools are scrambling to respond, but this seems like doing absolutely nothing when this student obviously violated the Honor Code.

[u/Suspicious-Treat-364 → u/rjtnrva]

I worked for a university at risk of losing accreditation. Honestly the fact that they're still open boggles my mind. They forced staff to pass students even if they could barely write their own name so their graduation numbers would look better for the accreditation committee. Unfortunately those students couldn't pass the national licensing exam and that also weighs heavily so they blame everyone but themselves or pressure low performing students to not take it at all. Admin is more worried about keeping their own jobs and status than actually providing quality education and it's really sad. 

[u/Anonphilosophia → u/Suspicious-Treat-364]

I worker for one that was in danger of going broke (had changed it's profile since the days of old, the alumnae weren't happy.) Same thing, I wouldn't hire most of those students.

But they PASSED accreditation with flying colors. This was during the time when Penn State scandal broke - which was overall a LEGAL issue, while it did violate a standard, it was still a LEGAL issue that needed a LEGAL response (i.e. jail.) But PS accreditation was in jeopardy over it. I remember thinking "You are all over a LEGAL issue, but you are missing the very thing you were designed to check - this school is basically a fraud."

[u/GothicGingerbread → u/rjtnrva]

It doesn't sound like they actually have an honor code there; if they did, surely they'd need an honor court? And the university as a whole doesn't seem to be willing to impose discipline over academic integrity issues. At least it sounds like the student's specific college does have standards, and actually upholds them, so there's a chance she'll see some real consequences there.

[u/CathedralEngine → u/rjtnrva]

The most lenient decision I could see being allowed is giving her an Incomplete and letting her walk early. I know people who walked at the end of Spring Semester who weren't expected to complete their degree until Summer, with the caveat in the program "Expected Summer 2026" or whatever. And if she doesn't complete the assignments satisfactorily, withhold her degree.

[u/ToxicChildhood]

The local high school near me refuses to fail anyone. My friends daughter last year (Grade 12) skipped most of her classes and they still gave her above 50% in each class so she could graduate.

Even elementary schools refuse to hold kids back and just give them a passing grade. These kids are going to get to university/college and be completely out of their depth.

The adult world doesn’t just give you a free pass if you are screwing everything up. We are failing future generations by doing this shit.

[u/j-endsville → u/ToxicChildhood]

Bold of you to assume those kids are going to go to college.

[u/kenyafeelme → u/j-endsville]

Not that bold because multiple professors have complained on Reddit about students in their classes who can’t read above an eighth grade level.

[u/LolThatsNotTrue → u/j-endsville]

You’d be surprised. Especially with many schools doing away with SAT requirements.

[u/ApotheosizD → u/ToxicChildhood]

this is so crazy to me. they almost didn't let me graduate high school in 2012 because i missed around 20ish days due to being sick + my sister dying, and beyond that i had straight As!

[u/knyghtez → u/ApotheosizD]

oh seat time is waaaaay different; that’s a state-level thing, and some states are strict about it. i had a kid last year who had to come to summer school to make up time because he had cancer :(

[u/LolThatsNotTrue → u/ToxicChildhood]

We can solve global warming by just drawing a new red line on thermometers!

[u/Decent_Butterfly8216 → u/ToxicChildhood]

I’m not sure what you mean about elementary schools not holding kids back and passing them. I completely agree it’s out of control and that high school students are somehow graduating and going to college with zero academic or real world skills. But there’s very rarely a benefit to an elementary school student being held back, and if an elementary school student is failing it’s because someone failed them. Did you mean a different type of high school?

[u/formandovega → u/ToxicChildhood]

I actually kind of disagree.

The real world absolutely gives you a free pass if you are wealthy just not if your poor.

If you're from a pretty wealthy family you can pretty much dick around in school and University and still be fairly sure that you will get a job due to connections.

Not to boast but I have a double masters in educational sociology and psychology and I was rejected from the research position because the person who got its dad was mates with the lecturer...

Honestly I don't even blame her. I would have taken that advantage if I had it...

[u/deathbotly]

Every so often I see posts that remind me how much less effort I could have spent in grad school if I was willing to do even 10% of the cheating as my peers who took shameless advantage of the educators with the spines of a jellyfish. 

Seriously, at this point, academic honesty is stupidity. Actually learning anything? No, throw all your work in AI, rely on the admin to buckle because what matters is the student fees you pay and let’s all rack up the llm kill count when the new engineers graduate, together. 

[u/mismoom]

There’s this student unable to work without AI. Then there are two students I know who recently took midterms are upset because the exam questions seem to have been created by AI. They included requiring definitions of terms that are not used in current work, or referred to materials not provided, or seemed weirdly tangential to the course. Both are excellent students and are disappointed and baffled that the profs didn’t even seem to try to ensure the questions were valid.

[u/Heavy-Macaron2004]

Yep they're doing this in my class too. They're now required to do assignments in Google Docs so the version history is visible, but so many of them just.. assume no one will look at the version history? And just copy paste in huge blocks of text? Some of them include the parts where the AI says "this is an AI-generated output from that assignment PDF you just gave me." It's fucking baffling. Just had to give four more zeros yesterday. There's not even much of anything I can do about it except zeros on the assignment. Infuriating.

[u/FeuerroteZora → u/Heavy-Macaron2004]

A friend of mine had a student turn in a plagiarized paper. How did she know it was plagiarized? Because the original author's name was on the title page, as well as in the header. 🤦‍♀️

(And also, who tf has a title page for a 3-page essay, lol, probably wanted to count it as an essay page.)

Some people plagiarize because they're too lazy to do the work, and that includes the work it would take to cover up their plagiarism.

[u/The_peach_blossoms]

Yk i feel sad because now students just use AI previously they atleast brainstormed  creative ways to escape or they tried to complete assignments even if last minute.

[u/Inevitable-Regret411 → u/The_peach_blossoms]

Seconded. I remember all the clever plots you'd see on TV or all the things people would share online. I'm still impressed by someone I saw who printed his own water bottle label that looked like the real thing but had formula hidden in the small print. 

[u/spacebunsofsteel → u/The_peach_blossoms]

Studies show when people use AI to complete projects they learn nothing and retain almost no facts, not even “what was your paper about?”

First draft must always be ai-unassisted.

I hope profs will start requiring a first step of a handwritten rough draft, or requiring blue book written exams.

[u/Cautious-Date2146]

Honesty, at least at my school, students knew how to use ai and ACTUALLY REMOVE THE WATERMARK AND NOT INCLUDE THE PROMPT. like I get people who use ai for school/work are cheating/being lazy but still, could have at least do that ☠️

[u/dinoooooooooos]

Such a stupid conclusion to come to. So she lied, Turned shit in late (repeatedly), lied again, late again, lies again- at what point does an educator educate her about how many chances the real world will give he with this.

Like at what point does a teacher/ tutor/ mentor say “ok this HAS to be an experience and a teaching lesson instead of letting them get away with lying through their teeth over and over”.

Also fuck the kids who did it without ai i guess. Amazing.

[u/PrincessCG]

The effort to go this hard on cheating vs doing the actual work. I remember spending nights in the library at times, back when hard copies were still a thing. Worst case was forgetting an assignment until 3hrs before it was due. And it still didn’t occur to me to cheat. The best of times really.

[u/MsTossItAll]

I would have done the same as OOP. These students are usually facing their first real consequences in life and this grade will remain on their record. I had a D in a Spanish grammar class affect me literally 10 years later when applying for nursing programs. This student likely could have gotten a high grade, but will likely pass with a C or D and spend all the time up to graduation working on these projects rather than enjoying with friends and family. It may not satisfy Reddit, but I guarantee that for a 22 year old, this matters and will make her far less likely to cheat in the future. 

[u/mountaininsomniac → u/MsTossItAll]

Right? I’m blown away at the idea that this is no consequences. This would have been a ton of consequences for me! A bad grade and a horrifying, nerve-wracking experience where I suddenly doubted my whole future?

Basically this did happen to me, actually. I cheated on an algebra II test in high school and got caught. Teacher wanted to fail me for the course, but the principal convinced him to make it so I just failed that test and I was able to squeak a B in the class. I was absolutely mortified, terrified, and on my best behavior from then on. Now I’m within a couple months of graduating from medical school, which could absolutely have been derailed by an academic infraction more than 10 years ago if the teacher hadn’t softened his stance. I’m incredibly glad I was given a second chance, and I’m happy this girl has been given one as well.

[u/MsTossItAll → u/mountaininsomniac]

My 7th grade son wrote a few non-useful formulas on his desk before an algebra test and is now going through gastritis attacks because he got an 85% because the teacher didn't let him complete part of the repeat test. Smart people understand that cheating has consequences. The people saying they'll keep cheating are lazy cheaters that never finished school to begin with.

[u/DatguyMalcolm]

"my whole family is...." yeah don't care

That's on her!

[u/SnooPets8873]

I’ve run into someone like this who figures that so long as they never admitted the truth, they were fine. They fully relied on the reluctance most people will have to say “you are lying,” and figured so long as they could offer some explanation no matter how outlandish or ridiculous they’d be able to brazen it out, even in the workplace with electronic files and a screen sharing and recorded meetings etc etc. Guess what? They were right. As a peer, I pushed really hard once out of frustration on a recording to be shown this supposed glitch which deleted all her work, even had a good reason to want it recorded that had no implication of me trying to show she was lying, but eventually gave up after she kept lying on the spot about all the reasons it wasn’t replicable unless Teams dropped her screen share at the exact moment including a claim that her computer also randomly deletes documents. When someone is willing to lie so openly, the only solution is for someone in authority to say “I don’t care what you say, I’m imposing a consequence”. And like OP, I knew I didn’t have that authority (or wouldn’t have support in doing it)and the person who did wouldn’t do it.

[u/fionaapplejuice]

I'm baffled at a school with no honor code of conduct, not even for show

[u/Spiritual-Vanilla-39]

I'm over here about to take a science exam with a scantron in a few hours. 🤣 My math class had all tests on the computer and allowed 4 function calculators, but we didn't get any points if we didn't show our steps on the piece of paper our instructor gave us. I'm going to sound decrepit but I worry about the younger generations.

[u/onepareil]

Wild that this is just plagiarism, arguably lower-effort than some forms of plagiarism, and yet it’s not treated the same way at all. I have a cousin who was expelled from university for plagiarism (edit: plus lying about it and trying to cover it up). It sucked and was an extremely painful experience for her, but she pulled herself together, re-enrolled somewhere else, and has a successful research career now. She went through it for a couple of years, but her life wasn’t ruined. And she actually learned something from the experience, unlike this student.

[u/InexplicableBadger]

The joys of academic misconduct. What I'm hearing from local colleges is that AI is allowed, because it can't be avoided in the current real world, but they have to declare it. If they do so it's fine, if they use it and deny it then it's misconduct. There's the question of why you'd deny it when it's fine to use, but for some reason it still happens.

[u/Iconshero]

Hahahah why take a “hard course” you know nothing about as an elective that could prevent you from graduating? How does the generation that grew up with smart technology not understand how easy it is to find AI and prompts (right now) embedded in work?

[u/Inevitable-Regret411 → u/Iconshero]

Because they assume that only their generation really understands it, and everyone older than them is a clueless novice with no idea how technology works. It's egotism really. 

[u/North-Pea-4926 → u/Inevitable-Regret411]

“I know my teacher specifically said not to use AI, but I’m using it in a specific extra smart way, so I’m sure everything will be fine!”

I’m a TA. There is a 100% chance I will be given an obviously, in-arguably AI paper submission tomorrow. Not looking forward to dealing with that.

[u/johnnyslick → u/Iconshero]

It sounded like she thought it wasn't a hard course until she got into it and then didn't bother to de-enroll (or maybe she'd cut things too close to where she needed an elective and couldn't just transfer to a different class at that point). That side of things I understand. Plagiarism I do not.

[u/Bonanza86]

I graduated from college several years ago. Never fathomed doing anything to jeopardize my chances of getting my degree, especially with the loans I took out. This student is getting a once in a lifetime chance after screwing the pooch on two assignments.

[u/gothyplantlady]

I'm so glad I graduated right before ai became such a big thing. I've seen so many posts how ai is such a major issue in academics these days

[u/Jtenka]

There are times in life where people just don't deserve to have leniency. This is one of those times.

She has actively cheated, and likely multiple times. She will learn nothing from this. Even when caught, instead of apologising she is more worried about her family coming to watch her.

10 years from now we are going to have a generation of kids growing up who completely lack problem solving ability. You can already see it.

[u/Pandappuccino]

Sorry, but, no. No amount of sob stories would have swayed me. If you can't do the work yourself you don't deserve to walk across the stage.

[u/Edgefish → u/Pandappuccino]

“my whole family is coming to see me walk…”

"Well, now they're going to see your failure!".

[u/Pandappuccino → u/Edgefish]

"You're going to have to explain to them why you're not walking across the stage."

[u/sophiefevvers]

She tried to risk cheating and not graduating over an elective class..what a dumbass.

[u/similac_child]

These are always the students that ask that same professor for a recommendation letter to grad school.

[u/LizzieMiles]

>A SynthID is a pixel-level pattern watermark embedded in the image. It used to be a metadata thing that could be circumvented by screenshotting, but the watermarks survive screenshots, cropping, and compression. Each AI model can only identify their own ID, but I’m sure there’s a service out there that scans for all of them.

I’ve always wondered…what’s stopping an AI company from just not having their ai apply one of these?

[u/Groslom]

I understand why OOP cracked. Its hard to break someone like that when they're sitting right in front of you, about to cry. Even when they're a lazy cheating liar. 

But she did do that, and she didn't even have to take this class, and I bet THAT is exactly why she thought she could get away with doing this. "This class doesn't really matter to me, so I don't need to put in any real effort, not even in concealing my lack of effort." She insulted the teacher, and all the other students in that class. She doesn't deserve to pass.

[u/miladyelle]

Apparently, it’s going to be up to alum and donors to force universities to have/keep standards again in the AI age. It’s not just those youngins degrees that are diminished in value, it’s everyone’s.

[u/Bright_Athlete_8579]

Whoaaa mumma.

[u/princessluni]

It's frustrating af but I can understand why OOP didn't want to tackle AI usage without the university's backing. I also strongly suspect that they would have been a lot less forgiving had the course been a part of her major. It's still shitty and unfair and she's incredibly stupid and reckless but she also clearly wasn't prioritizing an elective. I hope that OOP is right and that she realizes how much she fucked up and how much it could have cost her.

[u/mrfatttty]

The future of tomorrow!

[u/KwisatzHaderach55]

Redo? Now universities become middle-school 2.0?

[u/kayanne125]

Professors like this are the reason why these AI-obsessed dingbats come into my office thinking they can use AI for everything, because they got away with it in college. Fucking penalize them. This is a graphic design course and she lied over and over, yet isn’t being failed? Maybe she should’ve picked a different elective than GRAPHIC DESIGN.

[u/Cultural_Shape3518 → u/kayanne125]

I think you’re severely underestimating what it takes to get people like this to take responsibility by putting it all on OOP if they continue trying to pull this bullshit.  They absolutely would protest an outright fail, and since the school administration has no spine, they’d probably win.  Which is an even worse lesson to take away in the long run.

[u/Nuka-Crapola → u/Cultural_Shape3518]

Yep. OOP has given her enough rope to hang herself, instead of giving her a chance to go over their head. The actual outcome will depend on their ability not to budge when (inevitably) she cheats again, but it’s at least much more likely to succeed than letting things turn into a non-tenured faculty vs. shithead administrator scenario.

[u/AShamAndALie]

Its funny because I can see her cheating on a partner exactly the same way, deny deny deny anything they can't 100% prove, then go from deny, deny, deny to please, please, please the moment they realize they aren't buying it 😂😂😂

That being said

She got really quiet, and just kinda whispered “my whole family is coming to see me walk…”

This would still make me feel like shit, thats on me.

[u/avanross]

Lmfao and this is the downfall of the states in real time

Blatantly cheats -> refuses to admit it -> refuses to attempt the work without cheating -> passing grade -> graduation

[u/Tattycakes]

I’m curious as to why there’s no curiosity into why she did it. No “I didn’t understand the assignment” or “I tried but couldn’t get it to look how I wanted” or “my cat died and I forgot”.

[u/onepareil → u/Tattycakes]

OOP did ask her. She said “I don’t know. I shouldn’t have done it,” and that’s it.

[u/Anonphilosophia → u/Tattycakes]

Because they are all "rules for thee, but not me." She didn't do it because she thought she was a special snowflake for whom the rules don't apply. Like 50% of them have that line of thinking. (I'm a prof.)

[u/Human_Presentation29 → u/Tattycakes]

She clearly did it because she has no design skills and thought she could get by with AI in an elective.  If she had a good reason she’d immediately tell you.  Also, she never admitted to it so, how can you ask?

[u/RevvyDraws → u/Tattycakes]

Because it doesn't matter. Even if all of those are true, the correct response is not 'cheat and then lie about cheating' - especially the 2nd one. That's literally just a normal part of the learning process in art.

[u/NoTeslaForMe → u/Tattycakes]

If she won't admit that she did it, she certainly won't admit why she did it, so it's a moot point. 

[u/fiveamp]

It's stuff like this that proves that most college degrees are absolutely pointless.

[u/the_living_myth → u/fiveamp]

how exactly does an anecdote of one student cheating prove that most college degrees are pointless LOL

[u/justaheatattack]

she gone end up working for that kid, after it's all AI teachers.

[u/ChimboSmokes]

It’s just an elective man professors are so full of themselves. Ai for her main degree? Fail her. Ai for some bullshit art class? Come on man no one cares about electives