Degrees no longer prove much. The work still does.
A professor finds 68% of his students cheat with AI and warns that employers will trust degrees less. What to read instead when hiring engineers.
68% of his students admit to cheating with AI.
Victor Kumar, a university professor, put the question to his intro course in an anonymous survey: "In my intro course, 68% of students admitted to using LLMs in violation of course policies." In other courses than his own, he presumes, with some irony.
The largest published study on the subject, in Science, found 9%. But it used data from spring 2024, when generated text was still easy to spot.
What interests me is his conclusion. If universities do nothing, he says, employers will have no choice but to give less weight to degrees and transcripts.
The signal is drowning in noise.
For hiring engineers, the question becomes very concrete: if a grade no longer says what someone can do, what does?
My answer: what they have built, and what can be checked. A project that runs. Code reviewed by others. Choices they can defend when you ask about them.
It doesn't replace an education. But it can't be faked with a prompt.
