I am a professor of economics at Brown University, where I have taught for the past 34 years. During much of that time, I have taught Welfare Economics and Social Choice Theory, an advanced undergraduate course in mathematical economics.
But this spring semester, I suspect that more than half of my students cheated their way through the course. And even after I reported it, it took Brown far too long to get involved.
Here’s how it happened: In part due to the tragic shooting that took place at Brown on December 13 during a review session for a final exam, I decided to move my course’s two exams—the midterm and the final—from an in-class exam to a take-home, closed-book format. I thought that would help students deal with exam anxiety. The exams would be made available to students through an online portal, and they would have 11 hours (for a two-hour test) to complete and submit each. Unsurprisingly, the course enrollment jumped to 86, far above 30, the highest maximum in previous semesters.
The results from the midterm were immediately suspicious. The average grade was 96, with 40 students obtaining a perfect score. That compared to a midterm average ranging between 65 and 80 in previous years. In addition, I detected irregularities in many exams, including passages that matched the answers I received when I provided the exam questions to ChatGPT. I told the class I was convinced there had been massive cheating, but I decided not to void the results of the midterm: If the grade distribution of the final exam looked roughly similar to that of the midterm, I would count the midterm; otherwise, I would declare the midterm void and reweight the final. But I also told the class that the final exam was going to be an in-person, closed-book, three-hour exam.
