College Papers Are Becoming Obsolete, and Schools Haven't Noticed
Source: Prof G Research Team
Long-form written assignments—the scaffolding of undergraduate education for decades—are collapsing as students default to AI for drafting and synthesis, yet most institutions are still grading the output rather than redesigning what intellectual work means. The shift isn't about plagiarism detection. The labor of organizing 20 pages of argument into a coherent thesis no longer signals learning when a student can prompt an LLM and edit the result. Schools that don't move toward real-time oral defense, live problem-solving, or collaborative projects will graduate students who've outsourced their thinking instead of expanding it.