The Gazette’s story last week about a “study” run by UMass Economics Department Chair Christian Rojas is a perfect example of what’s so deeply wrong with academia [“Use of AI in the classroom doesn’t lead to higher grades, UMass study says.”]

The entire methodology is flawed in that it assumes (stupidly) that students “forbidden” from using AI actually works. It doesn’t. It’s wildly irresponsible to predicate study results on a single variable that can’t be controlled or tracked, and that students are almost certain to lie about, obscure or dismiss as “not a big deal,” especially when they don’t know that AI usage is the particular thing being studied (and thus that it does matter to the integrity of the results). Such“research” isn’t sound at even a sixth grade science project level.

Just as concerning, however, is Rojas’s conclusion that although AI didn’t improve grades, it did lead to other educational “improvements” such as “a higher frequency of using AI outside the class to edit and check for grammatical issues on their original work,” which allowed them to “get to the same finish line” in “more efficient ways.”

This “efficiency” is “cheating” in other disciplines. It’s not valuable or an improvement when students are paying for an education. I guess it doesn’t matter if they’re functionally illiterate as long as they get the right numbers quickly and with minimal effort, right? Wrong.

Among policy circles, economists (and academics) are infamous for missing the forest for the trees. Sadly, they so rarely disappoint. As is so often the case these days, UMass should be embarrassed. As a former instructor and alum, I am.

Lauren Leigh Rollins

Northampton