When I was a student at a uk university, essays were, I think, written in examinations where one can’t easily use AI, as were most of the other things one would need for a degree. There was a small coursework component of my course and I think others. But I’m still a bit surprised — surely if you are getting a coursework essay from a history or English student or similar, the AI will be a worse writer and won’t have sufficiently detailed knowledge to write about the topic, so either the essay won’t really make any sense if you think about it (which you’d hope examiners would be able to tell) or the student will have done their own research and gotten the AI to form the students opinions into the essay, but they will then likely synthesise a much worse essay than the one the student could have written.

Doing practicals seems good, and I think proctored examinations can add objectivity too.