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but the number of students failing exams increased dramatically because fewer people did the homework.

In a sane world that would be a "not our problem", as the horses have been brought to water and they just won't drink, but unfortunately institutions chasing pass rates metrics as a pure indicator of instructor skills pushes towards increased leniency in grading and that's another can of worms which I won't open here.

> I don’t really know what it is. Maybe a sense that because they’re using a tool that it’s not cheating? Thinking they’re less likely to get caught because it’s not identical to existing work?

That would make sense. The logic that they are not copying work from another student or copying someone else’s “efforts” so to speak.

Another aspect is how easy it is. It’s not having to find someone to copy it from, or search online and so on. It’s “just open an llm chat window and ask”.

The worst part is those that don’t cheat will hear how so and so uses llms to do homework and nails all the answers unpunished while they are barely managing, trying to do honest work. That stuff is soul killing.

> I’ve heard multiple stories of professors for undergrads who tried making homework optional, but the number of students failing exams increased dramatically because fewer people did the homework.

Just let them fail.

>but the number of students failing exams increased dramatically

It's their problem.

And possibly because they told developers use AI on the job.

I'm seeing in work that developers are producing code they don't understand. I think overall AI is making it harder for them to learn because the temptation is to just use what ever it produces. Especially when this is combined with measuring productivity on tickets closed.