What we covered:
– A recent report from the University of California San Diego revealed that 1 in 12 incoming freshmen were not proficient in middle school math – basically, anything above arithmetic with fractions. Their existing remedial math course was too advanced for these students, so they had to design even lower remedial remedial math courses. Even crazier, over a quarter of these students had a perfect 4.0 GPA in their high school math courses.
– It’s not just UCSD. This is everywhere. A similar thing happened at Harvard, too, having to add remedial support to their entry-level calculus courses. It’s like that movie Olympus Has Fallen, except this time it’s Harvard. It’s a catastrophe.
– How did things get this bad? Teachers and administrators face relentless pressure to inflate grades, and during the pandemic many universities went test-optional, removing the only signal that reliably correlated with actual math readiness. That decision simultaneously elevated high school grades to the sole gatekeeping metric, intensifying incentives to inflate them.
– This has all coincided with the advent of LLMs, which make it increasingly easy for students to cheat. The result was predictable: grades became untethered from real competence, and multiple cohorts of students entered college without ever having to demonstrate foundational math skills.
– Teachers have to play both good cop and bad cop, and there is no avoiding the latter. If you refuse to play bad cop at all, you eventually end up playing it constantly. The best teachers are strict from the start and ease up later, once students understand that hard, honest work is non-negotiable.
Outline:
00:00:00 - Introduction
00:02:11 - Freshmen math collapse: 1 in 12 UCSD freshmen don't know middle school math
00:06:45 - Remedial remedial math: UCSD created remediation for remedial math
00:08:40 - Inflated grades: 25% of remedial-remedial students had perfect GPA in HS math
00:10:06 - Test-optional admissions removed the last objective metric
00:12:13 - Pandemic inflation: GPAs skyrocketed
00:14:37 - Removing tests pressures teachers to inflate grades
00:16:52 - Grade-grubbing: endless negotiating, complaining, accusations
00:19:01 - Then vs. now: parents, tests, accountability
00:27:38 - Crisis opportunism: “Never let an emergency go to waste”
00:29:33 - No tests = no knowledge requirements
00:33:28 - Elite collapse: Harvard has the same problem
00:36:31 - No enforcement means no standards
00:37:40 - LLM cheating is trivially easy
00:38:25 - Catching a cheater and turning him around
00:48:46 - Cheating is like taking mob money. Now you’re in, you’re never out.
00:50:41 - Assessments must be done in person
00:55:06 - LLM cheating is often obvious yet hard to prove
00:57:17 - How to prevent cheating on long papers
00:58:28 - Start hardcore, then lighten up gradually
01:01:37 - Good teachers play bad cop when needed
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