Artificial intelligence threatens to undermine online education, a growing business for colleges and universities, as professors struggle to counter a groundswell of tech-enabled cheating.

In physical classrooms, many educators have shifted to oral presentations and handwritten exams to try to prevent misuse of an unregulated technology. But those strategies can be harder to execute online, where more than half of American college students took at least one class last year, up from about a third in 2019.

In many online courses, whether at community colleges or globally renowned universities, students may never meet with their professors or their peers, even over video. Those classes are self-paced with prerecorded lectures, also known as asynchronous. Assignments and tests are submitted digitally.

While some universities are completely online, an increasing number of brick-and-mortar schools are expanding their online offerings. Sometimes students can earn full degrees online. In other cases, they take individual classes.

In this realm, A.I. cheating is quickly accelerating beyond the copy-and-pasting of chatbot-produced essays and problem sets. A.I. agents have made it possible for students to outsource a semester of work. With simple commands — “log in and complete my quiz” — a student can unleash what is, essentially, an imitation of themselves. Agents can watch lecture videos, take tests, write papers and chat with classmates about reading assignments.

There have always been questions about whether degrees from online programs are of equal value to those earned on campuses. But policymakers and education leaders have spent two decades championing online learning as an equity tool allowing nontraditional college students, like low-income working parents, to study wherever and whenever is convenient for them. Many students say online classes put degrees within reach.

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