Brown Professor Flags AI Cheating After 40 of 86 Students Scored 100 on Take-Home Midterm
Updated
Updated · Fortune · Jun 29
Brown Professor Flags AI Cheating After 40 of 86 Students Scored 100 on Take-Home Midterm
2 articles · Updated · Fortune · Jun 29
Summary
40 of 86 Brown students earned perfect scores on Roberto Serrano’s March 5 take-home economics midterm, pushing the class average to 96 on an exam he said was harder than usual.
ChatGPT-style reasoning helped expose the suspected fraud: graders found the same convoluted AI-generated proof pattern repeated across dozens of papers after Serrano had moved the test home to ease trauma after Brown’s December campus shooting.
27 students dropped the course after Serrano confronted the class, including 22 who had scored 100; on the in-person final, only 59 students sat the exam, 19 failed and the average plunged to 48.
Serrano said Brown administrators were initially silent after he sent evidence to the dean and provost, though the Academic Code Committee later called the case a "wake-up call."
Brown has not commented, and Serrano has already scrapped take-home exams and grade-bearing homework, casting the case as part of a wider AI-driven erosion of academic integrity.
With AI detectors proven unreliable, how can universities fairly prove and punish academic dishonesty?
Is this Ivy League scandal the final proof that traditional university exams are now obsolete?
A professor exposed a massive cheating ring. Why did his university initially meet him with silence?
Academic Integrity on the Brink: The Brown University AI Cheating Scandal and the Nationwide Crisis in Higher Education
Overview
The Brown University AI cheating scandal began when Professor Roberto Serrano discovered students using AI for academic dishonesty in his classroom. After reporting the issue to university officials, he was met with silence from both the president and the dean. Frustrated by the lack of response, Professor Serrano escalated the matter to the Academic Code Committee. Only then did the university acknowledge the incident as a 'wake-up call.' However, Professor Serrano believes this response is not enough, stressing that academic integrity must be actively defended and that faculty should not face these challenges alone.