Colleges are reviving old-school blue books to curb artificial-intelligence cheating, even as educators warn the fix won't solve everything.
Blue-book Sales Surge As Schools Pivot Back
Bulk purchases of the lined exam booklets have jumped at major campuses since late 2022, when tools like ChatGPT became commonplace, according to university data cited by a recent The Wall Street Journal article.
Administrators say in-class, handwritten exams make it harder to outsource work to chatbots. Sales of blue books rose between roughly 30% and 80% across several large public universities, and the main U.S. manufacturer, Roaring Spring Paper Products, says its staple product is "at the center of the national conversation on academic integrity."
The pivot reflects a wider shift to "AI-resistant" assessments such as timed writing and oral defenses.
Analog Fixes Have Limits, Detection Tools Falter
Faculty caution that the analog move has limits. Philip Bunn, an assistant professor at Covenant College, argues that "the process of writing a paper outside of class cannot simply be replicated in a blue book exam, and something serious is lost if we give up entirely on the traditional essay, whether those essays are more analytic, argumentative, or research-based."
According to a report by New York Magazine, researchers and instructors also report that AI-detection tools remain unreliable, complicating enforcement in take-home work.
Cheating Scale Expands, Pedagogy Shifts Toward Orals
Surveys suggest the scope of the problem is broad. In one national poll conducted by Study.com, more than 89% of students said they had used ChatGPT to help with homework, and nearly half acknowledged using it for at-home tests or quizzes.
The return of blue books has become a cultural marker of the AI era. WSJ reported that campuses from Florida to California are stocking more booklets. Coverage of AI-driven cheating has spiked as students post viral clips and instructors rewrite syllabi.
Others argue that the "only real solution" is more direct, dialog-based evaluation, which one New York Times essay called a modern embrace of "medieval" methods that force students to think on their feet.
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