This week
in 30 seconds
Five things worth knowing before you walk into your department. Items fully covered in the August 1 issue are omitted.
The retreat from unsupervised assessment accelerates. University of Chicago Law bans laptops and phones for incoming students, and Princeton votes to end its 133-year tradition of unsupervised exams — the clearest signal yet of where assessment is heading.
Mexico's UNAM invalidated roughly 3,000 admissions exams in an AI cheating-and-proctoring scandal that reached President Sheinbaum.
Computer science enrollment is falling, but Northwestern doubled its CS teaching staff anyway — to serve non-majors flooding into AI courses, per AP.
The largest study of real AI-tutor usage — 77,000 students in Germany — finds AI-supported learning woven into everyday study schedules, not replacing them.
Only 11% of higher-ed leaders strongly agree AI has delivered measurable value — yet 71% still name scaling AI their top priority.
Main stories
The developments most likely to change how your campus teaches, tests, and plans.
Image: Nano Banana 2
The retreat from unsupervised assessment accelerates
The University of Chicago Law School has banned laptops and smartphones for incoming first-year students — all exams move in-class, without internet, files, or apps — while pairing the ban with a plan to teach effective AI use later in the program. Princeton, meanwhile, voted to end its 133-year honor-code tradition of unsupervised exams. Three-quarters of respondents to an AAC&U survey say they are concerned about generative AI cheating.
A July 20 HEPI report frames the alternative: "the pursuit of [integrity] through approaches that work," urging programs to move away from essay-based submissions rather than lean on detection. Backdrop, covered in the August 1 issue: the Yale GPTZero federal lawsuit, Brown's take-home midterm investigation, and Alcorn State's hidden-prompt trap, still topping TikTok feeds into August.
The Independent, July 28 →Decide before syllabi lock which of your assessments move in person. The sector's direction of travel is now unambiguous — and detector-based enforcement is the legally weaker alternative. Chicago's ban-then-teach sequencing is a model worth copying: protect foundational skills first, teach the tool second.
Image: Nano Banana 2
UNAM's AI cheating scandal leaves thousands of applicants in limbo
Mexico's most prestigious university took its admissions exam online for the first time, guarded by AI surveillance — then invalidated ≈3,000 tests (2%) after a wave of suspiciously perfect scores. Investigators found cheating via phones, stand-ins, and identity theft; applicants who feel wrongly flagged now blame the AI proctor itself, and President Sheinbaum suggested involving the attorney general. High-stakes online testing concentrates both cheating risk and wrongful-flag risk.
CNN, August 2 →
Image: Nano Banana 2
CS enrollment falls — and AI courses overflow with everyone else
AP finds entry-level software hiring cooling and computer science enrollment declining, while demand for AI instruction from non-tech majors surges. Northwestern doubled its CS teaching staff, is adding an AI major, and is streamlining prerequisites for non-majors. Harvard's Paul LeBlanc calls the pace "remarkable for a sector infamous for moving slowly." If your department doesn't offer an accessible AI route, students will find one elsewhere.
AP, August 3 →Research
& practice
What the data says, and what colleagues are actually doing with it.
From the Research
77,000 students, zero surveys: the largest look at real AI-tutor use
What was studied: IU International University of Applied Sciences analyzed anonymized behavioral data — not self-reports — from ~77,000 online students using its AI learning companion Syntea, the largest empirical analysis of a dedicated AI learning assistant to date.
What they found: AI-supported learning is now part of everyday student life, and usage mirrors students' own schedules rather than replacing study time — a behavioral baseline self-report surveys have missed.
What you could do with this: If your institution runs an AI-tutor pilot, ask for actual usage logs rather than satisfaction surveys. The behavioral data is where adoption claims get tested.
IU News, July 31 →The AI value gap: big bets, thin returns
Across 75 higher-ed institutions surveyed, 71% name scaling AI their top priority for the year — but only 11% strongly agree AI has delivered measurable value so far. The gap between investment and demonstrated return is the number to bring to your next budget conversation.
Coastal Cloud, July 28 →How Others Are Doing It
A music professor co-teaches AI with a computer scientist
Who: Benjamin Guerrero, assistant professor of music at Eastern Mennonite University.
What he's doing: Co-teaching a course next year with a computer scientist so music students can use AI tools for tasks like editing and generating drum tracks. Guerrero, who has advised the National Association for Music Education on AI, frames it as "no more disruptive than the record player, the radio, the metronome, the synthesizer or the computer."
What you could borrow: Cross-disciplinary co-teaching is a low-cost way to bring AI into a non-technical major without building a curriculum from scratch.
AP, August 3 →Chicago Law's ban-then-teach sequencing
The law school's device ban for first-years is paired with a deliberate plan to teach effective AI use later in the program — a sequencing model that protects foundational reasoning first and introduces the tool once judgment exists to evaluate its output.
The Independent, July 28 →Quick hits
& radar
Worth knowing, no commentary needed — plus dates to watch.
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1A historic divinity school will offer the first doctorate in "AI and Moral Agency" Shaw University Divinity School · AP/RNS · Jul 29
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2Futuresource: 67% of teachers now use AI tools Concentrated in lesson planning & content creation · Jul 29
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3Only 11% of higher-ed leaders strongly agree AI has delivered measurable value Yet 71% prioritize scaling it · Coastal Cloud · Jul 28
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4The AI in Education Podcast rounds up new evidence on AI marking, tutoring and "never-skilling" Critical thinking predicts successful AI use · Jul 30 · Australia
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5Prospective students increasingly discover programs through AI answers, not search rankings Pew: 42% of U.S. adults search via AI chatbots · Jul 28