Just going by the last 2 years of university teaching (energy focused computer science in germany), I feel like LLMs have already had a devastating effect. There has been a large influx of students who seemingly got through their entire Bachelors degree with nothing but ChatGPT. The university is slow to adapt and ill equipped to deal with this.
This is absolutely killing my enjoyment of teaching. There is nothing more disheartening than carefully preparing materials for people to grasp concepts I find extremely interesting, just for them to hand in ChatGPT generated slop and not understanding anything at all. In stark contrast, just a couple of years prior I would have quite rewarding projects and discussions with students.
I also refuse to give detailed feedback on such "solutions" anymore because the asymmetry in student effort and my effort is just completely unreasonable.
This development is something very different from the often quipped "graphing calculator in maths education". For a graphing calculator you still need to know the mathematical foundations to input the correct things to get the correct results. LLMs are mostly used by just pasting in the exercise of the day.
This is not to say LLMs can't be a useful tool for learning. They absolutely can. But that is not how the majority of students uses them... to their own detriment and the detriment of those trying to teach them.
If universities don't adapt to this quickly, then the already weak signal of "university degree implies some amount of competence" will be entirely lost.
This is absolutely killing my enjoyment of teaching. There is nothing more disheartening than carefully preparing materials for people to grasp concepts I find extremely interesting, just for them to hand in ChatGPT generated slop and not understanding anything at all. In stark contrast, just a couple of years prior I would have quite rewarding projects and discussions with students. I also refuse to give detailed feedback on such "solutions" anymore because the asymmetry in student effort and my effort is just completely unreasonable.
This development is something very different from the often quipped "graphing calculator in maths education". For a graphing calculator you still need to know the mathematical foundations to input the correct things to get the correct results. LLMs are mostly used by just pasting in the exercise of the day.
This is not to say LLMs can't be a useful tool for learning. They absolutely can. But that is not how the majority of students uses them... to their own detriment and the detriment of those trying to teach them.
If universities don't adapt to this quickly, then the already weak signal of "university degree implies some amount of competence" will be entirely lost.