A.I. is rapidly undermining the credibility of online education, with professors scrambling to counter a surge in tech‑enabled cheating.

While physical classrooms have turned to oral presentations and handwritten exams, online courses—where more than half of American college students enrolled last year, up from about a third in 2019—make such measures harder to enforce.

Students in asynchronous, self‑paced classes often never meet instructors or peers. A.I. agents now let them outsource an entire semester: a simple command can trigger the agent to watch lectures, take quizzes, write papers, and even chat with classmates.

The rapid spread of these agents threatens the value of online degrees and forces universities to rethink assessment methods and expand integrity safeguards.