Reclaiming Pen and Paper

With another finals season in the books, prohibited AI assistance continues to be a problem at universities. It may not come as a surprise that students attempt to cheat using AI. What may surprise some is the ease of access to complex cheating tools that the AI era has given to students. When presented with the harsh reality of a technological arms race between individual tech-savvy students and the bloated college bureaucracy, the need for a return to more traditional testing methods becomes apparent.

Most universities use Learning Management Systems (LMSs) like Canvas and Blackboard to administer and collect assignments and exams. During the academic year, students with social media are bombarded with advertisements for software that integrates AI to help them cheat not only on essays but also on examinations. These advertisements promise students the ability to cheat without detection.

Software companies like Respondus claim to offer services that counteract such attempts to cheat, but do they? Functions like lockdown browsers and screen recording are designed to prevent AI-enabled cheating. Faculty and school administrators, however, must manually enable these lockdown functions and review footage. Even for test administrators who have enough follow-through and know-how to utilize these tools, little stops students from simply using a second device to evade detection.

One harsh reality of the AI world is that academic integrity policies are nearly impossible to enforce in a virtual environment. And even if they were, the pace of technological development can only lead to an arms race that university systems are already losing.

At first, the scope of the problem might seem relatively narrow. There have always been and will be some students who attempt to cheat. But a brand new study casts the problem in a new light. In one survey of more than 95,000 students at major universities, about 9 percent admitted to cheating with AI, without the propensity to underreport bad behavior factored in. This comes at a time when a college education is already losing significant value due to AI. Employers have no assurance that the degrees they used to value weren’t obtained with the same free tools that are replacing entry-level white-collar jobs. 

The only way to prevent devalued degrees, frustrated students, and illegitimate institutions is a return to an old form of testing. 

The bluebook places students, honest or dishonest, technologically savvy or inept, on an even playing field. Manually proctored bluebook exams would make academic integrity policies enforceable, which would restore some of the credibility these institutions have lost. Given the scale of the problem, bluebooks could also play a role in reducing runaway grade inflation, adding even more value to students’ degrees.

By turning to analog testing, universities can show employers that their degrees represent value beyond the mindless generation of mediocre content. Some flagship universities, notably Florida and Texas A&M, have already caught on with bluebook usage soaring in recent years. 

In many cases, the move has been received well by professors and students alike. Dr. Katie Day Good, a communications professor at Calvin University, described her experience reverting to pen and paper enthusiastically: “I expected student pushback, but none came. During finals, my students wrote by hand for three hours, in class. After several demoralizing semesters of encountering AI writing in student work, the authenticity and richness of these students’ hand-penned prose nearly moved me to tears.”

If collegiate bureaucracies want to look out for their students’ long-term best interests, they should make a push for a complete return to handwritten bluebooks.

Harrison Hutton is a student at Patrick Henry College studying classical liberal arts. He served as an intern at the John Locke Foundation in the summer of 2025.