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Education Businesses

How ChatGPT Brought Down an Online Education Giant (msn.com) 60

Most companies are starting to figure out how AI will change the way they do business. Chegg is trying to avoid becoming its first major victim. WSJ: The online education company was for many years the go-to source for students who wanted help with their homework, or a potential tool for plagiarism. The shift to virtual learning during the pandemic sent subscriptions and its stock price to record highs.

Then came ChatGPT. Suddenly students had a free alternative to the answers Chegg spent years developing with thousands of contractors in India. Instead of "Chegging" the solution, they began canceling their subscriptions and plugging questions into chatbots. Since ChatGPT's launch, Chegg has lost more than half a million subscribers who pay up to $19.95 a month for prewritten answers to textbook questions and on-demand help from experts. Its stock is down 99% from early 2021, erasing some $14.5 billion of market value. Bond traders have doubts the company will continue bringing in enough cash to pay its debts.

How ChatGPT Brought Down an Online Education Giant

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  • by silentbozo ( 542534 ) on Monday November 11, 2024 @10:33AM (#64936835) Journal

    "Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign conducted a study in the spring last year to see how ChatGPT had influenced cheating in an introductory programming course. They found students had overwhelmingly moved to ChatGPT from what the researchers called âoeplagiarism hubsâ such as Chegg.

    âoeIt appeared that they completely shifted over from trying to find online solutions and copying them to just going to ChatGPT and having it generate solutions for them,â said Craig Zilles, professor of computer science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign."

    TL;DR - people who just want to memorize shit to pass or crib answers for homework found a cheaper, easier mechanism to let them slide by. Yay?

    • by hdyoung ( 5182939 ) on Monday November 11, 2024 @10:41AM (#64936861)
      Chegg’s business model is probably permanently dead.

      But, the idea of homework needs to change as well. This whole assign-homework-and demand-students-get-no-help-or-it’s-cheating model of education is simply outdated. If you want to assess individual student performance, you give a quiz or an exam, in class, no Internet devices allowed. Even most projects can be gamed nowadays. The purpose of assigned work outside the class is to prepare them for the exams. Period.
      • by Press2ToContinue ( 2424598 ) on Monday November 11, 2024 @11:07AM (#64936935)
        We're moving away from a static learning model and toward a "How quick can you find it, comprehend it, and apply it?" model. Those who will be most successful in life will formulate the most insightful questions, deeply comprehend the answer, and apply it quickly in a productive way. They will not be the ones with a static skillset.
        • It's still essential to carry a hefty load of general knowledge, even though you can just look it up. "common sense" is made of general knowledge plus wisdom and willingness to apply it. You need all three. You also need to be able to rapidly iterate problems. If you have to look up each detail of what you're doing you'll be spending 90% of your time acquiring new information and, out of habit, not trying to remember it for the next time. You'll work slowly, inefficiently and poorly whether that work involv
          • What makes you think that this type of "student" spends even one second trying to decide how to vote? They find out what party the rest of their herd follows, vote the way that party tells them to and never thinks of thinking for themselves at all. And if you don't know what I'm paraphrasing, your soul is probably fettered to an office stool.
        • "How quick can you find it, comprehend it, and apply it?" model.

          I've been operating in that mode since at least 1978, maybe even before but I wasn't conscious of it. By '78 the library at school or town was one of my haunts. Ditto bookstores. I was what.. 9? 8?

          Computers made it faster, and interconnected computers made it cake.

          Now, flip it over -- that speed and ease of central editing / manipulation also have created a disinformation monster. I find myself gravitating back to physical media because of it.

          My piano teacher has observed the kids these days learn from

        • It will be interesting to see what the company is valued at. It has questions and answers to thousands (tens of thousands?) of questions with human checked answers.

          That's a human refined and annotated AI data training set and should have some residual value.

        • We're moving away from a static learning model and toward a "How quick can you find it, comprehend it, and apply it?" model.

          Noit really. That was and still is the model that we all use. School is intended to give you a broad base of knowledge across a diverse range of subjects, university is supposed to let you go into depth in one area and then you are equipped to find, comprehend and read material over the rest of your life. That was always the model we had all that has changed is that now it si much, much easier to look things up so we do it more and educate ourselves after school or university more.

      • It's not as simple as that. You can't assess e.g. software architecture skills in a 2h exam. Not everything can be distilled to exam-style questions. Assessment definitely need to change, but offline quiz/exam is definitely not the answer
        • Fine, then assign them a huge CS project to do on their own time. But, here’s the kicker. The quality of the project they turn in is NOT the assessment. Because that’s absolutely game-able. You grade them based on the 10-minute presentation they give. Actually, no, the grade is determined by the 10-minute q/a session that happens AFTER the presentation. If they can’t answer questions about the beautiful work they just presented as their own, they still fail.

          And, at the end of the day,
          • That's a bit what I actually do already :) The oral part/demonstration counts a lot more than they realize. It's SUPER easy to identify who used ChatGPT lazily and who didn't.
      • I am a high school math teacher. I give one homework every schoolyear. But the projects... big issue for language teachers. GPT is good at writing assignments and it is only a matter of time before students figure out that they have to ask GPT to add a few spelling mistakes to avoid detection.
        I think the assignments are still a good thing though. Sure some will cheat, but some will not and develop themselves further. If you let AI do all the thinking, you'll end up in a zoo.
        • Sure some will cheat, but some will not and develop themselves further.

          I think that's a big problem when considering the teenager point of view. For the hard-working students, it can be infuriating to see known cheaters get better grades. Why should I be honest if others are not and get rewarded by the system? When this sort of thought process happens, we get really bad results as young adults.
          (I don't have a solution.)

      • This whole assign-homework-and demand-students-get-no-help-or-it’s-cheating model of education is simply outdated.

        Most of my university instructors considered it outdated 40 years ago. Typically they said something along the lines of "that's not how you'll be working after you leave here, whether you're in academia or not - you'll always be collaborating most of the time".

      • This whole assign-homework-and demand-students-get-no-help-or-it’s-cheating model of education is simply outdated.

        What do you mean demand students get no help? The whole point of homework is literally to cover things they have in their textbook. It's an exercise in research and learning, and the first thing that happens with homework after students get to class is they have the opportunity to discuss it with the teacher.

        No one is assessing student performance on homework beyond the ability to follow the instruction to do homework. You get docked for not doing it, not for getting something wrong.

    • by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

      This is a condemnation of degree factory model of education more so than students doing what they need to get their degree or chatgpt. Original university concept was about getting an actual education. It offered courses, you went in and studied for as long as you wanted, until you figured out that you had what you needed from it, and then you went back to the normal world to apply and develop what you learned.

      Today, university is basically an ass check. It makes sure your ass can handle sitting in those un

      • by dfghjk ( 711126 )

        One person's "ass check" its another's "getting an actual education", and that's been true longer than you've been alive.

        "Because if things being taught can be answered by chatGPT, no one is going to be paying you to do those things."

        But the purpose of an education is not for you to get paid "doing those things", which you'd know if you had received an education.

        "They can hire a high school graduate who has taken maybe a course or two in English so you know he or she can read and formulate proper sentences.

        • by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

          It's sad to me how many people understand the point, but can't break their indoctrination on these sorts of topics. For example, you clearly understand the issue:

          >>"...following by short stint familiarizing he or she with the task."

          >So...an education?

          Yes. That is what education is supposed to be. Direct, narrow and on point. The exact opposite of university system, which is indirect, wide, and utterly unfocused.

          You clearly understand what is being said, and are in agreement with it from this part.

        • If nothing else, Slashdot has shown me that Henry Higgins was right: "Use proper English, you're regarded as a freak!" There are so many posts here by people writing on topics that you can only learn about after you graduate from high school, and getting their facts right but using poor grammar, worse syntax and habitually picking the wrong homonym. Yes, I'm sure that not all of them grew up speaking English, but it's become clear to me that those who did just don't care if they use their native language
      • by SirSlud ( 67381 )

        Ah Luckyo. Always reliable for for stupid shit.

        • by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

          Thank you. I do enjoy casting pearls before the swine, because sometimes you can in fact find a human among the hogs.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by timeOday ( 582209 )
      If you do want to learn something, discussing it with ChatGPT is a great way to learn. I read classics (not for grades), and if you get a little lost in all the plot turns and characters, discussing it with ChatGPT is great. And if a question pops into your head about the historical context of the book, or the author's life, you can ask questions about those topics and then go back to discussing the book.
  • Education? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Happy Monkey ( 183927 ) on Monday November 11, 2024 @10:37AM (#64936845) Homepage
    Not familiar with Chegg, but as described in the article, it doesn't sound like an education company, but a "do your homework for you" company.
    • Re:Education? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by OrangeTide ( 124937 ) on Monday November 11, 2024 @10:46AM (#64936879) Homepage Journal

      I know them well. They dominated the text book rental market. For a while there it seemed like every student in the US was paying these guys money every semester. Right up until publishers got their act together and started offering digital subscriptions. That move undercut one project from a founder of Chegg for an ebook reader [wikipedia.org].

      • by dfghjk ( 711126 )

        Funny, the greed of the "publishers" is why the text book rental market came into existence. You seem confused as to who the villain is in the story.

        • Capitalism run amok is the villain of this story.

          We loan students money to get through college, then forgive those loans. So in a way, taxpayers are paying universities and businesses for these sorts of unnecessary services. Education is a serious business. And at the end of the day, it's people with $50K-150K of student loan dept that support this unnecessary industry.

          Before buying and loaning textbooks was a thing, people used to borrow books from a library. And universities kept their own textbooks or ch

          • Re:Education? (Score:5, Interesting)

            by silentbozo ( 542534 ) on Monday November 11, 2024 @12:11PM (#64937161) Journal

            It would be great if educators could just fork a standard open source github version of a textbook for their course, and if you wanted a dead tree copy, you could then get it printed out.

            What I find interesting is the resale of cheaper versions of textbooks (still official as far as I know, but paperback instead of hardback, on thinner paper) from places like India, into the US. If you look on Amazon for something like Russell and Norvig's Artificial Intelligence (4th ed), you'll see the "International Economy Edition" for $30. These editions aren't supposed to be exported outside the regions they're targeting, but apparently arbitrage and Amazon go hand in hand...

            • I know a lot of students that do just that. They order inexpensive text books from over seas that are essentially the same as the US version.

              The gizmo I worked on was supposed to be a value add over simply pirating text books. You paid a subscription and got access to all the books you needed. And your notes and highlights are saved "in the cloud". You could either hand write (wacom style pen) or type on the device (external or virtual keyboard). Theoretically we were going to sell the anonymous info on wha

          • The student loan program is anything but capitalism.

    • Your statement is correct. There was RAMPANT cheating using Chegg, as of four years ago. Instead of working for four or five hours on a demanding homework assignment, students were whipping them out in 30 minutes using Chegg. Take-home tests? Chegg! No comprehension whatsoever needed.

      If ChatGPT makes them fuck off and die, I will not be sad about their demise. I will be sad if ChatGPT prevents students from learning how things work.
    • Chegg was a cheat site - or at least that is how it was used in my experience. We had numerous cases of students cheating using them and the fact that many of the textbook sites actually advertised Chegg was a strong motivation for me to abandon publisher textbooks whenever and wherever I can. Worse, they were rubbish as a cheat site with about 50% of the first year physics questions people posted getting wrong answers so students using them got wrong answers which also made it easy to tell who was copying
      • by Slayer ( 6656 )

        Educational software - and apparently we can count cheat software into this category - always was the by far lowest quality ecosystem out there, even lower than software for medical doctors or kid's games. It does not surprise me one bit, that their answers to questions about physics were bogus.

        As long as I have school kids at home who are somewhat dependent on educational software, I celebrate each and every time one of these companies tanks for good.

  • by Chris Mattern ( 191822 ) on Monday November 11, 2024 @11:09AM (#64936939)

    That's a funny way to refer to a essay mill.

  • not sorry (Score:4, Interesting)

    by toxonix ( 1793960 ) on Monday November 11, 2024 @11:15AM (#64936957)

    Cheaters found a cheaper way (for now) to cheat. The buying spree Chegg went on in the 2010's vacuumed up a lot of competitors and either absorbed them or made them disappear. I'm sure the MBA who led all the acquisitions in the 2010's will find a nice cushion to land on. The employees, not so much.

  • by the quintessential tool to bullshit your way to any result with zero effort. What a surprise...

  • As a millennial I had part of my education done the old fashioned way, then Google and Wikipedia came a long. Now even that is becoming obsolete. Your old encyclopedia set laughs as you too are replaced. The student debt crisis came out of the fact that human brains are no longer valued by the capitalist class.
    • by Tony Isaac ( 1301187 ) on Monday November 11, 2024 @12:34PM (#64937229) Homepage

      Education was obsolete long before that. The education system is always at least 20 years behind the curve, if not more. My computer science degree in 1988 focused on hardware and software that was 20+ years old.

      One thing education did do well, was the basics. Reading, writing, and arithmetic. Once you get past those, it's almost impossible for the system to keep up. I don't know if today's education system even does the basics well.

      • Research, critical thinking, communications, and debate, along with basic accounting and economics, would be on my wish list of nice to haves for K-12. Also, bring back the vocational classes - wood shop and auto shop, drafting, etc. I would love to see CAD being taught in conjunction with the use of additive and subtractive manufacturing.

        My impression is that K-12 lags badly in terms of teaching the basics you listed of reading, writing, and arithmetic - and given these are foundational skills, it is not

        • To clarify, I meant the only "required" school-measurement standardized test at the K-12 level should be that graduation test.

          The APs/IBs are a different matter, as you choose to take those for college credit (and in California, depending on where you are, you can just enroll in community college as a K-12 student, with a dual enrollment form:

          example:

          https://catalog.mccd.edu/getti... [mccd.edu]

          "How to enroll as a K-12/Dual Enrollment Student
          Students in K-12 (Kindergarten through 12 grade in High School) must complete

      • by gweihir ( 88907 )

        One thing education did do well, was the basics. Reading, writing, and arithmetic. Once you get past those, it's almost impossible for the system to keep up.

        I disagree. Most things I learned in my CS studies are still relevant today.

        • Sure, the things they teach are relevant, but the subset is so small that it's difficult for fresh college grads to be productive in a software development job for some time.

          In your CS courses, did you learn and practice
          - Good SDLC practices
          - Branching strategies
          - Integration and deployment strategies
          - Unit testing best practices
          - SOLID principles
          - Microservice architecture vs. monoliths
          - Web development frameworks
          - State management
          - Design patterns
          - Agile vs. waterfall
          - Relational vs. star schemas vs. NoSQ

          • by gweihir ( 88907 )

            It did study CS, not Software Engineering.

            • Oh pardon me. I wasn't aware that there was a special "software engineering" degree. I certainly haven't run into any software developer candidates who had a "software engineering" degree.

              • by gweihir ( 88907 )

                You must be pretty uninformed then. See, for example, here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

                Note that both Mathematics and CS are part of the example curriculum, but a Software Engineering graduate is neither a Mathematician nor a Computer Scientist. Also note that the example is from 2010.

                • Maybe I am uninformed. But I do see a LOT of resumes, and not very many "software engineering" degrees.

                  • by gweihir ( 88907 )

                    Maybe I am uninformed. But I do see a LOT of resumes, and not very many "software engineering" degrees.

                    I am not disputing that. And there are CS courses that are essentially Software Engineering. I just did not take one of those and your list would be a major part of what a Software Engineering (whether named that or not) course would teach.

      • by labnet ( 457441 )

        My son has just completed year1 of a CS degree. They are learning things like binary logic, ALUs, programming a uC to drive a logic game on an external RGB dot matrix. This is the equivalent of reading and writing for CS.
        Sure chat GPT could have written the software and done the logic equations but at least he now knows why not just how.

      • ... impossible for the system to keep up.

        The point of education was to give children a body of knowledge, so they could assume adult responsibilities: As most societies became more industrialized and feminized, the required knowledge, changed. Another change, was so much ordinary knowledge became "dangerous". Large swathes of the truth have been deleted from education (and society) because it would incite 'wrong-think' or violence. Such as nudity and sex, or basic chemistry.

        Originally, educated people were leaders, and thus were expected to

  • Academic integrity has always been a challenge, and LLMs are just the latest threat vector that academic institutions have to contend with. Back in the day, students who prioritized grades over learning had essay mills to fall back on, where they could order pre-written papers and homework answers by mail. LLMs, however, offer a far more streamlined path to the same outcome—an AI-powered tool at their fingertips to do the thinking (and writing) for them.

    Ironically, companies like Chegg, once a corners

  • 1. Chegg and its ilk
    2. Asking people for answers on Quora or wherever
    3. Asking AI chatbots

  • by TJHook3r ( 4699685 ) on Monday November 11, 2024 @03:27PM (#64937767)
    I'm struggling to comprehend which part of paying Indians money to do your homework for you is actually education?
  • parts of college need to be more trade school like

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