What’s the point of college if no one’s actually doing the work? It’s not a rhetorical question. In the age of AI, it’s incredibly easy for students to offload their assignments. AI tools can write essays, make study guides, and even complete whole assignments.
So what is the point of higher education?
In today’s episode, Sean speaks with journalist James Walsh about his recent article, “Everyone is Cheating Their Way Through College.” The two discuss how students are using AI to finish their assignments, how colleges are (and aren’t) responding to these challenges, and whether you can learn to think when something else does the thinking for you.
Host: Sean Illing (@SeanIlling)
Guest: James Walsh, features writer for New York magazine’s Intelligencer.
Read James’s article: “Everyone is Cheating Their Way Through College.”
Listen to The Gray Area ad-free by becoming a Vox Member: vox.com/members
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What would Keynes do?
The novel coronavirus — and America’s disastrously inept response — has shuttered the economy, leaving factories quiet, businesses closed, workers unable to do their jobs. Pulling out of this hole will require an economic effort…
A devastating indictment of the Republican Party
For 30 years, Stuart Stevens was one of the most influential operatives in Republican politics. He was Mitt Romney’s top strategist in 2012, served in key roles on both of George W. Bush’s presidential campaigns,…
How inequality and white identity politics feed each other
Conservative parties operating in modern democracies face a dilemma: How does a party that represents the interests of moneyed elites win mass support? The dilemma sharpens as inequality widens — the more the haves have,…
Best of: Jia Tolentino on what happens when life is an endless performance
The introduction to Jia Tolentino’s Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion, hit me hard. In her investigation of how American politics and culture had collapsed into “an unbearable supernova of perpetually escalating conflict,” she became obsessed…
Dadding out with Mike Birbiglia
Mike Birbiglia is one of my favorite comedians. He’s behind the specials. “Thank God for Jokes” and “My Girlfriend’s Boyfriend,” the movies “Sleepwalk With Me” and “Don’t Think Twice,” and now the book The New…
A rabbi explains how to make sense of suffering
In this special crossover episode of Vox’s Future Perfect series, The Way Through, Co-host Sean Illing talks to David Wolpe, senior rabbi at Sinai Temple in Los Angeles, about God and how to make sense…
The crisis in the news
There’s been a lot of discussion lately — including on this show — of the problems facing national news. Cries of fake news, illiberalism in the administration, fractured audiences, the cancel culture debate, shaky business…
Bryan Stevenson on how America can heal
What would it take for America to heal? To be the country it claims to be? This is the question that animates Bryan Stevenson’s career. Stevenson is the founder and executive director of the Equal…
What a post-Trump Republican Party might look like
Five years ago, Oren Cass sat at the center of the Republican Party. Cass is a former management consultant who served as the domestic policy director for the Mitt Romney campaign and then as a…
Free speech, safety, and ‘the letter’
Last week, Harper’s published an open letter arguing that “the free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted.” The letter had a long list of signatories,…