LEILA FADEL, HOST:
In Mexico, one of Latin America's most prestigious universities is dealing with a massive cheating scandal. The National Autonomous University of Mexico uses an exam to determine who gets in. This year, for the first time ever, the exam was taken online and at home, and an analysis suggests many cheated. Here's NPR's Eyder Peralta.
EYDER PERALTA, BYLINE: As university administrators meet inside, protesters gather outside at the university's quad.
(SOUNDBITE OF PROTEST)
UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTERS: (Chanting in Spanish).
PERALTA: "We demand honesty, not artificial intelligence," they shout. Leonardo Ruiz (ph), 18, says his exam results were invalidated. Ruiz was studying for the applied mathematics exam.
LEONARDO RUIZ: (Speaking Spanish).
PERALTA: "I always had an excellent GPA, and I'm proud of what I've done." He assumes his exam was flagged for cheating because he scored too well, but he says he did it by studying. He says he did see ads on TikTok where they were selling answers to the exam.
RUIZ: (Speaking Spanish).
PERALTA: "But the truth is, I didn't dare order them."
RUIZ: (Speaking Spanish).
PERALTA: "Honestly, I was scared that they'd invalidate my test. But in the end, I ended up in the same place." As we talk, the crowd grows.
(SOUNDBITE OF PROTEST)
UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTERS: (Chanting in Spanish).
PERALTA: "An in-person test, they demand, an in-person retake." This whole scandal started when students and professors began analyzing results of the exams. Test by test, students and professors began noticing the bell curve was suddenly bulging unnaturally to the right, to the side of more right answers.
RAUL ROJAS: They have, like, 30% or 40% more correct results than in previous years.
PERALTA: Raul Rojas, who teaches AI at the Free University of Berlin and statistics at the University of Nevada, Reno, says when he looked at all the test scores, he didn't find the kind of deviation you can chalk up to an easier test or perhaps a smarter class. The only explanation, he says, is cheating.
ROJAS: My conclusion is that almost half of the students were cheating when taking the exam online.
PERALTA: He calculates about 75,000 students cheated. Unprecedented, he says. To Rojas, the university, which Mexicans call UNAM, was naive. They thought they could move this test online without a pilot program, and without taking into account how widespread cheating has become across the globe after the pandemic and with the advent of AI.
ROJAS: And it was very easy to cheat the system.
PERALTA: The tests were open for 17 days, giving ample chance for friends or internet entrepreneurs to leak or sell test questions. Blind spots in technology also allowed students to have someone else take their test. The university has suspended all new enrollment, and they have formed an investigative committee saying all options, including a mass retest, are on the table.
(SOUNDBITE OF PROTEST)
UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTERS: (Chanting in Spanish).
PERALTA: Back on campus, another group of protesters show up to complain the mass cheating also skewed the curve.
SAMANTHA SOLORZANO ALANIS: (Speaking Spanish).
PERALTA: Samantha Solorzano Alanis (ph) says any other year she would have gotten in. This year, she missed it by 5 points. The cheating, she says, was an open secret.
ALANIS: (Speaking Spanish).
PERALTA: "I gave it my all, and I don't feel bad," she says, "because I believe I made the grade." She hopes the university retests everyone, this time in person.
Eyder Peralta, NPR News, Mexico City. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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