When Getting a Degree Becomes a Shortcut (Part 1)

Inside the Classroom

Introduction

Education is built on effort — the unseen labour of teachers, the restless work of students, and the belief that knowledge should transform lives. Yet what happens when this shared journey is broken by shortcuts? This reflection begins with the classroom, where the promise of learning is too often set aside.

The Work Behind Teaching

It never ceases to amaze me how much effort educators pour into the design and delivery of programmes at university. We spend countless hours building case studies, structuring assessments, moderating tasks, checking rubrics, and ensuring that each piece of learning has a real-world connection. We do this because we believe education should be transformative — a place where knowledge, skill, and character come together.

Yet, as I sat with some assignments the other day, I felt the sharp sting of disappointment. Despite every effort to make the process fair, clear, and even supportive, many students had chosen the easy way out.

• Not the path of learning.

• Not the path of effort.

• But the path of shortcuts.

  
  

What Student Work Reveals

The work submitted is often disheartening. With only a few exceptions, much of it is written in a style that does not sound like the student’s own. The voice feels detached from the person I know in class. The very things we worked through together, how to apply theory, how to reference correctly, how to build an argument, were brushed aside and replaced with paragraphs that ignore every instruction in the brief.

Some assignments bear the unmistakable signs of third-party involvement. References cannot be traced, citations are lifted from non-academic websites, and theory is dropped in without understanding. The work feels hollow, borrowed, echoing someone else’s hand. Others show the output of AI used in the most unethical way: entire essays generated word for word, complete with references and in-text citations that, upon checking, are incorrect or fabricated. What is most disappointing is that these students had been given permission to use AI as a tool for support, to brainstorm, to polish their writing, to deepen their critical thinking. Instead, they misused it as a substitute for thinking altogether.

We design our classrooms to be safe and supportive spaces. We invest in facilitating learning rather than dictating it. We assume that if we create the right conditions, students will rise to the challenge. Yet time and again, many do not.

It leaves me wondering. Do they really believe we will not notice? That we, who spend our days immersed in these subjects, will not catch the fabricated citations, the mismatched referencing styles, the words that ring hollow because they carry no student voice? In my classroom, at least, those shortcuts do not pass unnoticed.

The Hollowing Out of Learning

This is not simply about dishonesty or breaches of academic integrity; it is about the hollowing out of education itself. It reflects a deeper misunderstanding of what education truly means. For what is a master’s degree, if not the mark of a journey? It is not meant to be spoon-fed, nor handed over to a stranger, nor generated in seconds. It is meant to be transformative, earned through sweat, through restless nights of wrestling with ideas until they take shape in your own words. A degree should stand as a symbol of that struggle, not as a hollow piece of paper purchased with quick fixes.

As educators, we do not spend hours facilitating discussion, offering flexibility, or creating space for students to use their own voices simply for them to bypass the process. We do this because we believe in learning as transformation, in the long, messy, necessary struggle of thought. Yet too often, the effort of educators collides with the evasions of students who have decided that passing matters more than learning. When the journey is outsourced to AI, to contract writers, or to anyone other than themselves, students rob themselves of the very transformation they came seeking.

The struggle I describe here is not mine alone. It echoes in classrooms from the UK to Australia and beyond. In Part 2, I will explore how this has become a global trade in shortcuts, and what we risk losing if we allow it to continue.