# Grades dropped from 96 to 48 percent when a Brown professor made students take the exam without AI

> Source: <https://the-decoder.com/grades-dropped-from-96-to-48-percent-when-a-brown-professor-made-students-take-the-exam-without-ai/>
> Published: 2026-07-12 08:25:25+00:00

An economics professor at Brown University suspects most of his 86 students used AI to cheat on a take-home exam that averaged 96 percent. When he made the final an in-person test, 18 students dropped the course, nine didn't show up, and the average fell to 48.6 percent. Two large studies from China and UC Berkeley back up his case: where students lean on AI for homework, their proctored exam scores tank.

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