"Professor, It's Easier to Get an A"... Rise in Top Grades After ChatGPT Emergence

A study has found that the percentage of A grades has rapidly increased at U.S. universities following the emergence of generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies such as OpenAI's ChatGPT.

Reuters Yonhap News

According to The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) on the 13th (local time), Igor Chirikov, a senior researcher at the Center for Studies in Higher Education at UC Berkeley, analyzed in a recently published paper that the proportion of A grades in university courses with high potential for AI utilization has significantly risen since ChatGPT was released.

Researcher Chirikov examined more than 500,000 grade records from a large public university in Texas spanning from 2018 to 2025. He divided the courses into two main groups for comparison: those with a high proportion of writing and coding assignments, and those without. Assignments with high potential for AI use were mainly found in the humanities and engineering fields.

The results showed that, up to 2022, there was little difference between the two groups. However, after the introduction of ChatGPT, the proportion of A grades increased more significantly in courses where AI could be widely used. Professors in these courses awarded about 30% more A grades, while A- and B+ grades decreased. Notably, the more take-home assignments a course had, the higher the likelihood of students receiving an A grade.

Researcher Chirikov stated, "These results do not mean that students in these courses are learning more, but rather that students have increasingly relied on generative AI to boost their academic performance." He added, "While AI can help people become more productive and create more, I believe it can also be detrimental to learning."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.