Princeton University ends 133-year-old tradition as AI cheating forces return of exam proctors

Students Cheating With AI Caused This Ivy League School to Overturn a 133-Year-Old Tradition

AI on smartphones makes it hard for students to catch each other cheating, and social media makes them less likely to report it. Students at Princeton University are about to experience something they haven't since the late 1800s: having someone watch them take their exams. The change stems from concerns about the proliferation of AI-related cheating among college students. The change goes into effect on July 1. Exams taken after that date will be proctored, the formal term for being supervised to ensure academic integrity while testing. Proctoring can come in many forms, including cameras, microphones and screen-sharing software. Princeton's solution is to use human instructors to witness the students taking exams and then report infractions to the student-run honor committee for punishment. The switch to proctoring was requested by both faculty and students. According to Princeton, students were concerned that cheating with generative AI is too easy since it can take place on personal devices like smartphones, making it harder to detect and to report, per the school's honor system. The Ivy League school also notes that reports are less frequent and often anonymous due to the potential threats of retaliation via social media in the form of doxxing or other bullying behavior. "This has made it difficult for the Honor Committee and the Office of the Dean of the Undergraduate Students (ODUS) to follow up on concerns, even when there is significant buzz or outrage about supposedly egregious violations," said Michael Gordin, dean of the college at Princeton, in the policy proposal that outlined the new changes. "If students alone are present in the examination room and students are unwilling to report, then there is no check against misconduct during assessments." A survey conducted among Princeton students in 2025 showed that approximately 30% of students admitted to cheating. The survey noted that there were "no significant increases in instances where individuals were called before the Honor Committee," despite the rise of cheating. Princeton's administration, including the Committee of Examinations & Standing, unanimously voted in April to institute proctoring. It's the biggest change to the university's honor system since it was introduced in 1893, when it was passed specifically to end proctoring at the school. Students are still expected to adhere to the honor code and will be asked to attest that they did not violate it during exams. Princeton is one of several schools making big changes because of students using AI. In 2024, Duke University ceased giving numerical ratings to student essays as part of the admissions process. Christoph Guttentag, Duke's dean of undergraduate admissions, noted that essays were once a way of better understanding applicants, but with the rise of AI, the university could no longer assume that essays are accurate reflections of candidates. The university still numerically scores other categories like curriculum strength, extracurriculars, and test scores. Princeton's return to proctoring is also in line with what researchers are seeing across higher education. "Our research shows that students are already navigating significant undercertainty about when and how AI use is acceptable, and that uncertainty is generating real tensions around academic integrity," said Jennifer Rubin, senior researcher at the Foundry10 education research organization. "Princeton's decision reflects a broader pattern we're seeing across education: institutions turning to increased oversight when existing norms feel inadequate." Rubin notes that proctors may relieve "some of the immediate pressure" when it comes to cheating with AI, but more will have to be done to properly navigate AI and its nearly ubiquitous availability. This is already happening in academia. Many schools have implemented tools like AI detection and have strict rules on AI use. It's common for schools to allow students limited AI use for things like cleaning up grammar and spelling in essays and for brainstorming, while making it clear that having AI write essays or create other work constitutes plagiarism. AI policies in schools have reached into the lower grades, with nearly half of all teachers in grades six through 12 saying they use AI detection tools regularly.

AI helped to kill Princeton's code of honor.

As originally reported by The Daily Princetonian and The Atlantic, Princeton University just decided to end a 133-year tradition of professors leaving the room when students are taking exams. The dean of the faculty claimed in the proposal to amend the rules that both students and professors had "the perception that cheating on in-class exams has become widespread", thanks in part to "the advent of generative artificial intelligence products." At least AI has reinvigorated one job: student chaperone.

Death of an Honor Code

Princeton's famous 133-year-old tradition was no match for AI-enabled cheating. In 1876, an editorial in Princeton's newly founded campus newspaper, The Princetonian, argued against the use of proctors to monitor exams. Proctoring was "a means of bad moral education," the author wrote. Treat students as presumptively dishonest, and some would become so; treat them as honorable, and they would learn to behave honorably. And so the editorial board suggested a different approach: "Let every man write at the end of his paper a pledge that he has neither given nor received help, and let professors and tutors address themselves to some better business than watching for fraud." That proposal was eventually embodied in Princeton's famous Honor Code, adopted in 1893 and modified only lightly in the ensuing 133 years. When students take their final exams, professors leave the room. Students write down a pledge not to cheat. They are expected to report anyone who does. Any student accused of impropriety comes before a jury of their peers. The Honor Code had a good run. F. Scott Fitzgerald (who enrolled at Princeton in 1913 but did not graduate) once wrote that violating it "simply doesn't occur to you, any more than it would occur to you to rifle your roommate's pocketbook." The code lasted through two world wars, the upheaval of the 1960s, the disillusionment of Watergate, and even the rise of search engines and SparkNotes. It finally met its match in generative AI. Yesterday, after the rise of AI-facilitated cheating became too obvious to ignore, Princeton's faculty voted to begin proctoring exams again. Technically, the Honor Code is still in place. Students will still sign a pledge that they didn't cheat. But now professors will be watching to make sure they're telling the truth. The Honor Code can't run on the honor system anymore. Rose Horowitch: What an Ivy League education really gets you Even at Princeton, obviously, some students have always cheated. Fitzgerald himself was scandalized when, during a campus visit a decade after his time at the university, a member of the football team told him that his roommate knew of unreported Honor Code violations. (Shortly thereafter, a fellow alumnus shared the same suspicion with the famous novelist.) "The implication was that these were many," Fitzgerald wrote to the dean. Back then, however, academic dishonesty was constrained not only by codes of conduct but by the amount of effort it required. A student who wanted to cheat had to go to the trouble of finding someone who would let them copy their answers. The internet and the shift to doing work on computers rather than by hand dramatically lowered the barriers to cheating. A study of thousands of students at Rutgers University found that, in 2017, a majority copied their homework answers from the internet. AI has taken that dynamic to new extremes. It can mimic any writing style, produce a unique essay, and add in typos to make it appear human-authored. The available detectors are not foolproof. Studies have consistently found that teachers are worse than they think at detecting AI usage. "It's a temptation," Anthony Grafton, a longtime Princeton history professor who retired last year, told me. "I can imagine the student with the devil over his or her left shoulder and the angel over his or her right shoulder." Since generative AI became widely available, in fall 2022, Princeton has seen rising academic dishonesty. The Committee on Discipline, which has jurisdiction over take-home assignments, found 82 students responsible for academic violations in the 2024-25 academic year, compared with 50 students in 2021-22. Those are just the students who manage to get caught; the real numbers are undoubtedly much higher. In the school newspaper's survey of graduating seniors, which 501 students responded to, 30 percent said that they had cheated, 28 percent said that they had used ChatGPT on an assignment when it was not allowed, and 45 percent said that they knew of cheating by a peer and chose not to report it. Michael Laffan, a Princeton history professor, told me that he has sat in coffee shops near campus and watched as students copied responses from ChatGPT and passed them off as their own. The ease of AI-enabled cheating seems to be imparting a "bad moral education" of its own. Cheating has become more visible, Nadia Makuc, a senior at Princeton and former chair of the Honor Committee, told me. Students post about violating the Honor Code on Fizz, the campus's anonymous social-media app. That makes students who play by the rules feel like suckers. "There's an air of people cheating on take-homes and people just using ChatGPT," Makuc said. "As long as people think there is more cheating, it encourages more cheating." Ian Bogost: College students have already changed forever Princeton's professors are finally trying to reset the system. Proctors are just one component. In the past year, the number of take-home exams at Princeton has declined by more than two-thirds. Next year, the economics department will require its majors to do an oral defense of their research projects, Smita Brunnermeier, the director of undergraduate studies, told me. David Bell, a history professor, has also added in oral exams and switched from short take-home papers to in-class writing in blue books. One of his colleagues in the history department forces students to write their papers in Google Docs so that he can review the stages of their composition. In short, what the 1876 editorial called a "system of suspicion and surveillance" is making a comeback. "It does change something about the student-faculty relationship," William Aepli, a graduating senior and the former chair of the group that represents students accused of violating the Honor Code, told me. "It's one thing to have proctoring from the very beginning. It's another thing to have this tradition of self-proctoring exams and trust that students abide by the Honor Code, and then to take that away." Bell told me that AI has made him more wary of his students, and that they can tell. When he changes his assignments to keep them from cheating, they understand that he doesn't trust them. "Inevitably, all the solutions involve a greater degree of surveillance -- that's the one thing in common," he said. "Maybe we'll just have to get used to this new kind of police state of instruction. But I'm not eager to see where this leads." Much of higher education's value rests on the assumption that cheating is an exception, not the rule. A diploma is meaningless if employers and graduate programs can't trust that graduates learned something in college. Prospective students and their families must believe that their tuition dollars will purchase a good education. And taxpayers need to trust that public-school students are getting something from their four years of subsidized education. Rampant AI use breaks down these signals. "It is bad policy to suspect a man of being a rogue in order to be sure that he is a scholar," The Princetonian warned in 1876. Perhaps so. But the alternative is even worse.

Princeton in Shambles Over AI Cheating

Can't-miss innovations from the bleeding edge of science and tech For 133 years, Princeton University allowed students to take their exams without a proctor -- a unusual situation resulting from student demands for an "honor code." Now in 2026, that time-honored system is coming to an end, all thanks to a surge of cheating enabled by AI. First reported by the Wall Street Journal, the Ivy League university made the bombshell decision to scrap the honor system this week, after faculty voted to require in-person proctors starting over the summer. Per a letter penned by Princeton dean Michael Gordin, faculty arrived at the decision after "significant numbers" of both professors and students came forward, "given their perception that cheating on in-class exams has become widespread." Instead of an honor system, professors will now have to watch over student exams and report any deviations from the school's policy on scholarly integrity. Students will still keep some autonomy: violations will be reported to a student-run honor committee to decide any alleged policy breaker's fate, the WSJ reports. That news comes amidst a massive rise in cheating across the US, not just in fancy Ivy's, but in colleges, high-schools, and even bar exams. "If the exam is on a laptop, someone can just flip to another window," Princeton senior Nadia Makuc told the WSJ. "Or if the exam is in a blue book, it's just people using their phone under their desk or going to the bathroom and using it." Last year, a survey of some 500 Princeton seniors found that over 27 percent admitted to cheating with an AI model like ChatGPT, while about half said they knew about a violation of the honor code. If those are the numbers at a vaunted Ivy league, just imagine what conditions are like for the rest of the country.

Princeton University Had This Rule for 133 Years -- Then 'Widespread' Cheating Changed It

Recent survey data shows a disconnect between the honor code and behavior: about 30% of Princeton seniors admit to cheating. For more than 100 years, Princeton University treated its honor code as sacred, to the point that outside monitoring during exams was essentially off-limits and a signed pledge was supposed to be protection enough. Those norms are now changing, as administrators move to rewrite the rules in response to a wave of AI-enabled cheating. Earlier this week, Princeton faculty approved a plan to bring proctors to every in-person exam starting this summer, rolling back a no-proctor policy that had been in place since Princeton adopted its honor code in 1893. According to a letter from Princeton dean Michael Gordin, viewed by The Wall Street Journal, the change arose after "significant numbers" of students and faculty encouraged it, "given their perception that cheating on in-class exams has become widespread." Gordin wrote that AI has made academic dishonesty far more accessible while also obscuring the usual telltale signs of cheating. He noted that students are reluctant to flag suspected cheating for fear of retaliation from their classmates. When students raise concerns anonymously, it often leaves administrators with too little information to follow up. Princeton was one of a small group of universities that trusted students enough to let them sit for exams without a professor in the room, relying instead on a strict, student-run honor system. Another institution with a similar honor code is the University of Virginia. Under the new rules, professors will sit in on exams, note any suspected violations and pass those cases along to the student honor committee to review and decide. Princeton students will still have to confirm that they have followed the honor code: "I pledge my honor that I have not violated the Honor Code during this examination." Nadia Makuc, a Princeton senior who led the honor committee this past year, told the Journal that she believes most students support the shift to proctored exams because it relieves them of the burden of turning in their peers. She noted that the panel handled around 60 cases over the last year, a noticeable increase, but suspects many more potential violations never make it into the system. It's easier than ever to cheat, she noted. "If the exam is on a laptop, someone can just flip to another window. Or if the exam is in a blue book, it's just people using their phone under their desk or going to the bathroom and using it," she told the Journal. A recent survey by The Daily Princetonian, Princeton's student-run newspaper, helps explain why the old system was under strain. In the 2025 poll of more than 500 Princeton seniors, nearly 30% said they had cheated on an assignment or exam at some point during their time at the university. At the same time, about 45% reported knowing about an honor code violation that went unreported. Just 0.4%, fewer than 1 in 200 seniors, said they had ever actually turned in a classmate. Professors at other institutions have turned to blue books, oral exams and even assignments written on typewriters to combat cheating. "At stake here is not just the soul of education, but also the genuine development of critical thinking among the population," Christian Moriarty, a professor of ethics and law at St. Petersburg College in Florida, told the Journal.