How ChatGPT Brought Down an Online Education Giant (msn.com)
- Reference: 0175450333
- News link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/11/11/1525223/how-chatgpt-brought-down-an-online-education-giant
- Source link: https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/careersandeducation/how-chatgpt-brought-down-an-online-education-giant/ar-AA1tMKzw
> The online education company was for many years the go-to source for students who wanted help with their homework, or a potential tool for plagiarism. The shift to virtual learning during the pandemic sent subscriptions and its stock price to record highs.
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> Then came ChatGPT. Suddenly students had a free alternative to the answers Chegg spent years developing with thousands of contractors in India. Instead of "Chegging" the solution, they began canceling their subscriptions and plugging questions into chatbots. Since ChatGPT's launch, Chegg has lost more than half a million subscribers who pay up to $19.95 a month for prewritten answers to textbook questions and on-demand help from experts. Its [1]stock is down 99% from early 2021 , erasing some $14.5 billion of market value. Bond traders have doubts the company will continue bringing in enough cash to pay its debts.
[1] https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/careersandeducation/how-chatgpt-brought-down-an-online-education-giant/ar-AA1tMKzw
Education? (Score:4, Insightful)
Not familiar with Chegg, but as described in the article, it doesn't sound like an education company, but a "do your homework for you" company.
Re: (Score:2)
I know them well. They dominated the text book rental market. For a while there it seemed like every student in the US was paying these guys money every semester. Right up until publishers got their act together and started offering digital subscriptions. That move undercut one project from a founder of Chegg for [1]an ebook reader [wikipedia.org].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kno
Re: (Score:2)
Funny, the greed of the "publishers" is why the text book rental market came into existence. You seem confused as to who the villain is in the story.
Re: (Score:2)
Capitalism run amok is the villain of this story.
We loan students money to get through college, then forgive those loans. So in a way, taxpayers are paying universities and businesses for these sorts of unnecessary services. Education is a serious business. And at the end of the day, it's people with $50K-150K of student loan dept that support this unnecessary industry.
Before buying and loaning textbooks was a thing, people used to borrow books from a library. And universities kept their own textbooks or ch
"Online Education Giant" (Score:4, Interesting)
That's a funny way to refer to a essay mill.
not sorry (Score:2)
Cheaters found a cheaper way (for now) to cheat. The buying spree Chegg went on in the 2010's vacuumed up a lot of competitors and either absorbed them or made them disappear. I'm sure the MBA who led all the acquisitions in the 2010's will find a nice cushion to land on. The employees, not so much.
A site that sells cheats gets steamrolled (Score:2)
by the quintessential tool to bullshit your way to any result with zero effort. What a surprise...
Education has already been obsolete for 20 years (Score:2)
As a millennial I had part of my education done the old fashioned way, then Google and Wikipedia came a long. Now even that is becoming obsolete. Your old encyclopedia set laughs as you too are replaced. The student debt crisis came out of the fact that human brains are no longer valued by the capitalist class.
And nothing of value was lost... (Score:5, Insightful)
"Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign conducted a study in the spring last year to see how ChatGPT had influenced cheating in an introductory programming course. They found students had overwhelmingly moved to ChatGPT from what the researchers called âoeplagiarism hubsâ such as Chegg.
âoeIt appeared that they completely shifted over from trying to find online solutions and copying them to just going to ChatGPT and having it generate solutions for them,â said Craig Zilles, professor of computer science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign."
TL;DR - people who just want to memorize shit to pass or crib answers for homework found a cheaper, easier mechanism to let them slide by. Yay?
Re: (Score:3)
Chegg’s business model is probably permanently dead.
But, the idea of homework needs to change as well. This whole assign-homework-and demand-students-get-no-help-or-it’s-cheating model of education is simply outdated. If you want to assess individual student performance, you give a quiz or an exam, in class, no Internet devices allowed. Even most projects can be gamed nowadays. The purpose of assigned work outside the class is to prepare them for the exams. Period.
How quick can you read, comprehend, and apply? (Score:3)
We're moving away from a static learning model and toward a "How quick can you find it, comprehend it, and apply it?" model. Those who will be most successful in life will formulate the most insightful questions, deeply comprehend the answer, and apply it quickly in a productive way. They will not be the ones with a static skillset.
Re: (Score:2)
It's not as simple as that. You can't assess e.g. software architecture skills in a 2h exam. Not everything can be distilled to exam-style questions. Assessment definitely need to change, but offline quiz/exam is definitely not the answer
Re: (Score:1)
This is a condemnation of degree factory model of education more so than students doing what they need to get their degree or chatgpt. Original university concept was about getting an actual education. It offered courses, you went in and studied for as long as you wanted, until you figured out that you had what you needed from it, and then you went back to the normal world to apply and develop what you learned.
Today, university is basically an ass check. It makes sure your ass can handle sitting in those un
Re: (Score:2)
One person's "ass check" its another's "getting an actual education", and that's been true longer than you've been alive.
"Because if things being taught can be answered by chatGPT, no one is going to be paying you to do those things."
But the purpose of an education is not for you to get paid "doing those things", which you'd know if you had received an education.
"They can hire a high school graduate who has taken maybe a course or two in English so you know he or she can read and formulate proper sentences.
Re: (Score:2)
Ah Luckyo. Always reliable for for stupid shit.