LLMs Break Essay Assessment

Large language models now produce original, bespoke essays that evade plagiarism and detection tools, leaving instructors unable to reliably assess student learning or authorship. That failure risks collapsing the credentialing function of essay‑based courses and, by extension, the labor signal graduate degrees provide employers. — If assessment no longer signals learning, universities' value proposition, funding models, and graduate labour pipelines could be fundamentally disrupted.