# Wisconsin professor plans to drop writing assignments as AI detectors fall short

Digest AI · Policy & Regulation · published 2026-09-21T04:00:00Z

Canonical: https://digestai.news/story/wisconsin-professor-plans-to-drop-writing-assignments-as-ai-detectors

## Summary

Timothy Paustian, a biology professor at the University of Wisconsin‑Madison, caught 60 AI‑written essays out of 350 submissions in a recent online microbiology class by using hidden prompts and AI detectors. All but one student admitted using AI, and the holdout received a zero. Facing students who now recognize and remove hidden prompts, Paustian says he will scrap writing assignments altogether, lamenting the loss of a key learning tool.

Turnitin’s AI detection add‑on, used by roughly 1,400 North American colleges, reportedly flagged AI in nearly half of all student submissions last academic year. The company claims a false‑positive rate under 1 % and a false‑negative rate around 15 %. Vanderbilt University warned that even a 1 % false‑positive rate could wrongly affect 750 papers out of its 75,000 annual submissions. A newer tool, Pangram, advertises a false‑positive rate of one in 25,000, though researchers note that “humanizer” software can evade detection. Academic leaders, including an MIT working group, caution against over‑reliance on detectors, warning they may foster distrust and bias, and suggest redesigning assignments to emphasize process and reasoning instead of detection.

## Key points

- Paustian caught 60 AI-written essays out of 350 submissions using hidden prompts and detectors.
- Turnitin’s AI detector, used by about 1,400 North American colleges, flags AI in nearly half of submissions with <1% false positives and ~15% false negatives.
- Pangram claims a false‑positive rate of one in 25,000 but can be fooled by “humanizer” tools that add stylistic quirks.

## Why it matters

Accurate AI detection affects academic integrity, student privacy, and the feasibility of integrating AI into coursework, shaping university policies and the tools they adopt.

## Sources

1. [Professors Are Tearing Their Hair Out Over AI Detectors](https://theatlantic.com/technology/2026/09/college-professors-ai-detectors-pangram/688727) (theatlantic.com, 2026-09-21)

Part of the developing story: [AI Detectors Fail to Stop Academic Writing Crisis](https://digestai.news/thread/pangram-detector-flags-claude-opus-5-text-as-100-ai-generated-in-substack-test) (2 stories)

## Cite

Digest AI, "Wisconsin professor plans to drop writing assignments as AI detectors fall short", 21 September 2026, https://digestai.news/story/wisconsin-professor-plans-to-drop-writing-assignments-as-ai-detectors

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