The loss that he describes is deeper and more existential than anything academic integrity can protect: a specific, if perhaps decaying, way of being among students and their teachers. “AI has already changed the classroom into something I no longer recognize,” he told me. In this view, AI isn’t a harbinger of the future but the last straw in a profession that was almost lost already, to funding collapse, gun violence, state overreach, economic decay, credentialism, and all the rest. New technology arrives on that grim shore, making schoolwork feel worthless, carried out to turn the crank of a machine rather than for teaching or learning.
i imagine much of this could be dealt with by something radical like funding education so highly that course sizes were no more than a dozen people and letting the instructor use discussion and/or novel forms of evaluation.
students should learn the strategies and tactics of composition as much as they should be able to communicate well orally and however the fuck else, but the focus on the essay -> manuscript -> article -> publication treadmill is kinda buttcheeks, imo. the scientific publication system in higher learning is over emphasized and archaic. nobody reads peer reviewed publications, even the people who are supposed to. i have multiple peer reviewed publications as a primary author and they are garbage to read. the only people who read them are required to read them and they only read enough to cite what they need.
if a young science brain can learn the science thing and then develop some other media for delivery of the ideas and their analysis, that's good and may do something to actually deliver scientific knowledge out into the world. the academy has absolutely fallen on its ass when it comes to being of service to the human community and could use a kick in the ass.
in conclusion, maybe the death of the essay does not fucking matter because there are other, better ways to communicate ideas.