Two elite universities are pushing back on AI-assisted cheating, a warning sign for how much students now lean on the technology instead of learning.

• University of Chicago Law School will ban phones, tablets, and laptops for first-year students this fall so they learn to reason on their own.
• At Brown, an economics professor caught likely cheating when scores crashed from near-perfect take-home midterms to below 20% on in-person finals.
• Many top-scoring students dropped the course as soon as they learned the final would be in person.
• The core problem: AI has cut the cost of cheating to almost zero, making the temptation hard to resist.
• Schools are acting partly to protect their reputations and avoid graduating students who can't think or speak without a device.

Outlook: Expect more universities to bring back in-person, device-free testing as AI use spreads across campuses.