Americas|Did 75,000 Students Cheat on a College-Entrance Exam in Mexico?

All of the applicants who passed this year’s entrance exam for Mexico’s premier public university will be required to take a new test, school officials said Friday, following an investigation into likely widespread cheating, including with the aid of artificial intelligence, during the institution’s first attempt at online testing.

As educators around the world grapple with the effects of A.I., the National Autonomous University of Mexico, or UNAM, ordered the investigation this month after a disproportionate number of applicants passed its demanding exam.

On Friday, university administrators said a commission had found that several times more applicants had passed the exam than in recent years. As a result, the commission was requiring that applicants who passed the exam take a new entrance exam in person.

Earlier this week, experts who reviewed the results had found almost half of the nearly 160,000 exams could have involved some sort of cheating. Administrators had suspended admissions while they investigated, leaving all prospective students in limbo.

It is hardly the first time A.I. has been suspected in cheating scandals. Students have been caught using A.I.-powered smart glasses to cheat on high-stakes exams in England and South Korea. In Australia, university administrators had to abandon the use of A.I.-detection tools after they falsely accused students of using A.I. at alarmingly high rates.

In Mexico, the UNAM scandal arose in mid-July after test results revealed an unusually high number of applicants had passed the difficult entrance exam, and that in competitive programs, such as medicine and law, many more students than usual had received high — even perfect — scores.