**off to take Biff’s and penelope’s examinations**

"AI has destroyed Kenyan jobs because American college students no longer hire them to write fake college essays" is not a framing I expected even the NYT to have pic.twitter.com/7DlifkjLE2
— Trevor McKendrick (@TrevMcKendrick) September 7, 2026

AI Overview

Total outstanding student loan debt in the United States is approximately $1.86 trillion.

Education Data Initiative

Breakdown of the Debt

Federal Student Loans: About $1.72 trillion, which makes up roughly 91% of all student debt.
Private Student Loans: About $138.8 billion to $166 billion, which makes up the remaining 7% to 9%.
Total Borrowers: Roughly 42.6 million Americans hold federal student loan debt.
Average Balances: The average federal debt per borrower is about $40,467, while total balances including private loans can average up to $43,521

UPDATE: PowerLine’s John Hinderaker has more on the NYT article. His conclusion is the same as mine, basically.

AI Kills Jobs!

In this case, by making cheating cheaper and more efficient. The New York Times headlines: “Kenyans Did College Students’ Homework for Years. Then A.I. Arrived.”

Hailing from a farming village in Kenya, Mr. Bundi moved to the capital, Nairobi, in 2011 to be the first in his family to attend university. There, a friend suggested he try a new online job: writing essays for cheating overseas college students.
***
Mr. Bundi estimates he wrote more than 2,500 essays over the next 12 years, sometimes three a day. He balanced completing his public health degree with helping faraway students studying engineering, medicine and computer science to finish theirs. Some students gave him their school login information so he could keep up with their assignments.
Alas, those halcyon days are over:
In 2022, OpenAI released ChatGPT. At colleges worldwide, students made a simple calculation that has become more pronounced today: Why pay a freelancer in Kenya when ChatGPT could do the job?
Essay work began to thin. Rates fell, and assignments dwindled. Before long, the industry shrank to almost nothing. “I never would have expected A.I. could do this,” Mr. Bundi said.

Is that a sad story, or what?

Actually, it is one more reminder of the corruption of “higher education.” A side benefit of AI might be a total rethinking of our education system.