UC Berkeley CS 10 recorded a 35.3% F rate and CS 61A a 10.6% F rate in spring 2026, compared with under 10% the prior two years, against EECS guidelines capping D/F at 7% for lower-division courses (Daily Cal, 2026).

Instructors Dan Garcia and Gireeja Ranade cited LLM use on take-home work followed by exam failure, plus missing linear algebra and proof prerequisites from courses permitting open-AI policies; 30 CS 10 cheating cases reached student conduct.

Over 1,300 UC faculty, including the pair, petitioned to restore SAT/ACT for STEM admissions, citing parallel preparation shortfalls also documented in a 2025 MIT Electrical Engineering and Computer Science internal review of introductory programming cohorts.

Comparable grade inflation reversal and prerequisite erosion patterns appear in a Stanford HAI 2025 working paper tracking AI-assisted homework across five universities, indicating downstream effects on unaided technical hiring filters.