Cheating is rampant. Students turn to generative artificial-intelligence chatbots to do their readings, complete their take-home exams and write their papers. A January 2023 survey from Study.com found that 89% of college students had used ChatGPT to complete a homework assignment. Nearly half admitted to using it on at-home tests or quizzes, and 53% had turned in an AI-generated essay.

We’re still in the early stages of the AI era, but the future for higher education looks bleak. Early research suggests what educators know intuitively: AI assistance can boost students’ short-term performance, but it enervates long-term comprehension, especially after the digital crutches are taken away.

A student who aces a quiz without studying the material has learned nothing. The same is true for a student who completes an essay without performing research, contemplating the subject matter, refining and ordering arguments, or painstakingly choosing the exact words to express the right idea. These students fail not only to retain knowledge, but also to develop their capacities for creative and critical thinking. Even where AI usage doesn’t cross obvious ethical lines—when it’s used for taking notes or creating study guides, for example—it usually undermines learning.

Students’ AI usage usually does cross ethical lines. Today’s academic incentive structure rewards cheating and rarely punishes fraud or dishonesty. Such an environment destroys students’ character formation, creating long-term consequences.

Despite their widespread use of AI chatbots, students don’t want an education predicated on cheating. The Study.com survey found that 72% of college students would like to see ChatGPT banned from their campuses. They want a rigorous education, if only one were available to them.

So, what can be done? Cheating can be difficult to detect. Aging professors will always be a step behind students when it comes to manipulating technology. And even with the help of software to detect plagiarism or AI, it’s difficult to spot artificially generated content. And these tools can be unfair to students, since false positives abound.

It’s time to take a step back from technology and return to pedagogical tools that have served educators for centuries. Start by eliminating online classes and banning screens in the classroom.

Colleges should also institute a more personal and in-person approach to assessment. Take-home exams, which were ripe for abuse long before AI, should be retired. Schools should instead administer in-class evaluations such as blue-book essays, oral exams and chalkboard demonstrations. Papers are too valuable to abandon entirely, but a clear policy that prohibits AI use and imposes serious consequences can reduce cheating.

More important, colleges and universities must restore conversation to its position of prominence in the classroom. Any bot can take lecture notes. College students frequently don’t even bother to attend classes anymore. Real conversations about perennial questions and ideas can make classes meaningful again.

Oral communication has for centuries been the guiding model for higher education. The Socratic seminar exposes students to rational discourse that actively engages the mind. Medieval universities tested their students through discussion and debate—this is the famous disputatio exemplified in the writings of Thomas Aquinas. The University of Oxford’s tutorial system, which focuses on small group discussions, is another remnant of this long tradition, placing reasoned discourse at the heart of a university education.

Some will object that such reforms would be inconvenient, maybe even impossible. Classes would need to be considerably smaller, and professors would need to give students more individualized attention. All that is true, but at a time when elite schools have endowments worth billions of dollars, some college football coaches make eight-figure salaries, and tuition growth outpaces inflation, the resources are available if the will is there.

I have taught for 23 years at a college that embraces small classes built around Socratic discussions, while charging less for tuition than most other private schools. This model isn’t only possible—it works.

AI has exposed a decline in higher education that has been under way for decades. Colleges increasingly focus on job training and credentials rather than intellectual growth for its own sake. Choose-your-own curricula, runaway grade inflation, and the popular notion of the four-year party are symptoms of the same problem. Students have no qualms about cheating, because as far as many of them can tell, college isn’t about learning anyway.

Education is meant to liberate us from bias and ignorance. By hindering the development of students’ critical faculties, AI is setting up future generations for the opposite. Technology has its place in higher education, but not at the expense of learning. Real students deserve a real education.

Mr. Goyette is vice president and dean emeritus of Thomas Aquinas College.