Analysis of 1,383 Research-Subreddit Posts: Graduate Students Outsource the Struggle and Get Neither Results Nor Skill

arXiv 2607.29519·medium signalXBlueskyLinkedInCopy link

By analyzing 1,383 posts across five research-focused subreddits, the authors find software engineering graduate students systematically outsource to LLMs the cognitive effort that builds research skill, ending up with neither the expected results nor the underlying competence — captured in the paper's title quote, 'You can't outsource the struggle and still get the skill.' The contribution is naming the specific missing AI-related skills as a precondition for curricula that teach working with LLMs rather than being displaced by them. It is empirical evidence for the deskilling risk that usually gets argued anecdotally.