Wall Street Journal, They Were Every Student’s Worst Nightmare. Now Blue Books Are Back.:

When this year’s college graduates first arrived on campus, there was no such thing as ChatGPT.

They had to use their own brains for math homework, econ problem sets, coding projects, Spanish exercises, biology research, term papers on the Civil War and the Shakespeare essay that made them want to gouge their eyes out.

Now they can just use artificial intelligence.

Students outsourcing their assignments to AI and cheating their way through college has become so rampant, so quickly, that it has created a market for a product that helps professors ChatGPT-proof school. As it turns out, that product already exists. In fact, you’ve probably used it. You might even dread it.

It’s called a blue book.

The mere thought of that exam booklet with a blue cover and blank pages is enough to make generations of college kids clam up—and make their hands cramp up.

But inexpensive pamphlets of stapled paper have become a surprisingly valuable tool for teachers at a time when they need all the help they can get.

All of which explains how a paper company in Pennsylvania has unexpectedly found itself on the front lines of the classroom AI wars. 

Most blue books for sale in campus bookstores and on Amazon for 23 cents apiece are made by Roaring Spring Paper Products. The family-owned business was founded more than a century ago in Roaring Spring, a small borough outside Altoona that has become the blue-book capital of America. The company now sells a few million of these classic exam books every year and all of them are manufactured in the U.S., said Kristen Allen, its vice president of sales and marketing.

And yes, I asked her if everybody makes jokes about Dunder Mifflin when they find out she works for a paper company in Pennsylvania.

“Nobody,” she said. “It’s weird—and it’s sad. I love ‘The Office.’ ” …

This new golden age of blue books is not something that anyone would have predicted a few years ago, when remote school put them on the verge of extinction. But after sales tanked in 2020 and 2021 due to the pandemic, they have picked up in recent years because of AI cheating. 

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