VŠEM abolished traditional bachelor's theses, students now defend practical projects
In 2024, Vysoká škola ekonomie a managementu (VŠEM) became the first school in the Czech Republic to abolish mandatory bachelor's theses and replace them with the defence of practical projects – a response to the fact that language models can both write and evaluate texts.
In 2024, the private university Vysoká škola ekonomie a managementu (VŠEM) became the first university in the Czech Republic to abolish the requirement to write traditional bachelor's theses. Instead, students defend practical projects carried out in their employment or business – for example, a marketing campaign, a business plan or the implementation of new HR tools.
According to rector Bohumil Kartous, writing traditional bachelor's theses has lost its purpose because both students and teachers use artificial intelligence to help with it: “One language model writes the text and another evaluates it,” Kartous explains, adding that AI enables teachers to obtain an assessment of a text within a few seconds. According to him, the school does not consider a blanket ban on AI tools meaningful and instead teaches students how to use them ethically and effectively.
In this context, Kartous refers to a 2025 study by Stanford University, according to which the number of junior jobs in the labour market fell by 16 percent, particularly among programmers and lawyers. As an example, he cites a comparison in which an AI system completed the same research task assigned by a lawyer in three minutes with comparable quality, while a trainee lawyer took several hours. According to Kartous, flexibility and the ability to adapt quickly to a changing world will therefore be a key quality in the future.
Why it matters
The case shows how one specific school is changing student assessment in response to the ability of language models to write and evaluate texts. For students and junior professionals, this is linked, according to the cited study, to an actual decline in junior roles in the labour market, which changes which skills are worth demonstrating.
Two audiences, two different impacts
What this means
For individuals
For students and junior employees (e.g. lawyers, programmers), the VŠEM case signals that AI can now handle writing and research tasks that previously demonstrated qualifications at a comparable quality and much faster, so practical application and the ability to adapt are valued more.
For a business
VŠEM shifted student assessment from writing texts to defending practical outputs because language models can both write and evaluate texts; according to rector Kartous, this is linked to a decline in junior roles in the labour market (programmers, lawyers), which is relevant to companies considering whom to train and how to train them now.
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Event sources
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