Thank you for taking a moment to read this page. I, like you, wear many hats. One of the hats I wear is that of an assistant professor of computer science at a public regional university with declining enrollment. Concern about the budget at my institution is a worry of mine. Recruitment of students is harder, forcing resources to be stretched thin while the fixed costs of the workload remain and fall on fewer people to handle. This story is a familiar one to many of us in higher education.

In Summer of 2026, while off contract but expecting grading support at my institution to be lower for faculty members than in years past due to financial pressures, I wrote a general purpose AI-based autograder for handwritten work in any subject. That software became CompGrader and I invite you to explore it.

CompGrader is geared primarily for determining completion of things like starters/bell-ringers, brainstorming sketches, and so forth. I'm not recommending that you use CompGrader to grade your final exam or essay. But it can do that.

I am mindful of some of the implications of this. I am no Luddite and I readily embrace pragmatic AI in the classroom and workplace. But I am also aware of some of the impacts such technology has on workers and the environment, not to mention what "AI grading done right" means for gaining and keeping the trust of key stakeholders when higher education already has some trust issues with the public. I also realize that I've written software that harnesses AI models to replace much of the work traditionally by undergraduate or graduate employee human graders, who tend to be some of the poorest paid academic workers.

With this context in mind, I plan to offer CompGrader as a for-profit service because that legal structure is necessary for it to remain viable at scale. However, I wish to do so with shared values at the forefront and with a clear vision in mind. As such, I respectfully ask for your input and invite you to read and comment on our founding principles as we determine the next steps for CompGrader.

Best regards,

Sam Schwartz, PhD

Speaking as the maker of CompGrader, a product of my company The Firm, LLC, and not on behalf of anyone else.