When I was a student in 2001, I was remote learning via a specialized satellite television system. I also had internet access and was unsupervised, so "cheating" was very easy, and I did so often. Yet I still managed to learn, very well. I put "cheating" in quotes because I think we need to redefine what cheating means to exclude looking up answers. And we need to rethink how we verify and measure learning. We should be encouraging students to look up answers, and teaching them how to do that. Instead of measuring what people know, we should measure what they can DO with what they know. Project-based evaluation and dynamic performances should replace problem worksheets and exam forms.
There is stuff you need to know cold, and stuff you should be able to reference. I do not want an ER doctor checking an anatomy book to figure out what they are looking at when someone rolls into the ER. I do want a surgeon to look up and learn the latest outcomes if I am going in for scheduled surgery.
They are two different skills. Good exams should ensure the student knows core principles cold (and should test that) and should allow for some level of reference material for concepts that would be more appropriate to research (maybe homework or projects?). What should be memorized vs. what should be looked up varies by professor (do students need to know the formulas to apply them? Memorize constants? Etc?).
The key here is that when I hire someone with a certain degree, I expect that they have a set of knowledge that they know cold, and they factor that knowledge into their decision making. If they've cheated to their degree and don't truly understand the concepts cold, then they may not be able to synthesize knowledge about their degree / experience and bring it to bear to have a unique perspective on the situation / problem. They may not see that a certain approach applies because they might not remember the concept or understand how it would be relevant in that context.
Anyone can google a problem and figure out existing solutions - it's more valuable if you're able to draw connections across things you've learned that matters. I've found it is harder to draw connections (and slower if it happens at all) if a person doesn't know the material outright.
> I do not want an ER doctor checking an anatomy book to figure out what they are looking at when someone rolls into the ER.
Truth is, we want a specific outcome out of these workers. But do we care that they had a 4.0 or a 3.9 GPA in their unrelated mandatory non-med-related undergrad? Absolutely not.
If the 3.9 or 4.0 was used to beat out another applicant to medical school with a 3.6 who was actually learning skills that would help them as a doctor, then yes, we should care.
And that's why I mentioned a relevant class and not underwater basket weaving in the example.
I'd also argue the specific outcome we should aim for is people who know what they are doing, and whose credentials accurately reflect their knowledge (not their ability to game the system or cheat).
That's the thing, I'm not sure the 3.9 has failed to learn those skills. The student with the 3.6 and the 3.9 would both make good doctors, and once they get into med school, the attrition rate (at an elite program) is typically below 1%. But med school is designed, in part, to ensure that many of the people who would make good doctors are not allowed to do so. I'm not saying that is the only function of the AMA's control over credentialing, it is also there to train doctors and ensure quality. But the AMA clearly engages in cartel-like behavior This is done to limit new entrants, artificially reduce competition, and pump up salaries for the cartel members.
The student who cheated a 3.6 up to a 3.9 probably knows the material very, very well.
I don't excuse the cheating, but I do insist that we recognize the broken system that rewards it, and specifically recognize the widespread harm that happens when organizations like the AMA engage in cartel like behavior.
> who was actually learning skills that would help them as a doctor, then yes, we should care. And that's why I mentioned a relevant class and not underwater basket weaving in the example.
From my experience, there's nothing of value out of the mandatory pre-med school undergrad. Universities don't even care (these students are bringing in tuition money).
If there’s truly nothing of value for four years of school, then I’d argue that university isn’t really worth attending…
And the required courses of bio, chem, o chem, and physics give all doctors a basic understanding of the scientific method, how biology works (that’s important), and a basic knowledge of skills required for pharmacology. Everything else is optional for Med school, but I can’t see how, everything else equal, someone who cheats their way through these would be more prepared for medical school than someone who actually learned the concepts.
> If there’s truly nothing of value for four years of school, then I’d argue that university isn’t really worth attending
The value is being able to fulfill a requirement.
> And the required courses of bio, chem, o chem, and physics give all doctors a basic understanding of the scientific method, how biology works (that’s important), and a basic knowledge of skills required for pharmacology.
That's one year worth of coursework out of the mandatory 4 years of undergrad.
> Everything else is optional for Med school, but I can’t see how, everything else equal, someone who cheats their way through these would be more prepared for medical school than someone who actually learned the concepts.
They would have more time to prepare for the MCAT or pad their resume with extra-curricular, making them more competitive. Or have a part time job to pay for the expensive in-person interviews.
I’m not sure why that attitude would encourage cheating… could you say more?
There’s even another piece to it, and that’s the moral and ethical side of it. When one takes a class or attends university, they agree to that class’ or university’s ethics code and rules. They agree to play in that sandbox by signing up and paying tuition. Cheating is saying that the rules don’t apply to them / putting their own value system ahead of the organization’s for some reason (it’s easier, they are lazy, they think the rules are stupid, doesn’t really matter). What matters is that they agreed to do one thing and we’re disingenuous.
When people become doctors, lawyers, (licensed) investment professionals, or engineers, there are rules that apply in all of those fields. I don’t want to work with someone who agrees to work in those fields but just flaunts the rules when they feel there is a personal benefit in doing so, even at the detriment of others. And one can argue “well I’d follow those rules”, but really? Would they? When push came to shove before and they didn’t see personal benefit, they clearly didn’t follow the rules that they previously agreed to.
I'm absolutely not saying it's right, but there's a point you can reach by setting expectations like this that filters out all of the honest students. I remember reading some statistic on cheating in med school and it's absolutely insane.
Switching to exams in person and more presentation-based exams is how you get around this. You can pay someone to write a paper, but its hard to then show mastery of that topic in a discussion with your professor.
That would require professors to show interest in teaching, so I doubt universities would go for it. It doesn't scale and they're not interested in adequate staffing.
Professors do everything in their power not to teach. A sign that you've "made it" as a Professor is not having to teach at all for several semesters and just getting to do research.
A great example of this is how Dijkstra used to conduct final examinations where students basically showed up and had a real-time, in-person discussion with him. It must have taken forever to get through everyone, and probably isn't feasible anymore with modern class sizes.
I think a good approximation is project work, and then requiring presentation of said work. Normal exams don't really cut it.
The university I went to allowed students to test out of the first three semesters of intro to programming classes (IE here's the compiler, this is what OOP is etc.) but you had to have an interview like this first.
I felt extra qualified when I did it after having read through the SICP, it was kind of cool. I wish I had talked to my professors more but I felt like everything was so expensive I shouldn't mess with it.
Perhaps we shouod be rethinking the entire premise of school assessment.
The goal is ostensibly to learn. We only assess so students can prove they learned to third parties, and perhaps secondarily for inatructors to assess how effective they are.
The more cynical view is that education is the exams, and we only care about obtainmentnof the credentials.
Yeah, I blame the top for collapsing. People want to have nice lives and fiscal stability. HR at Fortune 500 companies are bad and doesn't care if you have knowledge, just a good degree. Therefore, college is literally just a place to punch a ticket to the middle class.
I wouldn't be surprised if colleges just cut out the expensive facility and staff and sell the credentials directly at some point soon. You take an exam, and the colleges sell classes that give you some advantage during the exam, but if you are willing to pay "inflated price" you can totally just sit the exam and get the credits.
I mean thats already a thing for basically the entire first year of college in the United States if you go to a State school with the AP exams. And alot of the second year materially could easily be AP examined as well.
My experience is that it's not until your 3rd year that your past "digest information" and going into more critical analysis of what you are learning. If you EVER go into critical analysis of what you are supposed to be learning. You can get lots of 4 year degrees by just knowing what multiple choice answer to put down and be a semi component writer (that is know how to write a works cited page and not have spelling errors)
For STEM you might not actually go into critical analysis of what you are learning until your 4th year (if ever). Sense those degrees have more information you need to digest on average. I say this as someone who has gotten both a soft science degree (Sociology) and a STEM degree (Computer Science)
The phrase you might be looking for is "credit by examination."
There are CLEP tests for pretty much all the general education you need (ie the two initial years of easy bullshit they make you pay for) and many universities will let CS students test out of the first year or so of programming classes, leaving just the last two years of stuff like algorithms/databases/electives.
People like to complain about testing and what they really measure, but what alternative is there? Even a "real world" problem is still a test, just a really hard, open-ended one. The tests that we subject students to represent somebody's honest attempt, at least, to create questions that an intelligent person at their age can come up with an answer to without access to any external material.
I remember reading a number of years ago about a method of detecting the leaker of documents that are supposed to be kept confidential. [1] This is basically what the statistics professor used to catch the cheaters in his class.
This article did some decent research about what cheating is happening, though it doesn't really get into why. It certainly is getting rampant.
I suspect (this is a hunch) that cheating really takes off in professions where schools or early career hiring managers have more talent than they can bring on board. Med schools, for example, would fall under this category. This often surprises engineers, but elite medical schools in the US often have admissions rates below 4% and attrition rates well below 1% (something that a is essentially unheard of in graduate STEM programs, which even at the elite level have attrition rates of 25%-50% depending on MS vs PhD and program/field). In other words, for med school, getting in is the hardest part. They work the students hard, but pretty much everyone graduates, and job prospects are very, very good for almost all graduates (again, this is at the elite level).
Because they are so selective, having an MCAT at the 99%ile rather than the 97.5%ile does make a difference. Having a GPA of 3.9 instead of 3.65 does make a difference. My guess is that you could replace the entire class 10 times over without a dramatic drop in quality of graduates or physicians. It is, in this sense, excessively selective (I've heard it described, interestingly, as ironically selective).
Now, add in the fact that some students are cheating - not to pass, and not to deny themselves an education (they are hardworking and absolutely do learn the material), but to bump their numbers up juuuust enough get get an edge.
This isn't to justify it. I still consider it scummy. But to some extent, this is the byproduct of cartel building in medicine (and other fields) that artificially restrict the supply of physicians or other types of workers, creating a situation where "too many" very talented people are competing for "too few" spots (to everyone's detriment other than the members of the cartel).
But the image of the cheater as a slacker who doesn't care about learning and cheats to get a bit of parchment, denying themselves the education they went to college to receive? Eh. I'm sure that happens, but a lot of cheaters are actually very high talent, extremely driven and motivated people who are cheating to get an edge, kind of like the difference between an elite cyclist who trains intensely and an elite cyclist who trains intensely and takes PEDs.
I have had reports from students attending engineering classes say that since all classes have been on-line; teachers and administration keep increasing methods, amounts, and tools for testing, yet are decreasing the methods, amounts and tools for teaching. They complain, rightfully, how are they supposed to learn, when all that happens is they are tested?
If you're claiming to be a senior salesforce developer who worked for 4 fortune 500 companies, and the person hiring you doesn't know what an "object" is, you can fool them.
I literally had to recommend firing someone like that a few years ago as they were hired by my client as a "Senior Salesforce Admin." The red flag for me by day two was that he just never contributed anything in salesforce-specific meetings in spite of supposedly being the senior-most resource for SF expertise. I confronted him and ask if he could describe an object to me (he couldn't), but had claimed to work for many household brands for years as a salesforce admin.
Apart from the obvious dishonesty, I don't know why he oversold himself SO MUCH. I guess he was stupid enough to completely lie and not take the time to actually learn salesforce, but also equally stupid enough to just overshoot his qualifications.
