

Harvard Forced Dozens to Leave in Cheating Scandal - fahrbach
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/02/education/harvard-forced-dozens-to-leave-in-cheating-scandal.html?_r=0

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michael_miller
I find it a little disingenuous that students who are subject to "forced
withdrawal" are allowed to re-enter after 2-4 semesters. This sends a horrible
message to students - that you can cheat, and the worst case scenario is
taking a couple semesters off. No mar on their transcript of starting a degree
at Harvard, and suddenly transferring to another, probably academically
inferior, school. No explaining to employers why they suddenly decided to pack
up and leave during a large cheating scandal. Just a forced vacation.

I'm also pretty appalled that students supplied the same answer down to
typological errors. When the scandal first broke out, it sounded much more
mundane - that there was little guidance, and that students asked their TAs
for help. At least then, it's possible to rationalize the situation by saying
that students genuinely did not believe they were doing something wrong. I
don't think there's any way to justify multiple students submitting the same
typos. This indicates blatant cheating, which any Harvard student should
readily recognize as being morally wrong, and clearly violating any reasonable
academic honesty standard.

~~~
cynicalkane
If so many kids, proportionally, are cheating, the reasonable conclusion is
not that there's an abundance of 'bad seeds' but perhaps that Harvard isn't
very good at getting students to take ethics seriously.

At your typical university, cheating on take-home exams is common, pressure is
high, and ethics are underemphasized--is it your place to say a student
reacting in the obvious and ordinary way deserves expulsion? Are kids trying
to sink or swim in such an environment really deserving expulsion? Besides,
more effective cheaters are _less_ likely to be caught. The moral Harvard
sends its students is not "don't cheat on a take-home exam" but "don't be
caught by copy-pasting answers". The people who work together and tweak their
answers to look different get A's.

Honestly, I think it's an overreaction; an institution that has been so poor
at imparting academic ethics to its students is now harming the same in order
to save face.

More generally, it is an anti-pattern to paint large groups of people as wrong
and deserving of punishment, even if you feel the underlying ethics are
correct.

~~~
gaius
_perhaps that Harvard isn't very good at getting students to take ethics
seriously_

The current financial crisis would support that hypothesis.

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duaneb
This seems to be a matter of confusion over the rules more than anything
(though it sounds like there were some clear cut cases as well). After all, it
sounds like they were able to use everything but each other for the exams,
which seems like an atrocious way to prepare students for the "real world".

~~~
niggler
The real world isn't a series of read and regurgitate cycles, and allowing
students to use resources shifts the test focus from memorizing details to
understanding.

In the same vein, I also find interviewing by nitpicking to be poorly
reflective of real world work -- when you are actually programming, you have
access to tools like linters and google to help you when you are chasing down
a bug (and its not entirely clear how asking very subtle issues in a stressful
situation like an interview represents the realities of working for the
company)

~~~
duaneb
I meant more that in the real world you are not only expected but often
required to work with your peers.

> In the same vein, I also find interviewing by nitpicking to be poorly
> reflective of real world work -- when you are actually programming, you have
> access to tools like linters and google to help you when you are chasing
> down a bug (and its not entirely clear how asking very subtle issues in a
> stressful situation like an interview represents the realities of working
> for the company)

In my recent interviews I've been encouraged to google in front of my
interviewers if I didn't know something because they considered it crucial. So
perhaps this is changing?

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Eliezer
So half of 279 (=~140) students cheat, and 70 are forced out.

Gosh. It makes you wonder what sort of privilege the other 70 cheaters
invoked. Who was sacrificed? Who was spared?

Selective enforcement of the "law" is no law at all.

~~~
nhebb
I don't think that's a fair assessment of the situation. The article didn't
say that half the students were cheating. It said that half were suspected of
cheating.

Of course, considering that it's an Introduction to Congress class, you could
argue that the cheaters grasped the essence of Congress better than the non-
cheaters.

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officemonkey
>One implicated student, who argued that similarities between his paper and
others could be traced to shared lecture notes, said the Administrative Board
demanded that he produce the notes six months later.

If I were accused of cheating and I argued that my notes would exonerate me, I
would have no problem producing them six months later. Heck, I still have
notes from a class I took in 1982.

~~~
sseveran
Not all of us keep all of our notes forever. If the expectation is that they
should be kept the University should note it (and maybe they do). Mine did
not.

~~~
officemonkey
If you've been accused of cheating and you think your notes would exonerate
you, you would be a fool to throw them out.

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SagelyGuru
Good god! Final exams at Harvard are 'take home'? I really thought that at
least Harvard was a little more testing than that... Aside from the standard
that sets, it is naive to the extreme to suppose that students allowed to take
an important exam home will still write it just off the top of their head.

~~~
beloch
Take home exams can actually be quite brutal, but are rarely encountered in
large (i.e. 100+ student) classes because they usually result in an
correspondingly brutal amount of marking. I've had them only in a few senior
undergrad courses and grad school.

Why are they brutal when you have your notes, books, the web, etc. available?
They're usually not based on spitting back answers you were given or can look
up. You actually need to use what you've learned to produce something novel
or, at least, very esoteric. e.g. I've had exams where I was asked to look up
a paper and reproduce the unpublished proof to get from equation (x) to
equation (y). Such proofs are often not published because the authors are
freaking geniuses who view the derivation as obvious, and getting to the point
where you can do the same proof with intense effort is one point of the
course! These exams are often fiendishly difficult and/or open-ended, so you
will be working like a crazy fool from the moment you get the exam until it
must be turned in. This sometimes means pulling an all-nighter (or more). (I
despise all-nighters as the last resort of poor planners, and hate being
forced into them.) Time is such a constraint that, if you didn't study and
absorb all the course material thoroughly prior to the exam, you will likely
not be able to get much done in the time allowed. Frequently nobody in the
class will actually finish, and it's really just a matter of how much you can
do relative to your peers, and how well.

Collaboration during preparation was never forbidden in my field, although I
hear other disciplines (especially humanities) can be quite different.
Collaboration during the test is usually discouraged, but obviously students
are on the honor system. If any actual copying is detectable from what is
handed in you can bet it was egregiously bad. If Harvard was able to make
charges stick to 70 students, you can safely bet that twice that number
cheated their hineys off, but many were just a bit smarter about it.

~~~
blablabla123
Not so much difference to exercises in difficult courses I encountered. But we
called that homework. (Germany)

~~~
slurry
Which is why German universities are consistently at the top of international
rankings, right? Oh, wait...

~~~
blablabla123
I thought the international top 20 equal the U.S. top 20.

Seriously, think about it, it just cannot make sense. Nobel price winners come
from all countries. A university does not need to belong to the U.S. Ivy
League to have smart alumni.

However... The Ivy League is really expensive and well-known. In fact people
like George W. Bush studied there. It is almost like a self-amplifying loop.

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dmhdlr
Had to be Government students.

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kaonashi
Not sure why they're being forced out, it sounds like they're getting
excellent practice for the real world of the ambitious.

