

Harvard details suspensions in massive cheating scandal - bane
http://bostonglobe.com/metro/2013/02/02/harvard-details-suspensions-massive-cheating-scandal/6gzGzU2WvbFG17T4kAq50L/story.html

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WalterBright
An interesting counterpoint to this is the experience of Caltech, with its
honor system (I attended Caltech). It is institute policy that exams are not
proctored in any way. Exams are normally take-home. They are time limited,
starting from when you open the test.

Yet cheating is nearly non-existent. How is this possible?

I think it is because the honor system is a pretty explicit statement that the
Institute implicitly trusts its students. It views professors and students as
collaborators, rather than adversaries.

One consequence is that the students like the honor system very much, and do
not wish to see it change. Hence, there is intense pressure from the students
to themselves to not cheat - and someone who does cheat is pretty much
ostracized.

(There are other aspects to the Caltech honor system - professors are not
allowed to take attendance or base grades on attendance in any way. The
Institute also does not attempt to control student behavior on or off campus.
I don't remember ever locking my dorm room door.)

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tzs
> Hence, there is intense pressure from the students to themselves to not
> cheat - and someone who does cheat is pretty much ostracized.

Another thing to note is that homework at Caltech can be rather challenging.
It is common (or at least when I was there, around the same Walter was, and I
believe it still is so) for people to collaborate on it. You get a pretty good
idea from this how your classmates are doing, and you can make a pretty good
prediction by the end of the term how they are going to do on the exam. In my
experience, pretty much everyone came out about where I expected them to. If
there was significant cheating going on, there should have been noticeable
instances of people doing unexpectedly well on exams.

> I don't remember ever locking my dorm room door.

Did you ever meet the guy in the bushes on California Blvd? He was a mentally
ill college-aged kid who hid in the bushes in front of a building around half
way between campus and Lake Avenue. He would ask people if they had seen
"Sandy". (I know some people who managed to have a long talk with him, but
they were not able to figure out if Sandy was a girl he actually knew, or
someone imaginary).

One day, some of us were hanging out in my room, which was at the top of the
stairs that lead to the basement of the South houses. Someone started joking
about funny things we could say when bushes guy asked about Sandy. I suggested
something involving a crude sex act.

Apparently bushes guy happened to be lurking in the South houses basement and
was listening. That night, I woke up in the middle of the night with him
standing over me, rather agitated, asking why I would say such terrible things
about Sandy.

I started locking my door after that.

~~~
WalterBright
Hmm, I never heard of that guy. I was there from 75-79.

Doing the homework was how I learned the material. Things came too thick and
fast during lecture to learn it, it was all I could do to keep up taking
notes.

I discovered that if I knew how to solve all the homework problems front to
back, I'd do ok on the exams. I also rarely could do the homework without some
help from other students, who were always happy to coach me through my
difficulties. Having a "troll" session with your friends to work through the
homework was commonplace, followed by a "wretch" session with the TA for the
stuff none of us could figure out :-)

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doctorpangloss
It's hard to not feel a little sympathy for the handful of 2012 grads whose
lives were put on hold by the investigations this fall.

A few months prior to the incidents, I had had a conversation with the College
president and Dean Smith about cheating and mental health on campus. They were
aware of some kinds of cheating; they were not aware of others, particularly
the acute or technologically advanced kind.

I argued to Hammonds, the College president, that the design of exams was the
root cause of the cheating, not a lapse of morals. It seems that I was
vindicated in this assessment, because cheating happens in classes with final
exams of any kind, most strongly in take home exam classes. This is just a
particularly egregious example.

On the other hand, it could be that morally deficient students sort themselves
into Government and Economics. But that's utterly ridiculous, and I hope most
will agree with me that fixing the tests (preferably by eliminating them),
rather than just blaming the students, is the right step forward.

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WildUtah
The course was "Government 1310: Introduction to Congress."

Give the ones who cheated A's and flunk the rest.

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Zanyinj
I was unable to find which course it was this time. Although I suspect it was
something along those lines again.

There was a similar scandal in 2012 - here's my favorite commentary on that:

[http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2012/09/the_harvard_cheating_...](http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2012/09/the_harvard_cheating_scandal_i.html)

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Symbol
I'm continually disappointed by the increasing disconnect of the lessons of
college with the needs of our modern professional world. Nearly everything
meaningful is done as a collaborate effort, yet in formalized education it is
branded "cheating". Education is not a zero sum game (but grades often are).

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andylei
> increasing disconnect of the lessons of college with the needs of our modern
> professional world. Nearly everything meaningful is done as a collaborate
> effort

what's uniquely modern about collaboration? hasn't collaboration been
important for hundreds of years?

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gcatalfamo
I don't understand, Americans are still getting shocked that is in the
students nature to try and cheat their way to graduation? Both parties are
guilty, one of cheating and the other of being so naive.

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xkcdfanboy
Giving a take-home test and then remanding students for working together is
just silly. You don't wave your ice cream in front of the monkey cage if you
want to keep it.

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yuliyp
I'd hope that you would have higher expectations of Harvard students a bit
more strictly than monkeys.

~~~
nayefc
They're still human beings, you know.

