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It's always intriguing to see how people justify grossly unethical behavior to themselves. I don't think the issue is your disservice to higher education in general or grade systems as a whole, but to your customers, who never receive the education they were meant to, and that they paid for.
Ethics are in the eye of the beholder.
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I agree about the lack of ethics, but that's something to be screened by future employers or school admissions. I don't disagree with schools having penalties for cheating. But on the moral severity scale, it's really an infraction rather than a felony. Would you call jaywalkers bad people? If you want to see why I have such a disdain for academia, here's my story: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16726402
I wouldn't hire you. Attitudes matter. Trust matters. No way would I hire you, given the views you express.
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You cheating to acquire a degree that says you have learned x information devalues that degree for everyone else that has it. That is nothing like crossing the street where you aren't supposed too.
> "2. We only think it is a moral issue because it's been drilled into us since we were kids, and that we think it is not fair to those who don't cheat and devalues the value of their degree." Perhaps GP's point was that since degrees don't actually correlate with 'you have learned x information', degrees don't inherently have value in the first place?
I think they are projecting their own disillusionment after they themself realized the degree doesn't represent knowledge or whatever personal meaning they had attached to it.
I'm really disappointed by the downvotes that sithadmin, misterbowfinger, and I have been receiving in this thread. Let me restate the argument, not in favor of cheating but why it's not the moral issue that everyone makes it out to be: 1. Cheating is only an issue in the artificial world of academia, where it goes against how the system is supposed to work. 2. We only think it is a moral issue because it's been dril…
> Cheating is only an issue in the artificial world of academia, where it goes against how the system is supposed to work. What about other artificial systems with defined rules, like sports? Is doping or other cheating permissible? If so, at all levels, or only professional levels? > * Academic grades and degrees, to the extent that they affect your life after academia, should be based on what you can accomplish or…
Actually you raise a good point. The sports system is like that too, it's just an artificial system. I don't watch sports so I don't care what goes on inside that system.
> Edit: I should point out this isn't a theoretical concern. I personally resent the people who have attempted to 'beat the system' with simple dishonesty and caused me to have to endure uncomfortable and tedious attempts to minimise cheating during my education.
I resent the fact that I had to spend so much time in world renowned educational centers learning so much theory that I never use in the real world.
I resent the fact that we put the college-as-job-credential system on a pedestal instead of coming up with something more efficient and doesn't let professors hang the fucking sword of Damocles over your head.
> So having cheated my way through schooling, I should probably drop a few more bucks into getting some jobs-board contractors to knock out a couple of 'passion projects' to throw onto github?
Nice straw man bro.
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I think that lying is wrong (immoral), even if your assessment of the externalities of it aren't that bad. Here you're not the one lying, you're selling the mechanism of another's dishonesty. It's interesting to think about where that fits, but I can't see it in a favourable light. When you're profiting from it, it makes it hard to fairly assess those externalities. The rationalizing in your post is pretty apparent.…
On the other hand, even a little bit off attention of the professors or assistants would expose every last cheater. Cheaters don't even read the assignments they hand in (I've seen people expelled for handing in a paper where the name of the author on the 2nd page onward was different, seen different people hand in the same paper, ...) A few questions would trivially expose them. Clearly universities simply don't che…
Maybe the schools should put more effort into catching and punishing cheaters. But they shouldn't have to -- if the students were being honest.
The easier and cheaper it is to cheat, the more tempted the students will be. You can lubricate that market by providing the cheating-materials, maybe even by marketing them. Cheating numbers will go up, thus increasing the cost to detect and catch and appropriately deal with cheaters. The last bit is probably the expensive part.
And the more the schools crack down on easily-detectible cheating, the more sophisticated it will get. Sure that means increasing the cost of cheating, but that's an arms race that can only be won by a culture that values honesty. You reinforce that culture by not selling cheating-materials.
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> People who cheat their way to a degree, are lying to future employees about possessing a level of knowledge that they do not have. Not if they don't apply to jobs. > Being able to communicate, and think, in a clear and coherent manner is one of the very foundations of a classic liberal education. It is also one of the most important skills for almost any professional job. You can't assess that by talking to someone…
> Not if they don't apply to jobs This does not apply to the majority of students going to college. Why should a tiny fraction of students be able to drag down the reputation of a college because they do not want to do the work that they signed up to do, paid tuition to be taught how to do, and signed a contract saying that they would honestly complete to the best of their abilities? > You can't assess that by talkin…
Why should colleges penalize against possible future job interview fraud? Pre-crime, anyone?
> It is a matter for colleges to worry about because they are in the business of bestowing credentials backed up by the colleges reputation for doing a good job educating their students. If too many students have a degree from a college but they do not actually know anything, then degrees in general from that college become devalued and it cheats the students who put in all the work legitimately!
Good, the sooner we bury the whole rotten, overpriced system, the sooner we can come up with a better alternative.
> Cheating is not free, it has a real cost to it as companies have to implement additional testing and applicants have to spend their time (which always has a monetary trade off) going through screening that is redundant to the credentials they already have.
Neither is spending $200k on tuition!
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Cheating can take from others. Merit scholarships are given based on class rank. If the #11 student cheats to get to #10, then they took scholarship money that someone else actually earned. This is a very real problem in my school district. Additionally, if you cheated to get good grades and got into a good university because of them, then you probably took the seat of someone that didn't cheat and was not accepted b…
Yes, precisely!!!! The system is. broken. to. begin. with. And not just with cheating, with a number of different factors. What incentive, as a student, do I have to NOT cheat if I won't get caught?
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I've observed all of these in the USA. I suspect this sort of thing transcends cultural and international borders. Possibly amusing anecdote: I know a smart* technical colleague who wrote at least 2 PhD dissertations for former romantic partners. As in "best dissertation award" + famous people on committee + etc , etc. The former romantic partners went on to have distinguished careers in management. * Depending on yo…
>I know a smart* technical colleague who wrote at least 2 PhD dissertations for former romantic partners This is very hard to believe. From my experience this just couldn't work without near full time commitment by the ghost writer. The cheater would also have to be very familiar with the dissertation--to the point where they could have just written it themselves. Pulling this off twice (or more since you said at lea…
I knew a PhD who in a postdoc would routinely plagerize work (lifted verbatim from other papers, passed off as own work). I would be shocked if they didn’t do this to some degree in their thesis too.
This was from a relatively good university in the UK.