Prof Gives Lecture to Prove He Knows Students Cheated; Over 200 Students Confess

In terms of shortcuts, that would depend on what they were. Some are fine, others are not. E.g. 'borrowing' answers from other students on homework is a shortcut, but it's okay if the student understands the material in the end; cheating on an exam is not an okay shortcut.

"Surprisingly hard" is the name of the game. I mentioned that writing exams is hard to motivate why an instructor would use a test bank. At a research school (I'm at a research focused school), being an instructor is only a small part of a professors (or grad students) job. Using a test bank (from books/publishers or private ones) is considered to be fine, as it lets them focus more time on the things they "should" be doing. Many things that are considered okay in this context are abhorred in others, e.g. having grad students be primary instructors is okay here but would be taboo at a teaching focused school. Of course, most teaching focused schools don't have big grad programs.

Incidentally, I'm on track to graduate this year. I'm sending out academic job applications and I find myself more drawn to teaching schools than I thought I'd be.

That's the whole freakin' point: the test is supposed to measure your understanding. The honest way to improve your test scores is to improve your understanding of the material. The professors administer tests, the students study and learn, this is the intended way of things. This is the way traditional college classes work, and if you want to go to college and get grades, then you have two choices: study and earn your grades honestly, or lie and cheat.

Everybody encounters a class that they end up cutting corners in, of course. For example, you can try to predict what topics will be on the test and study those most carefully. You can try to predict which problems will be on the test and learn to solve those. The question is, are you actually trying to learn something the class is designed to teach and hoping that what you learn will serve you well in the test, or are you trying to improve your score without learning anything useful? Drilling pattern recognition of potential test problems is not learning. That method relies on your mind's ability to recognize specific verbal patterns and associate them with other verbal patterns. It has nothing to do with understanding the material. From the perspective of learning, it's a complete waste of time.

By the way, I agree with you that professors should lift questions and answers from their lecture notes with great restraint, for exactly the same reason. One or two here and there to reward diligent attendance is fine, but if it's a significant portion of the test, then the professor is essentially conspiring with the students to inflate the test results by relying on familiar phrases or diagrams to trigger students' memories of how to answer a particular question. That's actually a good reason for teachers to share testing materials: will students still understand the material when their professor's particular phrasing is not present? I heard a student complain he got a physics problem wrong because the professor always said "inclined plane," but the test problem talked about a "slanted floor." Clearly the student did not understand the material and was relying on verbal associations; no matter whose fault it was (the student's or the professor's) it was good that the test result reflected the student's lack of understanding. In the real world, an inclined plane does not say to you, "Hi there, I'm an 'inclined plane.' Does that ring a bell?" Or if it does, it will probably not use exactly the same words your college physics professor used in his lectures! That's a very good reason for a professor to use problems written by someone else.

At its worst, universities will sometimes assume a student accused of wrongdoing is lying, and punish the student based solely on the word of the faculty/staff bringing the charge. This happens in lesser cases where the administration thinks it can get away with it, and when the student is frightened of harsher sanctions that might be inflicted if the student asserts his or her rights and demands a full hearing process.

At its best (typically in more serious cases), the disciplinary process resembles a civil case (except instead of a jury, it's more of a tribunal) where the required proof is a preponderance of the evidence.

It's no wonder 200 students confessed. If I was in that class and I'd never seen the test bank, I'd have confessed too. It's been my observation that the disciplinary process is better at railroading not-provably-guilty students than punishing provably-guilty students. I would not want to take my chances.