Earlier quoted context omitted.
I spent a few years at Caltech in an academic role (not as a student). I never understood the rationale behind the unsupervised take-home exams. Could you elaborate what is it that makes it a 'success', in your opinion? The shortcomings that seem obvious to me are: - Penalizes honesty - Implied notion that Caltech students are "honourable" and honest. How is this achieved in practice?
I was an undergrad at Rice where we had a very strong honor code. Unsupervised exams were common, and to the best of my knowledge cheating was very rare. If you were accused of cheating then you went before the Honor Council, which was run entirely by students. I considered this an enormous success. It created an atmosphere where we were treated with respect, and where we were expected to treat others in the same way…
The council does have teeth. My friend was sent in and found guilty of cheating on a test. They got kicked out in short order. The straight-A student they'd allegedly copied the answers from got a few months' suspension. I never got an explanation as to why the sentence differed.
No system is perfect.
A professor questioned me as a witness at the "student council" hearing. I expected a student to do the job. The questions were all worded to make my testimony skew towards a guilty verdict, calling my own integrity into question. This is expected if there was a mechanism for an organized defense, but I was never questioned by the "defense attorney". I left the questioning disturbed and frankly afraid for the safety of my own academic record despite not having done anything wrong. Guilt by association. It felt like a witch hunt and a front for implicit faculty power. My friend still denies wrongdoing and had to rebuild their degree from scratch at another institution. They are still proud of the time spent at Rice, even though they feel their degree was taken away unfairly. The only evidence I heard against my friend was that they had made the same mathematical error as the other implicated party.
My first take-away from the situation was that organizations based on trust work well, but it is critical to have robust mechanisms in place for dealing with moments where that trust gets called into question. It is human nature to take trust away faster than it is given, even if it turns out there was no wrongdoing.
My second take-away is that organizations based on trust tend to punish violations disproportionately, especially if the violation reflects badly upon the group.
My third take-away (only realized years after the fact) was that trust-based systems tend to create a tyranny of implicit rules that tend to exclude newcomers (like students) unless specifically addressed.
I'm still very much in favor of a high-trust environment, but it is far from a cure-all. I find it's a prerequisite to a robust system, but must be paired with counterbalances.
For my beef with the Student Council, Rice was an overwhelmingly positive and nurturing experience. If I ever decide to get another degree, that's where I'll go, and I always recommend it to prospective students with an independent streak.