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Why I will never pursue cheating again

behind-the-enemy-lines.blogspot.com

31–40 of 506 posts

Re: Why I will never pursue cheating again

#31

"Cheating" is a meaningless concept once you reach college in my opinion. Either students are learning or they're not. They're (usually) paying money to be there and the only applicable metric is if the skills they acquire while chasing down the degree are worth the money they or their parents spend. To that end, I was impressed with the OP's thoughts on deterring this sort of behavior in the future. Because really,…

Others will suffer if the students continue the practice in their later accounting, legal testimony, health and safety practices, and business partnerships.

Do you think after succeeding with cheating through college, they can turn it off like a switch when the stakes are higher?

Re: Why I will never pursue cheating again

#32
Once the author decides that the academic standard allows copying and pasting, it ceases to become cheating - and he has joined those for whom the term "academic honesty" has lost all meaning. Seriously, when 44 hours over the course of a semester is too much work to uphold a minimum standard, the issue is not confined to students and the author has no moral high ground because they have abandoned the tough part of their job and are doing the grading equivalent of cutting and pasting.

Re: Why I will never pursue cheating again

#33
post #15

I don't know what it is with you US Americans and "cheating"... but it seems to be a very touchy subject in your culture, almost like violating someone's honors. I never understood that.

As a student I pay thousands of dollars to earn a degree from a respectable institution. When students cheat and get away with it like in the OP's article, it dilutes the value of my degree.

Re: Why I will never pursue cheating again

#34
post #15

I don't know what it is with you US Americans and "cheating"... but it seems to be a very touchy subject in your culture, almost like violating someone's honors. I never understood that.

Because the cheater gets out the other end of the degree course with a degree they didn't earn. And then they start competing for the same jobs as me.

Re: Why I will never pursue cheating again

#35

"Cheating" is a meaningless concept once you reach college in my opinion. Either students are learning or they're not. They're (usually) paying money to be there and the only applicable metric is if the skills they acquire while chasing down the degree are worth the money they or their parents spend. To that end, I was impressed with the OP's thoughts on deterring this sort of behavior in the future. Because really,…

Yes, the student is the only one suffering. Going to school and not learning anything is pointless and the diploma by itself is worthless in the long run.

Unless it turns into a complete party place, the university will do just fine and employers don't really care what your grades are and how you got them.

Re: Why I will never pursue cheating again

#38
I just have to share my favorite cheating story. And just to let everyone know, this occurred in 1976 when I was an undergrad EE. I wanted to take an elective that was an “easy A” and everyone said, oh, you have to take music appreciation, very easy A. Cool, so I took the course. The basis was that you were supposed to go into listening rooms where there was a library of classical music and become familiar with the pieces and would later be tested on them. Back in those days, recording were on these large round vinyl discs called “records” hee hee, long time ago. I would go to class and this doddering old professor with thick coke bottle bottom glasses would look at the record place it on the turn table and it would start playing and everyone’s hand in the class would go shooting up and they would immediately know what it was. Well, I was dying in this class, I was spending more and more time in the listening rooms and getting no where fast. I felt like the stupidest person in the world. Until finally someone in the class clued me in. They showed me their notes; which went something like this: “blue label with red writing, Bach”, green label with yellow writing and furly loops around, Beethoven”. You get the idea. They were keying off the labels and the poor old professor did not have a clue. Now, I was faced with a real moral dilemma! On the one hand, I had been spending tons of time in the listening room and there is no way the others in the class could catch up with me so if I told on them, I would get and A and they would all probably fail. But on the other hand, if I joined in with them and also cheated, then we would all probably get A’s. What would you do?

If anyone responds to this post, I will tell you what I did in a later post.

Re: Why I will never pursue cheating again

#39
post #10

[deleted]

That's not necessarily true. Lot's of people can "talk the talk" with a highly embellished resume and land a job.

As a result of the cheating, grade inflation becomes worse and a possibly highly able candidate with a 3.4 GPA may completely miss the "GPA filter" on a resume sorting algorithm for a cheater with a 3.6.

Re: Why I will never pursue cheating again

#40

While I sympathize with the instructor and think he should be incentivized to fight cheating, I'm not pleased with the use of services like TurnItIn. Basically, the student gives someone some faceless company a license to whatever they create for perpetuity. Are these companies ever compelled to delete material on request? And who could audit that?

A fellow grad student got blackballed and ultimately kicked out of the program for bringing this up to the chair of the department.
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