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Why I will never pursue cheating again

behind-the-enemy-lines.blogspot.com

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Re: Why I will never pursue cheating again

#451

Post by nostrademons »

roel_v wrote: post #442
nostrademons wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Salary survey here on Hacker News 4 days ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2763932 (When I looked at it last, there were actually a lot fewer responses in the The citation in the poll says that StackExchange's top end is about $200K.

Yes, I saw that survey, but I don't see why it's base salary only; the more logical reading of it is total compensation, and I think many people filled it in as such. 150k+ is the 93th percentile in that survey, and the whole survey is I think biased towards the upper end. But even without that, calling the 93th percentile something that a merely skilled developer can "easily" make is a stretch, to put it mildly. All…

Man, I would've felt so much better about my answer on that survey if I'd assumed it was talking total compensation. :-)

I suppose a lot depends on your definition of "easily". Yes, the poll is biased towards the high end - because it's on Hacker News, and typically people who aren't passionate about programming don't visit here. But what's the question that readers of this comment thread are asking? My guess is it's whether they can be making $150K+ after being out in the real world for 7 years or so.

And I don't think that's all that unreasonable. They're already part of the self-selecting group that the poll is being drawn from. We know from other HN polls that HN skews young: I don't remember offhand the proportion of readers that are over 30, but I believe it was only 15-20%. If we assume that experience and salary are pretty sharply correlated, that's a pretty large chunk of the older crowd that are raking in the big bucks. It's not a lottery ticket; it's something that a good number of the people you're talking with have achieved.

Re: Why I will never pursue cheating again

#452

Post by matmann2001 »

Even as a student, I sympathize with this professor. I've seen how pervasive cheating can be in an academic environment. It's frustrating to know that while one classmate (or myself) is spending hours perfecting an assignment, another is copying/plagiarizing their assignment. It makes the learning experience very stressful. And it's self-perpetuating, as this frustration become the factor that leads more students to cheat. By graduation, you end up with a bunch of students who have just copy and pasted their way through school, who have forgotten how to learn, and who are not prepared.

This article really shines light on why cheating is still so pervasive despite how it damages the learning process. For students, the risk tends to be low while the reward is high. For teachers, the process of eliminating cheating is draining and is often met with negative feedback.

This only leads me to think that cheating will continue to infect our education, until there is a fundamental change in the rewards/feedback system (for students and teachers) in our academic system.

Re: Why I will never pursue cheating again

#453

Post by ori_b »

eropple wrote: post #418
ori_b wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So give them a chance to appeal.

Sure. What I mean is, they'll whine to you anyway, trying to get around the system. And, practically, refusing to talk to them is difficult-to-impossible.

I'm not sure that it should be the professor's job to handle appeals. It should be the same sort of process that schools use to handle appeals for missed tests and work.

You miss a test, you get a zero. You go to the office of the dean with a note or explanation, get them to sign off that you should be allowed to retake, reweight, or whatever else it is that is needed, and then you go to the professor to deal with it.

The same sort of process should probably be put in place for plagarism. The professor flags you, and if you want to appeal, you go to the dean's office, they review the possibly-plagarized paper, and if they feel that the professor was in error, or that the student deserves the benefit of the doubt, they allow some sort of corrective action.

Re: Why I will never pursue cheating again

#454

Post by aidenn0 »

nekitamo wrote: post #287

Computer science undergrad here, final year in a very nice public university. For a long time now I've observed how business majors (my roommates) go on unpunished for years of blatant cheating. It has made me completely lose faith in the system. In computer science, cheating is not such a simple proposition. Our university CS department has a no-bullshit cheating policy: first offense results in failing grade, suspe…

I would be careful generalizing the business school at your university.

I went to Purdue. I started as a Physics major and switched to computer science. I had several friends who started as an engineering or science major and then switched to other majors.

The academic standards in the Physics program were significantly higher than in CS, and liberal arts was a joke. There is a reason for this more than just Physics > CS > Liberal Arts:

Let's say you're a quality student who has decided against a private college for whatever reason (e.g. you don't want 6 figures in student debt) in Indiana:

If you want to major in liberal arts, you go to Indiana U.

If you want to major in CS and you don't mind the medium increase in cost, you go to the University of Illinois

If you want to major in Physics, you go to Purdue.

So there is some selection bias here. I don't know much about business schools, so I don't know if your generalization is valid or not. This is just something I've noticed in my own narrow experience.

Re: Why I will never pursue cheating again

#455

Post by Dove »

hackinthebochs wrote: post #446
Dove wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. The incidentiality of the teaching doesn't enter into it. As long as he is giving grades, he has a responsibility to make a reasonable effort to detect and deter cheating. (I do think the strategy he described -- spending two hours per student trying to force a confession -- is unreasonable. Detection, notification, and escalation to school enforcement is a reasonable approach. Giving up and blaming the s…

>he has a responsibility to make a reasonable effort to detect and deter cheating. I can agree with this. But in the face of an administration that is bent on turning a blind eye, or even punishing the teacher, he has no obligation to carry the burden of defending the integrity of the institution himself. Putting a reasonable effort into detecting cheating is his responsibility. It is not his responsibility to ensure…

I don't know about that. There's still the rest of society to consider. Which is to say, there's still his personal professional integrity.

I guess it depends on the circumstance. If the school knowingly encourages cheating for profit, I would think integrity demands playing whistleblower. In fact, I'd apply that to any organization knowningly doing something shady -- bring it to light or accept guilt as an accomplice.

If the school believes in academic integrity, but the compensation for teachers results in perverse incentives, it is important to do the right thing anyway--defend the academic integrity of the school, work on fixing the system, and in the mean time put social pressure on other teachers to do the right thing until the system is fixed.

I agree that it's not the professor's responsibility to pursue the matter beyond his influence at the school. If there's an office of academic honesty, but it's lax, the best he can do is lobby to improve it. But inasmuch as professors have absolute control over the grades they distribute, I do think they have a responsibility to be fair with them.

I can see leaving an institution over a lack of academic honesty. I can see working to reform or improve one. I can see failing a student for cheating, but washing your hands of it when the school does nothing further. What I cannot see is saying to society at large, "On my reputation as an expert, this student can do calculus," when you aren't sure it's true, for the sake of a less stressful workplace and a higher salary.

Re: Why I will never pursue cheating again

#456

Post by [deleted] »

evilduck wrote: post #390
dkersten wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I felt that I am teaching a class full of kids that come just for the grade, and not for learning. From reading your blog post and your comments here, I got the impression that you cared more about your pay raise than about the students learning. Now, I'll be the first to admit that I could have misinterpreted whats been said and that you were probably a victim of circumstance, but you blame the guy for demonstrating…

My impression was that it was just another (small) data point in the long list of negative incentives for chasing down cheaters. Most of it seemed focused on the disproportionate amount of time it took to enforce the rules, and demonstrating how blatant the cheaters are about it.

[deleted]

Re: Why I will never pursue cheating again

#457

Post by Panos »

evilduck wrote: post #390
dkersten wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I felt that I am teaching a class full of kids that come just for the grade, and not for learning. From reading your blog post and your comments here, I got the impression that you cared more about your pay raise than about the students learning. Now, I'll be the first to admit that I could have misinterpreted whats been said and that you were probably a victim of circumstance, but you blame the guy for demonstrating…

My impression was that it was just another (small) data point in the long list of negative incentives for chasing down cheaters. Most of it seemed focused on the disproportionate amount of time it took to enforce the rules, and demonstrating how blatant the cheaters are about it.

Absolutely correct. The compensation part was just one of the many data points, but a point that many people can relate to. A couple of thousand dollars per year would not make a difference in my life. It is mainly a signal of appreciation for the work.

Re: Why I will never pursue cheating again

#458

Post by crux_ »

As a very random anecdote, I attended NYU myself ages ago and while I was not a business student, I did take classes at Stern.

Unless things have changed, the amount of cheating in Stern is astronomical compared to courses from the other schools within NYU: Of course there were cheating problems elsewhere, but nowhere else was it done as brazenly or as part of the shared culture of the student body.

Re: Why I will never pursue cheating again

#459

Post by gammarator »

jmonegro wrote: post #412
onan_barbarian wrote: post #19

While there's much to be said in favor of more creative assignments that aren't minor variants of last year's assignments, the author has drawn the wrong conclusion from what happened. 22 cheats out of 108 is big - and the real proportion may have been even higher, given that it seemed like he caught only either blatant cheats or conscience-stricken/less brazen cheats (the latter category from when he acted people to…

> 22 cheats out of 108 is big Looks like standard 80/20 to me, nothing surprising.

The 80/20 "rule" arises when quantities are distributed as a power-law with typical indicies [1]. "Incidences of cheating" is not such a quantity.

[1] https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Pareto_princi...

Re: Why I will never pursue cheating again

#460

Post by stonemetal »

ZachPruckowski wrote: post #194
stonemetal wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I don't get is why he spent all that time on it. Catch someone cheating turn them in, no need for the in office histrionics, or long winded lectures about how to site sources.

Because the cost of being wrong[1] or of leaving doubt of guilt could well be a lawsuit or administrative action. A student who gets expelled or suspended for cheating loses a lot of money and has a very, very serious black mark that'll follow them for years. This (a) is not something you want to inflict incorrectly[1], and (b) makes the unconfessed student desperate enough to lash out in a lot of ways. [1] - If your…

At every university I have been attended(not that many) a report of academic dishonesty went to some sort of university investigation process to cover any sort of professor malfeasant(and university CYA). Therefore the professor should do his due diligence but beyond a shadow of a doubt isn't necessary.
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