Harvard investigates 125 students for cheating on final exam • Hacker News Board

Re: Harvard investigates 125 students for cheating on final exam

#41

Post by chc » Thu, Aug 30, 2012, 8:49 PM UTC

waterlesscloud wrote: post #3

Techne wrote: post #2

Very unfortunate. Obviously cheating is a very serious issue, but in this case I feel like something is systematically wrong with your class if half of your students are cheating. Putting people in the position where cheating is such an alluring option is bad user experience. Evolve or die!

Please, let's keep the responsibility for this where it belongs- on those who actually cheated.

People have such weird logic. When 80% of the population is criminalized, we see that as a surefire sign of a bad government. But that completely changes when the population is "students" — then it's all their fault and the administration is just helpless against all these lazy kids.

Without necessarily absolving the students of responsibility for their actions, I don't think it's unreasonable to say that rampant cheating represents a failure on the school's part.

Re: Harvard investigates 125 students for cheating on final exam

#42

Post by danielweber » Thu, Aug 30, 2012, 8:49 PM UTC

danso wrote: post #30

Anechoic wrote: post #24

One thing that I really appreciated at MIT was that when we were given take-home tests or other take-home assignments, it was expected (and often encouraged ) that we collaborate with our classmates. Writing down the exact same answer as another classmate was fine, so long as you documented who you worked with and who contributed what to the assignment. It provided an important lesson since collaboration has been a h…

Perhaps, but isn't there the risk that a charismatic leader could get team members to essentially do the work for him/her? Sure, you could say that's a lesson in life, but ideally, you want a passing grade in engineering mechanics to mean that that person has competency in engineering, not merely the politics and management of engineering. Of course, this risk is mitigated by having the final weighted much heavier th…

On assignments, that ends up with the charismatic leader not understanding what's going on come test time. (I am unfamiliar with collaboration on take-home tests.) The practice questions really are warm-ups for the test in most classes.

Re: Harvard investigates 125 students for cheating on final exam

#43

Post by BasDirks » Thu, Aug 30, 2012, 8:50 PM UTC

chc wrote: post #31

BasDirks wrote: post #5

Let's see them burn. Many would give their right arm to be given the opportunity they had.

Many would give their right arm for the opportunities you have had. Should we all wish for your demise? That seems quite unreasonable to me.

No but in case I squander those opportunities, don't hesitate to fill up the gap.

Re: Harvard investigates 125 students for cheating on final exam

#44

Post by EricDeb » Thu, Aug 30, 2012, 8:50 PM UTC

Having just finished graduate school I think the cheating issue often comes down to a misalignment between what is being taught and the skills actually needed in the real-world.

Most students are at college to get a "piece of paper" that makes it easier to get a job. Unfortunately, I think most of them are also intuitively aware that what they are learning will more than likely be irrelevant in any real business environment. In the realm of CS, how often does one use calculus, linear algebra, unusual algorithms, or automata theory in the standard 9-5 coding job?... Rarely - thus the incentive in students to minimize hard learning in these topics

Re: Harvard investigates 125 students for cheating on final exam

#45

Post by colanderman » Thu, Aug 30, 2012, 8:52 PM UTC

stephencanon wrote: post #22

jvrossb wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why can't it both be true that the students cheated and deserve to be punished and that there was something fundamentally wrong with the course that drove half the students to cheat? If I had to guess it was a basic requirement students had to take whether interested or not and cheating seemed like the easiest way to pass while devoting more time to other pursuits perceived to be more intellectually stimulating. Pure…

Oh, come on. It's not like the course held a gun to their head and made them cheat. They didn't cheat to feed their family. It's (nearly) impossible for a college course to actually "drive half the students to cheat". They're big boys and girls, and they need to be responsible for their decisions. The point of taking a course isn't to get an A. It's to learn something. If the students are too thick to grasp that fact…

Your reasoning is poor.

The point of taking a course isn't to get an A.

No, but sometimes an A makes the difference between graduating or not.

It's not like the course held a gun to their head and made them cheat.

No, but if cheating in the class is common, then it's likely that the difficulty of the class material is artificially inflated to account for students' artificially high performance. If you know this, the professor doesn't know this, and you need an A, then it may be that the only way to get an A is to cheat.

Re: Harvard investigates 125 students for cheating on final exam

#46

Post by Jd » Thu, Aug 30, 2012, 8:52 PM UTC

majormajor wrote: post #40

gms7777 wrote: post #11

I hate to say it, but this isn't that surprising. I recently came from one of these top universities and there's a problematic combination of factors at play: 1. Students are under a ton of stress, have very little time to do work and have very high standards for themselves. 2. Guidelines are not clear defined or communicated as to what is and isn't cheating. There's a ton of grey area. 3. It is incredibly easy to ch…

At a school like Harvard, with their much-touted financial aid where students aren't supposed to have to hold down outside jobs to pay for tuition, how do students end up with very little time to do work? Class itself should take, what, three to five hours on a typical day? That leaves a lot of time for homework and studying. Do people just overwhelm themselves with too many extracurricular activities?

From my experience (Brown), students often have on-campus jobs, take more classes than the norm in order to graduate early or edify themselves, and involve themselves in a variety of extracurricular activities with often intensive time requirements (i.e. sports). All of these contribute to stress. If you are out of town for a debate tournament and then have an exam on Monday morning when you get back, you feel a bit stretched.

Re: Harvard investigates 125 students for cheating on final exam

#47

Post by sur » Thu, Aug 30, 2012, 8:54 PM UTC

Anechoic wrote: post #38

michael_miller wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that giving take home exams might not be the best idea, but I place 100% of the blame on the students for this. It is completely reasonable to give academic honesty instructions to students and request that they be followed. Maybe it's not realistic to expect that the instructions will be followed, but it is certainly reasonable to punish the students for violations of academic honesty. Honestly, I think Harv…

It's a little scary (maybe not surprising) that 2% of Harvard undergrads were involved in this scandal. This incident, combined with the Stuyvesant scandal makes me lose so much faith in the national student body. You've lost faith "in the national student body" based on the actions of a tiny minority of students? Really?

It seems like the GP is saying that based partly on Harvard's reputation, not just the incident itself.

Re: Harvard investigates 125 students for cheating on final exam

#48

Post by danielweber » Thu, Aug 30, 2012, 8:54 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #26

I think cheating is one of the signs of the crumbling of our civilized society. It is a scourge that doesn't stop at final exams, but as we can see in the financial sector one that continues on through life. That said, we lay all the blame on students, but universities themselves are also cheating. Multiple well-known universities in recent years have been exposed as lying,[1] about their enrollment statistics to ran…

About 5 years ago MIT's graduate management Sloan School had a "cheating" incident where potential students could see if they were admitted before they were officially told by trivially modifying the URL of their web account. It was widely discussed on mailing lists with detailed instructions.

When the school found out, it delayed admittance for those students that did so by a year, saying some crap like "in this new post-ENRON age we need to teach that ethics matter." But the only ethics they taught was "don't make the guy in charge look silly."

(I tend to fall on the "don't hack into things" side of arguments here, but the ease of the "hack" as well as the incredibly minor impact it had on anyone of importance just made this all seem way overblown. EDIT Plus, it was MIT. Can't you take a joke?)

Re: Harvard investigates 125 students for cheating on final exam

#49

Post by chc » Thu, Aug 30, 2012, 8:54 PM UTC

stephencanon wrote: post #22

jvrossb wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why can't it both be true that the students cheated and deserve to be punished and that there was something fundamentally wrong with the course that drove half the students to cheat? If I had to guess it was a basic requirement students had to take whether interested or not and cheating seemed like the easiest way to pass while devoting more time to other pursuits perceived to be more intellectually stimulating. Pure…

Oh, come on. It's not like the course held a gun to their head and made them cheat. They didn't cheat to feed their family. It's (nearly) impossible for a college course to actually "drive half the students to cheat". They're big boys and girls, and they need to be responsible for their decisions. The point of taking a course isn't to get an A. It's to learn something. If the students are too thick to grasp that fact…

> The point of taking a course isn't to get an A. It's to learn something. If the students are too thick to grasp that fact, then Harvard made a mistake in admitting them and would do well to kick them out and give their places to students who get it.

Schools generally do a bad job of communicating this if it's actually true. If you get all As but retain nothing, you are rewarded handsomely. If you learn a lot but fail all your courses in the process, you'll be punished severely. If the school is too thick to align its incentives correctly, whose fault is that?

Re: Harvard investigates 125 students for cheating on final exam

#50

Post by draggnar » Thu, Aug 30, 2012, 8:56 PM UTC

pdenya wrote: post #19

tptacek wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can cheat on a final at Harvard and not be expelled?

The article mentions the blurred line between collaborating and cheating. Seems like this is the former since it requires analysis rather than just comparing matching answers.

But the point is... does the line even exist? Why should a line that does not produce optimal results exist? Wouldn't you be able to come up with a better articulated answer to a question if you see the responses of all your peers first? The problem is well then we can't grade you because we can't separate you from your peers. But then why go to school in the first place? To get affirmation or to learn?