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Harvard investigates 125 students for cheating on final exam

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Re: Harvard investigates 125 students for cheating on final exam

#71

Post by chc »

stephencanon wrote: post #62
chc wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> after graduation That is out of the school's control. It isn't really relevant to the incentives set by the school.

What handsome rewards do you imagine are heaped upon A students while still in school? If the students in question are incapable of looking ahead 1-3 years, that doesn't exactly speak well of them either. I won't pretend that there isn't pressure on students to get As. But that doesn't mean we should condone students doing whatever it takes to get an A; it may mean that we should reduce the pressure on the students t…

> What handsome rewards do you imagine are heaped upon A students while still in school?

Scholarships, honors, Dean's List, general praise, etc. And students who get bad grades are given the stink-eye no matter how clever they are. In general, students who get good grades are just treated better than students who fail. Is that not your experience?

This case is actually a good example of the phenomenon. The students don't appear to have been punished for not learning. According to the story, they didn't copy any answers — it just looks like they discussed the subject matter. It may well be that these students learned better from collaborating than they would have from working separately. I know I usually did in school. But because it gave them an advantage in the grading system that the school didn't want them to have, they were punished for it. Learning doesn't appear to be the primary concern here.

(I don't mean to say that I think they should cheat. I'm just pointing out that they may well have learned better than they otherwise would have, but that doesn't matter because learning is not the overriding concern here.)

Re: Harvard investigates 125 students for cheating on final exam

#72

Post by kd0amg »

danielweber wrote: post #48
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…

I haven't thought this through at all, but what is problematic about students finding out their admission results before whatever magical date? At first glance, it doesn't seem like the students are worse off (they have more time to plan/act based on their admission result and are free to not look at the information if they don't want it), nor does it seem like the school is better off (I can't think of a good way for them to take advantage of students' uncertainty right now).

Re: Harvard investigates 125 students for cheating on final exam

#73

Post by kevinw »

calvinlough wrote: post #7

It's funny how they think it's a problem of educating students about what isn't considered acceptable behavior. The students knew what they were doing, they just compared the probability of getting caught with the reward and made a decision.

I agree completely. I remember that cheating in college (at least on a small scale -- e.g. copying homework in certain STEM classes with a "right" answer) was common and not viewed as risky behavior. I doubt that any of the people who cheated would have said that they felt they were morally in the right or even in a gray area if confronted. Cheating is more akin to stealing a laptop from an empty dorm room than it is to running afoul of some arcane law that few people have ever heard of.

Given the high value that many desirable career paths (e.g. consulting, finance, academia) place on a good GPA, and the low probability of getting caught, the risk/reward tradeoff from cheating is naturally going to tempt people to make the unscrupulous choice.

Re: Harvard investigates 125 students for cheating on final exam

#74

Post by stephencanon »

chc wrote: post #71
stephencanon wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What handsome rewards do you imagine are heaped upon A students while still in school? If the students in question are incapable of looking ahead 1-3 years, that doesn't exactly speak well of them either. I won't pretend that there isn't pressure on students to get As. But that doesn't mean we should condone students doing whatever it takes to get an A; it may mean that we should reduce the pressure on the students t…

> What handsome rewards do you imagine are heaped upon A students while still in school? Scholarships, honors, Dean's List, general praise, etc. And students who get bad grades are given the stink-eye no matter how clever they are. In general, students who get good grades are just treated better than students who fail. Is that not your experience? This case is actually a good example of the phenomenon. The students d…

Harvard doesn't award scholarships based on grades and they don't have a Dean's list. I can't speak to honors at Harvard, but at the Ivies with which I am more familiar, departmental honors carry a lot more weight than that magna/summa nonsense, and are awarded based on advanced work in your major, not on your GPA.

I'm sure that students are praised for getting 'A's, but are they men and women, or are they golden retrievers? I was mostly an 'A' student as an undergrad, but I certainly never felt that I was "given the stink-eye" on the occasions that I earned a 'C'.

To be clear, I'm not saying that 'B' and 'C' students are better off than 'A' students; I'm just observing that in my experience, they are also generally no worse off at the Ivies.

I agree that there are silly incentives to get 'A's. We should probably do something about that. But that doesn't make it unreasonable to expect the alleged "best and brightest" to be able to see past those silly incentives.

Re: Harvard investigates 125 students for cheating on final exam

#75

Post by aik »

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…

>> I think cheating is one of the signs of the crumbling of our civilized society.

I think cheating is a sign of an over emphasis or overly large focus on external motivators (or artificial targets) rather than on things that actually matter[1]. People are much less likely to cheat on things that they directly care about or are based in tangible reality. With all else removed, cheating is a great way of meeting the target.

A grade on a test in a boring course is a perfect example of an artificial target that creates an unhealthy imbalance in a students' mind. Since the knowledge itself (or the growth potential from the course) is perceived as irrelevant or non-existent, the only thing left to care about is the grade, and so all else becomes removed...

[1] Ie. Over industrialization or standardization.

Re: Harvard investigates 125 students for cheating on final exam

#76

Post by rayiner »

aik wrote: post #75
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…

>> I think cheating is one of the signs of the crumbling of our civilized society. I think cheating is a sign of an over emphasis or overly large focus on external motivators (or artificial targets) rather than on things that actually matter[1]. People are much less likely to cheat on things that they directly care about or are based in tangible reality. With all else removed, cheating is a great way of meeting the t…

People are bad at distinguishing between real targets and artificial targets. E.g. an exam in a "boring" course is not an artificial target. It serves important functions to the university and the student. It's an abstraction but that does not make it artificial.

The attitude that cheating is okay on "artificial targets" is the same sort of attitude that leads to ignoring things like financial regulations ("they don't really apply in _this_ case").

Re: Harvard investigates 125 students for cheating on final exam

#77

Post by rayiner »

falcolas wrote: post #65
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…

Honestly, I don't think it's a failing of "Civilized Society", as much as it is a reflection of the value we place on academic scores over what a student actually knows. South Korea has a terrible problem with cheating, and correspondingly harsh penalties for cheating - all because they have put such a high value on their student's scores; those scores determine a child's future. If your future was on the line, and y…

> If your future was on the line, and you didn't have the chops to make it on ability alone, what's to loose by cheating?

That's the same sort of thinking that people who take bribes to hook up phone service use to justify their actions. The small bribe is not a lot of money to the person in the nice neighborhood who is hooking up phone service, but is good money for the underpaid service worker who takes the bribe. What does he have to lose by cheating?

Re: Harvard investigates 125 students for cheating on final exam

#78

Post by tzs »

mikexstudios wrote: post #70
lesterbuck wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a counterpoint, at Caltech during the 70s (at least) it was pretty standard to have a take home final that was (1) no collaboration, (2) closed book, and (3) timed. In fact, I very clearly remember screaming out loud on hard tests as time ticked away. Thank goodness I was in a deserted campus building in the middle of the night. You could study/cram all your notes and texts that you wanted before you put everythin…

The majority of classes at Caltech still have take home exams like you described. For midterms and finals, the exams were handed out at the beginning of the week and due at the end of the week. More often than not, they were open book (although the joke was that those books weren't going to help you solve the problems anyway). The honor code at Caltech was taken very seriously and in my opinion, the students reciproc…

My freshman year (1977-78) I was what was then known as a "computroll": someone who spends far too much time in the computing center, usually to the detriment of their academic performance. I managed to flame out so spectacularly first and second terms that I had to petition to be allowed to stay for third term. I was allowed, on the condition that I pass all my third term classes.

It was close. It came down to one exam where I knew that if I got this one question, I would pass, and if I did not get it, I would fail and be kicked out of school. I also knew exactly what equation I needed from the textbook to solve the problem. I could visualize what page it was on, and exactly where it was on the page--I just couldn't visualize the damned equation itself.

I was alone in my room, and the book was sitting closed on my desk just a foot or two away. It would have taken less than 10 seconds to glance at the equation I needed and pass that exam. But it was a closed book exam and peeking would violate the honor system, so peeking was out of the question.

So, I failed the exam and got kicked out.

I spend the next year at my local community college, taking courses in psychology, anthropology, and economics to show that (1) I could actually do college level academic work (2) even in subjects that weren't in my main interests. I also took a computer course, to show that I could succeed in college course even when I have access to a computer, to show I could keep my computroll tendencies in check.

Caltech let me back in, and I even was able to transfer enough credits from the community college courses to come back as a sophomore. And since I had graduated high school in three years, the year at the community college actually dropped me back to where my age matched my classmates instead of being a year younger. So it all worked out reasonably.

Re: Harvard investigates 125 students for cheating on final exam

#79

Post by gsibble »

Something really doesn't add up here. 125 students collaborating on a final would not only be difficult to organize but would require a lot of coordination. Not to mention getting 125 students to collectively decide to cheat and not discuss it.

How would this even happen?

My educated guess would be a complete, graded test from a previous year passed around. That would not require 125 students conspiring together, only that one test was somehow available.

This problem was rampant at Vanderbilt where fraternities and sororities would keep old, graded tests for every class on campus. It was widely recognized for the reason that Greek GPAs were higher than non-Greek. I dated a sorority VP and got to see the massive file cabinets with all of the tests and watch all of her "sisters" use them constantly, without any concern for the morality of the action. (edit: To be clear, I was offered and refused access to the files)

Re: Harvard investigates 125 students for cheating on final exam

#80

Post by tptacek »

tzs wrote: post #78
mikexstudios wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The majority of classes at Caltech still have take home exams like you described. For midterms and finals, the exams were handed out at the beginning of the week and due at the end of the week. More often than not, they were open book (although the joke was that those books weren't going to help you solve the problems anyway). The honor code at Caltech was taken very seriously and in my opinion, the students reciproc…

My freshman year (1977-78) I was what was then known as a "computroll": someone who spends far too much time in the computing center, usually to the detriment of their academic performance. I managed to flame out so spectacularly first and second terms that I had to petition to be allowed to stay for third term. I was allowed, on the condition that I pass all my third term classes. It was close. It came down to one e…

I have no idea if I'm this honest, because I've never been tested this way, but I will say this: I want to spend my career working with people like you. o.O
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