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Princeton mandates proctoring for in-person exams, upending 133 year precedent

dailyprincetonian.com

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Re: Princeton mandates proctoring for in-person exams, upending 133 year precedent

#551

Post by [deleted] »

dlcarrier wrote: post #460
bluegatty wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe a bit that - but it's far more the change of elite 'class' institutions - to elite 'competitive' institutions. 'Grades Did Not Matter' 100 years ago so much. It was where 'the only educated people sent their kids to be educated'. Or maybe the nouveau riche bourgois did. Now it's a 'Giant International Competition'. You can see this where students are competitive with grades elsewhere in the world. They're compe…

What you're talking about is often called elite overproduction: https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/the-elite-overproduction-hypot... There's a rather technical but not too dry book about how elite overproduction tends to cycle, with comparisons of past cycles: https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691232607/we...

[deleted]

Re: Princeton mandates proctoring for in-person exams, upending 133 year precedent

#552

Post by cucumber3732842 »

meroes wrote: post #452
marsten wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly right. Gone are the days when you could get a C+ average at Harvard and still land a good job or a spot in a prestigious law program – purely by virtue of having gone to Harvard. Everyone is in competition now. Everyone has to prove their worth, all the time. It's more egalitarian but it also creates a lot of stress.

Egalitarian? Let me explain healthcare right now. To get into a radiation tech program, there are 260 applicants, almost all with all As, for 20 slots at my local community college. Maybe in the very first instant you’d think it’s merit based. But, EVERYONE is playing the game. Getting homework and tests from friends who already took the class, taking classes at several different schools to get the easier teachers, p…

Even among trades where you can move up the initial ranks simply by showing up sober and working once you get to the point where you want to level up by striking out on your own it's all the same shit. Instead of paying a tutor you're paying a consultant and/or an accountant to tell you the answer. Instead of the school or licensing board asking you questions where wrong answers will have an opportunity cost of many dollars it's the government.

Re: Princeton mandates proctoring for in-person exams, upending 133 year precedent

#553

Post by Forgeties79 »

grey-area wrote: post #469
Forgeties79 wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I went to a school that actually tried to enforce it, and unfortunately it ended up being enforced wildly disproportionately along racial lines. My school had a very simple rule: if you were caught cheating, you were expelled. No strikes, no exceptions. That is a massive burden to put on an educator. Getting expelled from your university is a very serious, mandated fork in the road for anyone it happens to. So what d…

The obvious answer would be to make the punishment more proportionate. Caught cheating in an exam? Lose half the marks for that exam (for example). Expulsion is far too harsh if cheating is widespread but there should be some penalty.

Agreed. And they finally changed it to a multi-strike system with different punishments. Which is good!

Re: Princeton mandates proctoring for in-person exams, upending 133 year precedent

#554

Post by rayiner »

Forgeties79 wrote: post #550
rayiner wrote: post #540

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does a student know how much cheating goes unreported in each group to form an opinion as to whether the policy is being applied fairly?

I’m an alum now, not a student, but even college students can submit a FOIA request. Additionally, the school can look in to it if it wants. The possibilities are near-endless for getting this kind of info. There’s also the simple fact that it’s not like it’s a secret when someone is expelled. I don’t understand why you think it’s so impossible for people to prove this problem exists. For starters, they could simply…

I didn’t say it was “impossible.” I just asked you for your evidence. Do you have evidence similarly situated individuals were treated differently? Do you have evidence of events of cheating going unreported? I’m not saying you’re wrong about your ultimate conclusion. I’m asking about the type of evidence you believe is sufficient to support that conclusion.

The fact that most teachers were uncomfortable reporting might suggest enforcement was self selecting, but what makes you think it was the particularly racist teachers self selecting into enforcement? And under Title VI, which is what your allegation amounts to, disparate impact isn’t a valid theory of of discrimination: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_v._Sandoval.

Again, strict rules against cheating are societally critical. Petty corruption and cheating is a huge tax on a society, and countries like Singapore and China have greatly improved the lives of ordinary people by taking draconian measures to stamp it out. So you have a very heavy burden if you’re arguing against such rules based on allegations of racial bias.

Re: Princeton mandates proctoring for in-person exams, upending 133 year precedent

#555

Post by limbicsystem »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #504
rayiner wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He or she is telling on himself. Cheaters always project. I looked at materials hidden in my desk for one question during a quiz in fifth grade and it still gnaws at me. Cheaters suck.

I am curious if there is a specific personality trait that is hard-wired (from birth) into certain people (like the Big Five OCEAN psychology model) to adhere more closely to honour codes. I too had a pretty strong natural adherence, even from a young age, and no one "beat it into me".

I don't know about the big 5 but in the six-factor 'open source' version (the HEXACO) the 'H' stands for 'honesty/humility' https://hexaco.org/

Re: Princeton mandates proctoring for in-person exams, upending 133 year precedent

#556

Post by cucumber3732842 »

marticode wrote: post #438
badlibrarian wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The morgue manager at Harvard Medical School spent five years selling donated body parts online. The Cornell president just backed his Cadillac into a student asking him a question in a parking lot. This isn't high-trust culture. It's people who stopped believing anyone was watching.

> It's people who stopped believing anyone was watching. Which, in the era of social media, video surveillance, smartphones and dashcams, is crazy. Once you leave your home, you have to assume everything you do is recorded and might end up online or in court.

These people don't operated under that assumption because they run the systems. They don't care if it's recorded because the system will never make a big deal out of it. Ain't no different than a cop driving drunk because his coworkers won't prosecute him.

Re: Princeton mandates proctoring for in-person exams, upending 133 year precedent

#558

Post by fingerlocks »

rayiner wrote: post #542
nerdsniper wrote: post #499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We do have "little libraries" where anyone can take or leave books in many people's yards. But I haven't seen the honor system produce stands in urban areas for the past 10+ years.

We have a little honor system library in our neighborhood near the playground. But I’ve never seen anything like that in Baltimore, DC, or Philadelphia.

They are everywhere in Seattle. Some neighborhoods have them on almost every block. This had led to some creative variations on the concept, such as the Little Free Pantry, Little Free Art Gallery, Little Free Toolbox, Pottery, Boutique, Toybox, etc.

Not complaining. It’s a neat concept. And if you have a bunch of crap you want to get rid, it’s a lot of fun to build a big birdhouse looking thing, prop it up on the side walk, and keep it stocked with all the crap you don’t want anymore. This is why I created the Little Free Lumberyard to discard my woodworking offcuts. Seriously considering expanding into e-waste because it works so damn well.

Re: Princeton mandates proctoring for in-person exams, upending 133 year precedent

#559

Post by dbvn »

mystraline wrote: post #151
dbvn wrote: post #4

Crazy it took them 133 years to do the obvious. Assuming your *entire* student-base is morally superior to the general population

The elite have ALWAYS had special rules. Whereas the rest of us were always assumed to be cheaters until absolutely cleared otherwise. Just look at how people are treated by the dalits who run Proctorio. We were teated as less than human.

Yeah but they're lying to themselves. They cheated the whole time - guaranteed.

Re: Princeton mandates proctoring for in-person exams, upending 133 year precedent

#560

Post by nerdsniper »

avazhi wrote: post #526
nerdsniper wrote: post #506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is just racist. At Princeton, 56 undergrads are Chinese [0]. That's about 1%. Not "half the student body". 0: https://davisic.princeton.edu/sites/g/files/toruqf2371/files...

I don't think you know what racist means. Either way, international students make up a huge percentage of the student population, as evidenced by your documentation. And in fact, it's too funny to me that you specify undergrad - keeps you from mentioning that there were 533 Chinese grad students, nearly 5x more than the the country with the 2nd most grad students, India.

What does racist mean?

I don’t know why specifying undergraduate is “too funny to you”…I specified undergrad because TFA was about undergrads. At no point did TFA mention any graduate student body - but it took care to explicitly reference decisions and feedback from multiple specific undergraduate bodies:

- (Undergraduate) Honor Committee [0]

- Senior Survey

- Undergraduate Student Government

- Dean of Undergraduate Students

- Faculty-Student Committee on Discipline [1]

> In The Daily Princetonian’s 2025 Senior Survey of over 500 seniors, 29.9 percent of respondents reported that they had cheated on an assignment or exam during their time at Princeton. 44.6 percent of senior respondents reported knowledge of Honor Code violations that they chose not to report. Only 0.4 percent of seniors responded saying that they had reported a peer for an Honor Code violation.

An Undergraduate Student Government survey of students cited in the proposal reportedly found that “a majority would favor proctoring or are indifferent to any change,” though a “sizeable minority opposes it on the grounds that students should behave honorably, and that faculty and students should trust each other given the 1893 Honor Code compact.”

The proposal states that Gordin met with and received endorsements on the policy from “current and former student chairs of the Honor Committee; colleagues from the Office of the Dean of Undergraduate Students and the McGraw Center for Teaching and Learning; the Faculty-Student Committee on Discipline; and the Academics Chair of the Undergraduate Student Government.”

“Undergraduates and faculty are realistic in understanding that having an instructor supervising examinations will not eradicate cheating,” the proposal notes. “However, they believe that there will be a significant deterrent effect, and that having an additional witness in the room will reduce pressure on students to notice and report concerns while they are themselves completing exams.”

0: https://honor.princeton.edu/front : Note that the “Honor Committee” is an undergraduate body, there is no graduate Honor Committee at Princeton.

1: https://odus.princeton.edu/student-support-and-community-sta... “ composed of faculty members, undergraduate students, and administrators, adjudicates all potential violations of academic integrity regulations by undergraduate students” (has nothing at all to do with graduate students)

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