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Harvard Students in Cheating Scandal Say Collaboration Was Accepted

nytimes.com

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Re: Harvard Students in Cheating Scandal Say Collaboration Was Accepted

#41

Post by mbreese »

oob205 wrote: post #21
tlrobinson wrote: post #14

"Some students asked whether there was a fundamental contradiction between telling students to use online resources, but not to discuss the test with each other." No.

Um..yes. Study groups or websites are online resources. So is facebook. If a student posts the questions online and starts discussions with anonymous posters, or even reads relevant discussions posted online before the test, how is that different from discussing with one another. There are plenty of ways to have a test that explicitly prevents collaboration. This professor clearly did not try.

There is a fundamental difference between using online resources to find an answer to a question and collaborating with others to find the same answer. Part of the grade is based on how well you can find the answers, not how well your collective group can.

If the test is open book, open Internet, that doesn't mean you can ask your friends on Facebook for help, just because Facebook is on the Internet.

I think that the class was likely poorly designed, but that doesn't mean that the students are all in the clear.

Re: Harvard Students in Cheating Scandal Say Collaboration Was Accepted

#42

Post by trhtrsh »

monjaro wrote: post #2

For being at an elite "best-of-the-best" school, these students sure sound like a bunch of spoiled children. The reasons for cheating seem to vary from "it was a hard course so I had to cheat" to "everyone does it" to "it's an open book test, so we should be allowed to cheat".

Note that the class in question is a Government clas that had a reputation as the easiest course in school, taken by students who wanted to coast to a degree. It's a far cry from the bastions of intellectual inquiry found in other departments. But this year, the professor decided to change the course's reputation, and the students were caught by surprise.

Re: Harvard Students in Cheating Scandal Say Collaboration Was Accepted

#43

Post by trhtrsh »

rhizome wrote: post #35
arjunnarayan wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you not been paying attention to the entitlement and attitudes of the global financial elite in 2009-2010? This was precisely their response to the mismanagement of the banks: everybody was doing it, it was accepted, now bail us out and leave.

And many, many of those people, in the industry, regulatory, and political sides, learned that stuff at schools like Harvard.

They didn't learn it at Harvard, so much as they didn't learn any different at Harvard.

Re: Harvard Students in Cheating Scandal Say Collaboration Was Accepted

#44

Post by trhtrsh »

grandalf wrote: post #5

The worst part is that cheating indicates a strong cynicism about the course and the value of learning the material. I thought elite schools were able to recruit people with intellectual curiosity and character. Clearly the admissions formula is broken.

The admissions formula is working as intended, filling a diverse class with a mix of scholars and coddled legacies:

http://www.quora.com/College-and-University-Admissions/What-...

Re: Harvard Students in Cheating Scandal Say Collaboration Was Accepted

#45

Post by waterlesscloud »

mbreese wrote: post #41
oob205 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Um..yes. Study groups or websites are online resources. So is facebook. If a student posts the questions online and starts discussions with anonymous posters, or even reads relevant discussions posted online before the test, how is that different from discussing with one another. There are plenty of ways to have a test that explicitly prevents collaboration. This professor clearly did not try.

There is a fundamental difference between using online resources to find an answer to a question and collaborating with others to find the same answer. Part of the grade is based on how well you can find the answers, not how well your collective group can. If the test is open book, open Internet, that doesn't mean you can ask your friends on Facebook for help, just because Facebook is on the Internet. I think that th…

It's not even really about how well you can find the answers, it's more about what you'll learn while you're searching for and thinking about the answers.

That process is completely cut short if you just copy someone else's answer.

Re: Harvard Students in Cheating Scandal Say Collaboration Was Accepted

#46

Post by clarky07 »

I think a case of widespread "cheating" like this is a good indication there was something wrong with the course and the professor. If the material would have been covered in class and not purposefully tricky it's likely there wouldn't have been cheating.

Also, open book open Internet take home test might as well be code for group test. I always found that to be an absurd way to give a test. If you want to not have cheating give the test in class over the material covered in the course.

Re: Harvard Students in Cheating Scandal Say Collaboration Was Accepted

#47

Post by NathanKP »

grandalf wrote: post #5

The worst part is that cheating indicates a strong cynicism about the course and the value of learning the material. I thought elite schools were able to recruit people with intellectual curiosity and character. Clearly the admissions formula is broken.

I think it is important for students to be cynical about their schools and recognize that there is a huge difference between academia and real life.

Most of schooling is complete crap that you'll never use, or in the case of computer sciences especially it is outdated and/or barely practical by the time you graduate and get a job.

What schooling is important for is teaching how to collaborate and how to learn. Most of the learning you'll actually use on the job is stuff you'll learn on your own or after you are hired by working with other people.

In my opinion from what I read in this article these students working together to figure out a tough test and collaborating are using their brains and learning how to accomplish things. That is vastly more important than an arbitrary, contrived, academia model of learning.

Re: Harvard Students in Cheating Scandal Say Collaboration Was Accepted

#48

Post by cwdutch »

"For being at an elite "best-of-the-best" school, these students sure sound like a bunch of spoiled children", "They're not the people who ever build cool things anyway though, so who cares." - These and similar sentiments seem a bit common on HN and, to me, seem rather myopic and, frankly, immature. The latter statement is pretty clearly false and I don't plan on listing examples to demonstrate that.

Going to a "best-of-best" school is rarely not in someone's best interest. I did go to Harvard undergrad and I did not attend YC, but the draw is similar: sure the prestige matters and I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing, bu the real value is in the people that you live and work with, both peers and mentors.

Does giving money help you get into Harvard? I'm sure it does and if that money benefits the undergraduate population more than having someone who is subjectively less deserving in that class is a detriment, then it is in all students' best interest to have the paying member accepted.

Regarding the cheating: It happens and I'm sure it happens at every campus. I don't think that's what happened to half of this class. It's a large class, it's probably required for Gov concentrators, and it seems clear that the expectations were not understood by the students or the teaching fellows. What I DID do a lot of was pool notes in preparation for an exam, and I wouldn't be surprised if that is responsible for a lot of the consistencies in test answers. Why redefine a term that you have a ("the") definition for in your notes? And honestly, I think it's healthy to have varying levels of respect for different material. If I want to be a physicist, I'm going to really make sure I understand linear algebra. For the Core class on Chinese history, I'm going to pool notes, cram, and try to scrape an A, because the A means more to me than the knowledge.

Sorry to address several topics; I've been reading HN for a while and this is my first comment, so I'm still learning the ropes.

Re: Harvard Students in Cheating Scandal Say Collaboration Was Accepted

#49

Post by zerostar07 »

gizmo wrote: post #16

Most people here are saying that the students were clearly in the wrong. "Lack intellectual curiosity and character". "spoiled children". I don't agree at all. Aside from the formal rules, smart people pick up on which rules can be broken safely. In fact, knowing which rules in life you should break and which rules you should follow is probably a critical factor for success in life. Jaywalking is illegal in most (all…

Except that school is not real life. It's like a game or a sport where you train for real life. Is it right to unilaterally break the rules of a game?

Re: Harvard Students in Cheating Scandal Say Collaboration Was Accepted

#50

Post by patmcguire »

grandalf wrote: post #5

The worst part is that cheating indicates a strong cynicism about the course and the value of learning the material. I thought elite schools were able to recruit people with intellectual curiosity and character. Clearly the admissions formula is broken.

80% of kids at elite schools come through the same kind of feeder system of either good local public schools or private schools.

In that system there's a series of successively narrower hoops you have to jump through - if there's only one junior high that teaches math beyond a certain point and not everyone can go there, those kids are going to be better prepared for the high school that teaches more advanced things, so they'll make up a disproportionate amount. Since it's really hard to on the track once you're not on it, at every level of evaluation and selection you keep selecting out of smaller and smaller sections of the initial pool.

The people who come out of that system tend to be supremely competent, but in a limited way. If you take a stand in high school approaching a topic from a different angle and a teacher doesn't like it and gives you a C (the horror), when it comes time to apply for Harvard there are an essentially limitless number of competitors who didn't and who got the A. So people who naturally play it safe and cynical tend to move on, and people who don't tend to adapt or get cut.

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