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

Post by cbau » Thu, May 14, 2026, 4:19 AM UTC

bluegatty wrote: post #352

CSMastermind wrote: post #275

People blame AI but in reality it's more about America transitioning from a high-trust society to a low-trust one.

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…

Post by alfiedotwtf » Thu, May 14, 2026, 4:20 AM UTC

raincom wrote: post #417

marsten wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Academic integrity committees at prestigious schools are horribly lax. They want these types of issues to go away quietly. I have a friend who in college had another student take his test from the "complete" pile, erase my friend's name, and put on his own instead. It was only through blind luck that my friend figured it out. He, the TA, and the professor reported it – with smoking gun proof – but nothing happened. T…

I know a guy who TA'ed at Stanford in the 1970's. He said his professor told him to give students “gentleman’s B’s” even when their work was not fully up to par, because many of them would eventually become part of the country’s future elite and power structure.

Post by bluefirebrand » Thu, May 14, 2026, 4:32 AM UTC

marsten wrote: post #366

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…

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.

Post by bluefirebrand » Thu, May 14, 2026, 4:40 AM UTC

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #15

hcurtiss wrote: post #2

Princeton is a strange place. What on earth could be the objection to proctoring? I'd much rather have a proctor than have to narc on a classmate. And even then, the proctor just reports the matter to a student-run body? Wild.

> What on earth could be the objection to proctoring? There is a unique pride in being part of a community built around honor. You see this on the Swiss metro and in small-town vegetable stalls. Unproctored exams force every student to weigh the value of their honor against a better grade. That's a personal moral reckoning that might be worth the entire degree.

Post by Nifty3929 » Thu, May 14, 2026, 4:45 AM UTC

busyant wrote: post #346

I was a grad student @ Princeton a handful of decades ago. I was a TA for a few classes and, given the honor code, we did not proctor the exams for undergrads. We just handed them out (left the room) and returned to collect them at the end. - One of the exams in a course that I TAed had 5 free-response questions. - There were also 5 TAs in that class, so we un-stapled the exams and each TA graded one question (for co…