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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

#451

Post by silver_silver »

nradov wrote: post #425
SoftTalker wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've talked to instructors who've just given up. They know the students use AI. More and more of them do every year. The instructors can spot it easily, but if they brought them all into the academic dishonesty process, the department would grind to a halt. So they just let it go. They are all paying tuition, and they'll all get the credential they paid for.

I sympathize with the instructors to an extent, but the reality is that LLMs will be a pervasive part of life going forward. Schools need to completely reinvent their curriculum around that new reality. It's going to be a painful process for instructors accustomed to the old way of teaching.

The reality is that it’s not possible to learn if one offloads the work itself to an LLM

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

#452

Post by meroes »

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.

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, paying multiple times the tuition cost on tutors and other study aides (eg $2k+ for all the anatomy models), every demographic is using paid ChatGPT. We all know which teachers to take. We spend much of class strategizing like this.

Every single student. It’s just another game to play or you lose.

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

#453

Post by mynameisash »

asdff wrote: post #348
mynameisash wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My son is taking an AP chem class - he's doing really well, super interested in the subject. It's a difficult class, to be sure. Many of his peers are just goofing off and don't understand things. My son regularly tells me about people in his lab group that are cheating off his papers (and, I think, even his test). He tries to cover up answers, but it's not always possible to do. What is even more frustrating is that…

If I were your son, next exam I would physically move my desk to the corner of the room out of protest. He should also report everyone he sees cheating.

He started writing his answers in French so that his peers wouldn't understand:D

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

#454

Post by dingaling »

crazygringo wrote: post #243
ericmay wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Which is bad, someone who cheats on a test or someone who rats out their friend for cheating on a test? Obviously the first. How is this even a question?

This is not obvious at all. Loyalty is a fundamental moral principle. Loyalty to a friend carries a lot of moral weight. Humans are a social animal, and loyalty to a friend can easily outweigh loyalty to some abstract institution. Like, my friend will still have my back five years from now. The university I went to won't do shit for me. Like, if you're talking about loyalty to a friend who wants you to cover up an un…

> Like, my friend will still have my back five years from now

Im not convinced that's the case, if it's a person who can normalise cheating.

They've already made the decision that benefit to themselves outweighs everything else.

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

#455

Post by CJefferson »

lokar wrote: post #8
john_strinlai wrote: post #5

huh, i had no idea princeton specifically disallowed proctors, and instead relied on an honor system. seems... like a poorly thought out system, especially given: " 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. " crazier is the people prote…

AIUI, these schools see their mission as training the next generation of leaders and elites. They aim for people with strong abilities, and moral character. And, the way you guide youth to act in a certain way is by treating them that way. If you want them to be trustworthy, you trust them. This is not a totally fringe idea.

No, they want to train the next generation of leaders and elites, and those elites and leader's parents pay a huge amount of money to get them there.

They know not to bite the hand that feeds them.

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

#456

Post by BarryMilo »

silver_silver wrote: post #451
nradov wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I sympathize with the instructors to an extent, but the reality is that LLMs will be a pervasive part of life going forward. Schools need to completely reinvent their curriculum around that new reality. It's going to be a painful process for instructors accustomed to the old way of teaching.

The reality is that it’s not possible to learn if one offloads the work itself to an LLM

They learn if they have to, like we always did. In-person exams (proctored) are good for testing that.

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

#457

Post by rixed »

jimbokun wrote: post #54
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

All of that is sophistry in defense of fucking over those who choose not to cheat.

If one is honorable only for the reward, is one really honorable though?

Either it is a principle or it is a strategy, can't be both.

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

#458

Post by dlcarrier »

rayiner wrote: post #389
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…

If you want rage bait, read the proceedings of honor code committees at your school. At least at Northwestern they were public record (sometimes with redaction of identities). The number of people who got off with obviously bullshit excuses was maddening even to read about.

When I was in high school, mad dad was subscribed to the California Bar Journal, and the discipline section was one of my favorite reads. The outrageous rational lawyers had for failing their clients or downright stealing from them was hilarious, and the rate they won their appeals was appalling.

Someone wrote a book about how organizations like state bars protect their members from clients, not the clients from their members as is the stated goal: https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674295421

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

#459

Post by svara »

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…

> but when 'anyone can be anything' it creates hyper competition, anxiety

Not sure if you intended this but this is basically exactly Byung-Chul Han's point in The Burnout Society.

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

#460

Post by dlcarrier »

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…

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...

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