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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

#601

Post by crazygringo »

wat10000 wrote: post #584
crazygringo wrote: post #578

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No, I don't see any moral value in following the law. Just so you know, that's not a position most moral philosophers take, as long as the law is decided by sufficiently democratic procedures. The fact that you belong to a group of people, and the people decide on rules, means that violating those rules is a moral violation against that community of people. To say that has no moral weight at all is a pretty extreme…

Who determines what's "sufficiently democratic"? Do most moral philosophers really believe that being one vote out of many thousands to choose one representative to send to a legislative body of dozens is sufficiently democratic to obligate me to follow a pointless law that was written long before I was even born? Not that it's going to change my view, but I'm curious if that's really the position they take.

Yes, that is absolutely the mainstream position. See John Rawls "A Theory of Justice" which is the basis for a lot of applied ethics today.

And "sufficiently democratic" basically means freedom of political speech, adult citizens can vote, representatives are chosen by majority rule, elections are fairly conducted and not rigged, and laws are passed by majority rule.

Obviously you can always quibble over details such as unicameral vs bicameral legislatures, single-member district vs. multi-member district representation, gerrymandering, judicial review, and so forth.

But if people are allowed to freely debate and the franchise is universal and elections are free and fair and elections and decisions are based on majority rule, then those are the basic conditions. So the US and France and the UK are sufficiently democratic; Russia and Iran and China are not (despite holding elections).

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

#602

Post by bluegatty »

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…

This is basically the 'extreme version' aka 'extreme scarcity'.

At that point, it has almost nothing to do with regular education and institutions.

It's cray cray land

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

#603

Post by pdonis »

throw48296 wrote: post #401
hawaiianbrah wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I only recall some finals at MIT being that long. Which classes had normal exams that long?

This year 6.7800 has a both 3h midterm and a 3h final, for instance. Wish us luck.

That would be this?

https://web.mit.edu/6.7800/www/info24.pdf

Or at least this year's version? If so, it looks like Course 6 hasn't gotten any easier over the years. Good luck!

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

#604

Post by wat10000 »

crazygringo wrote: post #601
wat10000 wrote: post #584

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who determines what's "sufficiently democratic"? Do most moral philosophers really believe that being one vote out of many thousands to choose one representative to send to a legislative body of dozens is sufficiently democratic to obligate me to follow a pointless law that was written long before I was even born? Not that it's going to change my view, but I'm curious if that's really the position they take.

Yes, that is absolutely the mainstream position. See John Rawls "A Theory of Justice" which is the basis for a lot of applied ethics today. And "sufficiently democratic" basically means freedom of political speech, adult citizens can vote, representatives are chosen by majority rule, elections are fairly conducted and not rigged, and laws are passed by majority rule. Obviously you can always quibble over details such…

What can I say but: people continue to baffle me.

Edit: actually I do have one other thing to say. It's quite a coincidence that the conditions you laid out happen to be those that were met in the US right about the time that book came out. Feels like it might have been working backwards from the conclusion.

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

#605

Post by asdff »

mynameisash wrote: post #453
asdff wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Hopefully the teacher can

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

#606

Post by pdonis »

wallst07 wrote: post #541
pdonis wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> every exam was take home When I was at MIT, most exams were in-class, but open book, open notes, open whatever you wanted to bring with you. And of course that just meant the exams were much harder, because they could assume you had all the necessary reference materials at hand and didn't have to conjure things up from memory. "Cheating" was pointless, because everyone else in the room was struggling just as hard a…

Same, but before AI. The thought being that the Engineering exams were so difficult that even with the text book, you had little chance of getting it right unless you knew the material. Often, final exams were just one question, but you were graded on the multiple pages of work you had to show.

> Same, but before AI.

My time at MIT was well before AI. And before smartphones. Even PCs were new then--I didn't have one until my senior year, and that PC had less computing power than is in things like microwaves nowadays.

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

#607

Post by [deleted] »

traderj0e wrote: post #222
pickleRick243 wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The numbers don't play out because international chinese students only make up 5-7% (maybe less) of the undergraduate student body. Self-reported cheating frequencies are much higher.

That's kind of a large number. Honor system is a solidarity thing. There can be 0% cheating cause nobody wants to be that person, but if 5% come in and egregiously cheat anyway, it can poison more. Most people don't want to cheat, but they may feel disadvantaged not to.

[deleted]

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

#608

Post by MaxBarraclough »

vjk800 wrote: post #478
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…

> Academic integrity committees at prestigious schools are horribly lax. They want these types of issues to go away quietly. Yes, because the working model is that the students are there because they want to learn. And they are paying for the professors to teach them. If they cheat in classes, they are really just cheating themselves, and this should be no concern to the staff.

> If they cheat in classes, they are really just cheating themselves, and this should be no concern to the staff.

This is quite plainly not the case. If curve grading is used, cheating directly harms other students who aren't cheating. If curve grading isn't used, the university may end up handing out high grades like candy, and that's a problem for the university.

Higher grades can translate to better career outcomes even if undeserved. If it were clear that this wasn't the case, nobody would cheat in the first place.

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

#609

Post by traderj0e »

symlinkk wrote: post #251

You’ll face unfairness with DEI / diversity quotas to get in to the college, and then if you graduate you’ll face unfairness by having your job outsourced to AI or H1B, but yeah cheating in school is totally where we draw the line.

Honestly the DEI in private universities was a huge loss of credibility. But they've changed that.

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

#610

Post by crackercrews »

Forgeties79 wrote: post #600
FireBeyond wrote: post #587

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I’m an alum now, not a student, but even college students can submit a FOIA request. "Show me the reports on unreported cheating"? > Additionally, you could see the breakdown by race (and more) of people that were expelled. How do you know they were expelled for cheating? And not sexual harassment, or in some universities breaking codes of conduct around public behavior. You have heard of FERPA, right? It would be…

Over half the faculty literally admitted they don’t report/don’t feel comfortable reporting in an anonymous survey when this was being more rigorously interrogated. It’s easy to infer “therefore a lot of cheating goes unreported” from that. Second question: Because cheating is handled by a specific group and sexual misconduct/assault is a criminal offense that gets you arrested (it’s also handled at the school level…

Unless I missed something, no one ever addressed the original question, which is how we know the policy was enforced along racially discriminatory lines. This requires knowing the extent of cheating in various racial groups and the extent of enforcement in each group. No evidence of the former has been presented.

Even if most of the people who were disciplined are from URM groups, that doesn't prove racially-biased enforcement.

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