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

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

#641

Post by lII1lIlI11ll »

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…

Just out of curiosity, where do all those hyper-competitive 260 applicants expect to work after graduating "radiation tech program" in a community college? And how much approximately do they expect to get paid for it?

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

#642

Post by wink »

smelendez wrote: post #423
jasonfarnon wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not defending the honor code or anything, but photocopying students' exams seems like an end-run around the policy.

It makes some sense just to have a backup, especially if you’re dividing papers and recombining them. It’s not impossible that one could get misplaced or damaged. Also, you could have an issue where the exam somehow becomes relevant again after you’ve handed them back, and some students may not have kept their copies (like if one student successfully challenges their grade and you realize other papers were also misgr…

In my (German) university in the 00s we weren't handed back the graded papers, but there was an office hours slot where you could visit and take a look at yours (under supervision I guess). I don't think I did that even once.

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

#643

Post by hammock »

danaris wrote: post #635
hammock wrote: post #625

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are equating “leniency” and “standard of proof” which goes against my every sense of justice. You either did it or you didn’t. There is no small crime, they are all the same. That is honor- you have it or you don’t. There is no “you were accused, but it’s minor so we’ll have to be more sure than usual.” That would be as ridiculous as saying “you were accused, and it’s major, so if there’s any suspicion at all, yo…

You're looking at it in much too black-and-white a manner. First of all, there's a difference between cheating on the big final exam that determines 40% of your course grade, and cheating on a quiz in week 3. A zero-tolerance policy has to make a decision: does the latter count as cheating? Is that really worth expelling a student over? A more nuanced policy can give that student a more nuanced punishment that may de…

> Is that really worth expelling a student over?

What do you mean by this. What is the cost of one university expelling a liar? There is only benefit.

I am talking about a school like Princeton here. Not a for-profit degree mill.

The school with only honorable students is the most valuable school, all else being equal. All your students will be practically guaranteed jobs.

How much cheating is acceptable, from your wife? Do you have a sliding scale of punishment? I’d be curious to learn from you. Penalty for kissing another man. Penalty for touching another man. Etc.

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

#645

Post by [deleted] »

rayiner wrote: post #617
FireBeyond wrote: post #588

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Replying to your dead comment: Why is multiple county and school district-wide segregation policies "personal racism" but as soon as it goes to a university it becomes "institutional"?

There were no “county and school district wide policies.” The segregated proms you’re talking about were planned by parents and held on private property. That’s a bad thing to do, but it’s not illegal. The schools had nothing to do with them—which would be illegal. Your story, by contrast, is about a school enforcing honor codes in a discriminatory way. That’s something schools face tremendous Title VI liability over…

[deleted]

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

#646

Post by FatherOfCurses »

rayiner wrote: post #392
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…

[flagged]

https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2022/06/30/academic-int... https://www.princeton.edu/news/2019/04/02/racial-bias-associ...

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

#647

Post by another_twist »

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…

I mean this students parents were likely big donors. That would explain a lot.

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

#648

Post by danaris »

hammock wrote: post #643
danaris wrote: post #635

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're looking at it in much too black-and-white a manner. First of all, there's a difference between cheating on the big final exam that determines 40% of your course grade, and cheating on a quiz in week 3. A zero-tolerance policy has to make a decision: does the latter count as cheating? Is that really worth expelling a student over? A more nuanced policy can give that student a more nuanced punishment that may de…

> Is that really worth expelling a student over? What do you mean by this. What is the cost of one university expelling a liar? There is only benefit. I am talking about a school like Princeton here. Not a for-profit degree mill. The school with only honorable students is the most valuable school, all else being equal. All your students will be practically guaranteed jobs. How much cheating is acceptable, from your w…

> What is the cost of one university expelling a liar?

What is the cost to the student?

And you seem to have immediately glossed over the part where not all of these students are, in fact, lying, or cheating.

> The school with only honorable students is the most valuable school, all else being equal. All your students will be practically guaranteed jobs.

Where on earth do you get that idea?

No one in the corporate world really cares if you cheated on your exams. Plenty of them would brag about doing the same. They care about the piece of paper, and not much else, from the schooling itself. (They do care about what experience you have. In fact, they'd love it if, as 22-year-old college graduate, you have 15 years of experience!)

> How much cheating is acceptable, from your wife?

I don't feel like going too much into my personal life with someone like you, but oh boy, buddy, did you pick the wrong person to try that "gotcha" on X-D

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

#649

Post by ericmay »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #170
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?

> Obviously the first. The more usual perspective would be that they're both bad.

That would be a very unusual perspective, at least in the western world and specifically the United States which has a legal and moral system broadly constructed on a mixture social trust and rule of law and we take into consideration both intent and effect in our moral judgements. There are certainly cases, for example someone cheated on a test but that test allowed them to achieve some greater good, that we can modify our moral beliefs on but there's no clear perspective that would suggest both would be bad. That really doesn't make sense.
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