May 10, 2007

Cheating on a Different Level

The way Lawrence Goldblatt sees it, by the time students reach professional school, they should be trusted to act responsibly on assignments.

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Cheating, typically thought of as an undergraduate concern, has surfaced recently at several professional schools. Late last month, Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business announced that dozens of first-year students violated the honor code by collaborating on a take-home test that was supposed to be completed alone.

Thirty-four students in the M.B.A. program face penalties: 9 expulsion, 15 a one-year suspension and a failing grade in the class, 9 a failing mark in the class and one a failing mark on the assignment.

On Friday, the Faculty Council at Indiana’s dental school voted to dismiss 9 of its students, suspend 16 for various lengths of time and send a letter of reprimand to 21 others for violating its professional code of conduct by knowing about and not reporting the incident. The class has just under 100 students.

Two professional conduct committees — one comprising students and the other faculty — looked into the cheating allegations and the entire faculty had a say in the final decision.

“This has been a wrenching experience for everyone involved — for students who made this big error and classmates, faculty, administrators and alumni,” Goldblatt said. “It’s sad that this happened and it’s sad that we had to take this action.”

The school has an obligation to take cases of cheating seriously because it certifies that graduates “can be trusted to do the absolute right thing in every situation in their professional lives, even when nobody is looking,” he added.

David M. Eberhardt, a research associate at Florida State University’s Hardee Center for Leadership and Ethics in Higher Education who writes an ethics column for its Journal of College and Character, said cases of cheating at professional schools aren’t surprising given that students might have gotten away with the same practices as undergraduates.

Still, there are structural differences that would seemingly make academic dishonesty less prevalent in graduate programs. They are typically smaller than undergraduate programs, making honor code violations easier to enforce. If you know your instructor and your instructor knows you, wouldn’t cheating be unlikely? And since this is commonly the final step before starting a career, why risk blowing years of work for a higher grade?

Then again, as both Eberhardt and Goldblatt point out, professional school faculty tend to be more trusting of their students.

“In my [doctoral] program, professors give take-home exams,” Eberhardt said. “It’s assumed that you’ve developed a level of professional integrity that means you aren’t going to cheat. But when the pressure is on, some people make choices that aren’t ethical.”

Don McCabe, a professor of management and global business at Rutgers University who has tracked cheating for 17 years, said that multiple surveys show that graduate students generally admit to cheating less often than undergraduates.

For instance, 56 percent of M.B.A. students reported in one survey cheating in some way from fall 2002 to spring 2004. A comparable survey showed that 74 percent of undergraduate business majors and 68 percent of non-business majors reported cheating.

McCabe asks his students each year to rate the seriousness of different types of cheating. He said the Duke students’ infraction, collaborating on a test meant to be taken alone, would be considered serious on the index, but not as egregious as copying another student’s exam. The dental school students’ actions would likely rate high on the seriousness scale since “outright deception was involved,” he said.

And then there’s the question of response to cheating. The American Dental Association is sponsoring a symposium on integrity and ethics in dental education next month — although the topic was chosen prior to the incident at Indiana.

Goldblatt said the dental school has already made changes to its encryption to make code-breaking more difficult. He said that’s a minor part of the review process in this case.

“We can create a virtually uncrackable code, but that’s still not the answer,” he said. “We could look into the background of all 2,100 students who applied for the 100 slots and we still wouldn’t find anything [in students’ records]. I don’t think there’s a way in the admissions process we could screen this out. As far as I know, there’s no such thing as an integrity test.”

— Elia Powers

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Comments

change the system

Why do we need to grade on the curve? Does this have anything to do with cheating? Has their ever been a study? To me university should be about true comprehension and learning, not about beating the classmates to get the best grade. Work and life is not like university so why make students conform to a system that is non existent in the real world.

When is the last time you crammed for a exam at work to see who would get promoted?

Even the highly touted business case- in reality it is a marketing vehicle, for businesses.

I work with MBA’s from good schools all the time, and they are idiots when you start to scratch the veneer of education off them.

pete, at 5:40 pm EDT on July 17, 2007

re: this should not be a surprise

Cheating is a problem at all levels of higher education. I would like to believe that my future surgeon or dentist would have studied hard to get through professional school, but cheating is endemic at the undergraduate level. Why should we think it would be any different as students move up?

I suppose it depends on what you believe about students who cheat. Many are not unintelligent, but they are often too busy to keep up with their studies. Cheating is a short cut that allows them to do what they want and continue to “succeed.” This is part of the unfortunate culture of the higher ed system today.

Deb, at 6:40 am EDT on May 10, 2007

The Dean With Thirty-five Fingers On Each Hand

I’m not sure what to make of this. On April 30, Inside Higher Ed reported, “In the biggest cheating scandal ever at Duke University’s business school, 34 students are facing penalties for collaborating on exam answers, The ‘News & Observer’ of Raleigh reported. Nine students face expulsion, while others face a range of penalties, including one-year suspensions from the MBA program.” That was it. Not even a single comment in response to those two sentences.

At first I thought, “Good for IHE. Incidents like this are a dime a dozen in American higher education these days, so why make a big deal out of it.”

I hope I won’t bore you with numbers, but according to the University of Wisconsin student newspaper, “Spectator” ...

1. almost 80% of college students admit to cheating at least once.

2. more than 36% of undergraduates have admitted to plagiarizing written material.

3. approximately 90% of students believe that cheaters are either never caught or have never been appropriately disciplined.

4. a cheating level between 20%-25% exists among high school advanced placement students.

http://www.mustangps.org/~kingch/Cheating.htm

I will spare you my rant, but go to

http://www.glass-castle.com/clien...ncil/research/cheatingfactsheet.html

to review another collection of truly depressing statistics about cheating. In the 1940s, approximately 20% of college students admitted they cheated in high school. Today, somewhere between 75% and 98% admit to having done so.

In recent years, a UC-Berkeley professor discovered that 45 of his 320 neurobiology students used the Internet to cheat. At U.Va., 122 students were discovered to have cheated in two introductory physics courses. At Georgia Tech, 136 students plagiarized computer science homework. Thirty Ohio University graduate students plagiarized their masters theses. At Simon Fraser, an excellent Canadian university, 44 students cheated in an economics class. As many as 84 Diablo Valley College students may have paid bribes (up to $600) to have grades changed on their transcripts. At Penn State, more than half the students admitted to cheating sometime during their college careers.

Go to ...

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/05/17/churchill

and read the three posts by RWH to see that cheating is not just a problem amongst students. More than a few college and university faculty are also guilty of various forms of cheating.

Obviously, I have touched only the very tip of the top of the proverbial iceberg.

What is noteworthy about the cheating at Duke’s Fuqua School and at the University of Indiana School of Dinistry is (1) they do not appear to be in a state of denial about what happened and (2) they appear to be doing something about it. The tragedy of rampant cheating in high schools, colleges, and universities in this country is the fact that it’s just so difficult and time consuming to respond to it, we much too often ignore it altogether or give the guilty party a light rap on the knuckles. I can assure you that at many institutions of higher education across this land, the practical constraints obstructing pursuit of well-defined honor code procedures for penalizing cheaters are significant. I have been in the presence of senior faculty when they advised young assistant professors to give the student an F on the assignment on which s/he cheated – or make hir do it again – and then move on. If you want a sense of how faculty often pay a steep price when responding to cheaters, just ask an adjunct professor how s/he has handled the problem.

The dean of a business school at which I taught recently, was quoted in the local newspaper as saying, “I have come across very few instances of cheating. I can count on one hand the number of cases I’ve had [during the past four years], and still have fingers left over.”

Sounds good, but he made that statement just months after he and I co-signed 31 separate statement in which BBA and MBA student admitted they cheated ... and I was hardly the only faculty member in the school who had students who cheated.

http://www.winchesterstar.com/TheWinchesterStar/031011/Area_COPYcat.asp

The article went on to say, “[the dean], while not trying to explain students’ motivations, admitted cheating is just ‘part of the due process.’”

If I sound pessimistic, I am. This is not a problem that will just go away. We have produced a couple of generations of young people in this country who are both willing to cheat, and are not even certain it is ethically reprehensible. Furthermore, we are not doing much to arrest it ... and, forgive my hostility, but that includes those silly in-house ethics courses that seem to be even more ubiquitous these days than in-house critical thinking courses.

RWH, at 7:00 am EDT on May 10, 2007

cheating

It always surprises me that professors who give take home exams are in turn surprised that students cheat. Take home exams are a license to cheat. Not only can students who are supposed to do the exam themselves collaborate with others, they can use internet resources they are not supposed to use, they can recruit or pay others to write the exam for them, and they can radically cut corners. In the latter case, if students are responsible for 800 pages of required reading for an exam, they can read little or nothing and simply wait to receive the exam and read only what they need to in order to answer the questions.

Levon Chorbajian, Dr. at U of Massachusetts Lowell, at 7:50 am EDT on May 10, 2007

I Wish I Taught Sociology 228

I take Levon Chorbajian’s comment to be close to outrageous.

If I were teaching a course like Sociology 228, then it might make sense to “examine” students with an in-class test consisting of 30 multiple-guess questions, 10 fill in the blank questions, and one “write a brief paragraph” question. But as we all know, those silly tests do little more than satisfy the teachers responsibility (laziness?, unimaginativeness?) for sorting students and turning in grades at the end of the term.

In my case, I teach courses in mathematics, statistics, management science, and research methods, and my tests invariably have two parts; (1) a very short (20 minute) simple-minded in-class test like the one described above, just for the purpose of sorting and (2) a usually data-based, very challenging, out-of-class, open book/open notes test in which students must use course content to solve problems not unlike the ones they will encounter outside an academic environment.

The risk, of course, is that some students will cheat. And some do. But any college or university that is inclined to create a learning culture in which students have an appreciation for honesty and personal integrity can come very close to doing so. My students know – because of my reputation – that (1) I give fair, but challenging tests, (2) I am fairly adept at identifying cheaters,(3) I will not handle incidents of cheating myself, (4) I will not let my department chair or dean handle my incidents of cheating, but (5) they will, along with the evidence, go straight to the Honor Court.

It is noteworthy, I think, that I do not go to great pains to identify cheaters. It is almost humorous how identical incorrect answers or Excel spread-sheets with identical layouts simply “jump off the page,” shouting “Cheater! Cheater!”

At the last school at which I taught, the dean of the School of Business could not even bring himself to use the C-word in reference to cheaters and, instead, employed all kinds of absurd euphemisms when discussing them.

Frizbane Manley, at 9:00 am EDT on May 10, 2007

Disgusted

Cheating is the essence of American Society! We see it appear repeatedly throughout american history and culture. You cannot pick up a newspaper that does not have an article about some form or another of cheating in society. It is endemic and for the life of me I can’t understand why these folks would be surprised that it occurs in higher education too. From the olympics to business to politics, cheaters are high profile. Hell, our country is based on cheating the indigenous peoples out of their land. Why do you think all of these various organizations want to police themselves?..why so that they can continue to get away with cheating. If someone imposes unbiased, neutral external checks on whatever, then it would make it much harder to cheat...and we can’t have that. How else are all of these people supposed to get ahead in American Society?? The myth that hard work and honesty will make you succesful is just that-a myth. For every example of someone succeeding from hard work and perserverence I can give you ten that got there by cheating. Hell, we even punish our whistleblowers. An act of honesty in american society is the most courageous thing someone can do. No wonder there are so few takers.

R.F., at 9:00 am EDT on May 10, 2007

The reasons for not punishing students are under our noses

To me, the reasons are clear why most professors (graduate and undergrad) turn a blind eye to cheating (and then deny that they do.)

First of all, many administrations make it exceedingly difficult to actually punish cheaters. It isn’t a matter of just participating in a quasi-judicial proceeding and/or submitting evidence. Instead, there is real pressure from deans and department heads to drop the issue. It brings on unwanted and unneeded attention.

Second of all, the fact that one (or 100) cheaters is caught means that the subject is 1) prone to cheating; and 2) there are other cheaters out there (in the past and present) that didn’t get caught. To punish a few cheaters means that others will simply get away with it.

Third, many professors are on pins and needles about various forms accommodations made to certain students that are not cheating per se, but give the students an unfair advantage over others. To some, the practice of giving extensions (in private) to some almost explains why the other students must cheat.

Fourth, As some have expressed on some blogs recently: punishing a cheater (especially on the graduate/professional level) means that the school will have to reorient its ranking, which would mean revoking rewards, scholarships, and membership in honor societies (or law reviews).

Larry, at 9:20 am EDT on May 10, 2007

Cheating at all levels

With systemic cheating, in all of its forms from conflicts of interests to deceptions to outright lying, at all levels in organizations throughout our culture is there any surprise that students mimic those behaviors?

Strength of character is seldom easy to maintain, but it is even more difficult to sustain when those around you have lost theirs.

Boliver, Professor, at 10:00 am EDT on May 10, 2007

they aren’t ALL rats. I promise.

“It always surprises me that professors who give take home exams are in turn surprised that students cheat. Take home exams are a license to cheat.”

I couldn’t disagree more. Take home exams are an opportunity for students to prepare a more thoughtful, well-reasoned and better researched response. A well-devised take-home exam tests a different set of skills and knowledge in your students relative to a time-pressured in-class exam.

I do not believe that there is no cheating at my college (since I’m not a complete idiot), but I think that the only way to encourage students to rise to their better selves is to expect better of them. Many, many students take themselves and their education seriously and will respect a strong honor code. Assuming they will cheat does us all a disservice, and I don’t see how it combats the problem. Furthermore, if on your take-home exam you ask essay questions that require students to move beyond parroting back facts and instead engage the material on a higher level, then it matters little whether or not they talk to each other about the question. I teach science, and I am still finding ways to do this. I am even contemplating requiring students to debate the test question together before writing the exam, so that all students will see the material from a wider perspective.

My point, really, was only this: that we can expect our students not to cheat, and simultaneously work to not reward un-caught cheating by writing better, more meaningful exams.

Plus, I’ll admit I’m a fan of heavy penalties for those caught. See, not so naive after all. Or...did I just prove that I am?

Britt Argow, Wellesley College, at 10:00 am EDT on May 10, 2007

Systemic changes

The model is broken. Everyone knows it, but little is done to remedy it. SOL was an attempt to fix it, but really only made it worse. In the end, SOL testing has dumbed-down the kids entering college and/or taught them to beat the test – not learn the material. Top that off with the teachers having to train the kids to “pass the test” to keep their jobs and you’ll see how we’ve gotten here. This will continue until we value education as a society – our children are just following our lead. When all you have to do is “get by” until you sign that multi-million dollar sports deal, why would you bother learning anything beyond spelling your own name?

Befuddled, at 10:05 am EDT on May 10, 2007

research on why students cheat

When people know that it’s wrong to cheat, why do they do it anyway?

Because they distance themselves from their unethical actions — they rationalize it — according to a study co-authored by three Iowa State University College of Business faculty members and their former colleague.

ISU’s Jeffrey Kaufmann, Sue Pickard Ravenscroft and Brad Shrader joined with former Iowa State professor Tim West (now at the University of Arkansas) to study the behavior of nearly 50 students from another Midwestern university who had cheated on a take-home exam.

Kaufmann, an assistant professor of management; Ravenscroft, the Roger P. Murphy Professor of Accounting; Brad Shrader, professor of management, and accounting professor West co-authored a paper titled “Ethical Distancing: Rationalizing Violations of Organizational Norms,” which was published last summer in the Business and Professional Ethics Journal.

I thought this research might be helpful in this discussion. You can read the specific details from their study at: http://www.iastate.edu/~nscentral/news/2006/jun/rationalizing.shtml.

Mike Ferlazzo, communications specialist at Iowa State University, at 10:05 am EDT on May 10, 2007

Conspiracy of silence

Not reporting the cheating?

The most outrageous fraud and plagiarism ever happened in academia is also the most censored story: “University of Toronto Fraud” at http://ca.geocities.com/uoftfraud/

The academic media is leading in not reporting the cheating.

Michael Pyshnov, at 10:25 am EDT on May 10, 2007

The Cheating Culture

David Callahan, The Cheating Culture: Why More Americans Are Doing Wrong to Get Ahead (Orlando, Florida: Harcourt, Inc., 2004).

Brian Manhire, at 11:15 am EDT on May 10, 2007

Catching Up

Higher Ed should re-think what and how to measure.

It is important to see if students understand the concept of addition numbers, but limiting their use of calculator in all math courses is ridiculous. Teachers are responsible for designing methods that measure the understanding — A homework assignment is a bad way of measuring understanding while the calculator-free in class test is a better one.

In the past, resources are limited and professionals are much relied on things they memorized and the limited resources they have at hand. Their career performance are limited in a similar way. These days, however, resources are abundance and the performance is no longer heavily linked to what people memorized rather than what information they can find and how well they can use it. Also, with the easiness of communication, consulting with their peer is part of the performance measure.

So. When instructors try to evaluate their students they have a lot to think about. For example, my students were never evaluated by their homework. They got unlimited opportunities to get their answer right and got full credits. They can talk to anyone. My idea behind it is that homework is a learning tool. It helps to clarify students’ thoughts. The test is the real measure of their achievement.

This world is evolving and higher ed suppose to be the one with forward thinking and vision. Let’s pay more attention to what should be measured and how should it be measured rather than counting on students’ ethic conducts, which, at least, is not what most instructors try to measure at the moment. So. Until the day we have integrity test established, we just have to know the limits and work around it.

Duncan, at 11:25 am EDT on May 10, 2007

Take home exams and assignments

A take home exam seems similar to an out of class assignment. Relatively high stakes out of class assignments are common in my area (CS) and there have been problems with cheating as long as I can remember (which is a long time). I’ve seen a number of systems demonstrated that detect similarities in code submitted by different students.

Apparently High Schools often don’t have such high stakes assignments and collaboration among students is not (from what I’ve seen) discouraged.

Rob Rittenhouse, CS Faculty at McMurry University, at 11:25 am EDT on May 10, 2007

Students’ excuses

It only took two years as a TA for me to catch my first plagiarizing student. His excuse for why the Dean shouldn’t punish him? “Everyone does it.” I assume this is right before they all jump off bridges.

Lindsay, at 11:35 am EDT on May 10, 2007

As an administrator dealing with plagiarism at the end of the term I entered into an interesting discussion with my husband (also in higher ed)regarding the topic of responsibility for plagiarism. His position, to my surprise, is that in many cases the instructor is responsible because he/she provided enabling circumstances for the cheating.I disagree with this but I ask- I am that out of the mainstream of common sense and modern thought to believe that the student holds the responsibility for deciding to cheat?

Ann Marie, at 3:10 pm EDT on May 10, 2007

cheating, law schools, and societal norms

Lindsay, Before condemning people for doing what everyone else does, and using it for an excuse, consider this: people are generally expected to conform to the norms of a community.

Let me give you an example from an environment that I know sort of well. A law school. Most law schools are not in the “top 10″ law schools. Instead, they are lower ranked, and as a result, they grade on a fairly law “curve.” In general, this means that in the first year, the faculty arbitrarily picks a distribution or midpoint of all grades based on the degree to which they hate the students. (Seriously, I have first-hand knowledge, of how faculty compare, based on almost no objective data students at their school to students at “better” schools down the road.)

Anyway, because this is effectively a “zero-sum” game, students are under a lot of pressure. If they do worse in a class than other people, employers will see it. So, there is incredible pressure to do anything they can. Usually students will try and smooth-talk the professor. (This works quite well, as some professors are willing to give their “Favorites” their personal notes.) This isn’t considered “cheating” because the some professors (not all) sanction it. Sure it is unfair, but life and the law are unfair.

And, if there is an opportunity to somehow climb higher on the curve (or push other people lower), a student at a lower-ranked school will take it. And why shouldn’t they? Indeed, if 10% of the class is cheating, and scoring in the top 10% of a curve, the remaining 90% are at a serious disadvantage, which will deprive them of certain jobs. Therefore, they feel they must. In practice, if 50% are cheating, the remaining 50% will score at or near the bottom of the curve, kicking them out of the running for many jobs. Are you really telling students to shoot themselves in the foot like this, when everyone, in fact, is doing all that they can to cheat?

At lower-ranked law schools, if you are in the bottom of the class, you can’t come back, but you still have to pay your loans.

Note: I think this whole system is sick, and since I went to a good law school, I didn’t have to face these moral dilemmas. I advise undergrads to choose law schools on the basis of how high (and therefore easy) their grade curves are.

Larry, at 3:10 pm EDT on May 10, 2007

What Is Duncan Thinking?

What’s up Duncan? No one up to this point has even mentioned the use of calculators in class. Then you not only introduce the topic, you call those who propose “limiting the use of calculators in all math courses” ridiculous ... not that anyone did.

Although my students use a truly unsophisticated calculator in class – and just to contribute this or that to the ongoing discussion – anyone who is wasting good time teaching students how to use a high-end calculator to solve math problems is a technological “cave person.” Here’s a blurb from my statistics syllabi ...

“It will be useful for you to have a calculator from time to time, and you should bring it with you to class. I recommend that you purchase the current version of the HP-30S, which you should be able to pick up for less than $20. [Note: If you already have a good calculator and know how to use its elementary statistics functions, the HP-30S will be unnecessary. On the other hand, don’t expect your instructor to provide you with assistance with any calculator other than the 30S. By the way, since you will be using Excel and SPSS, there will be no reason for you to purchase a high-end calculator (e.g., a TI-83). In this day and age – and especially since you already own a first-rate laptop computer – (1) purchasing a high-end calculator is a waste of money and (2) becoming dependent on one is intellectually distracting.]”

In my math classes, I use Maple and occasionally Mathematica instead of SPSS. And please ... if you knew where I teach you would not criticize my choices of software.

Frizbane Manley, at 3:10 pm EDT on May 10, 2007

Even administrators cheat

Cheating is rampant at all levels in a university. Unfortunately, the people in power get away with cheating and other crimes. I know of an AACSB accrediated business school where an administrator was caught for writing and signing a resignation letter for a faculty without her knowledge, but was let go when he apologized to her for writing the letter. The American way to get away with cheating is to just follow it up with an apology.

Disillusioned by academia

ggggvvvv, at 3:45 pm EDT on May 10, 2007

calculators on math tests

Since students will use calculators in the field, I let them use calculators on math questions on tests. as I tell them, If you don’t know what you are doing, all a calculator will do is get you the wrong anser faster.

Judith, at 3:45 pm EDT on May 10, 2007

Survey: Developing Ethical Environments in Online Courses

Graduate students from St. Edward’s University (www.stedwards.edu), working in collaboration with the University of Texas System TeleCampus (www.uttc.org), are investigating ways in which a faculty member can create a community of integrity in an online course.

Please help by sharing one idea at http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=453743642056. If you provide your email address on the survey, we will send you the results of the study when it is complete.

Thank you!

Lori, at 5:10 pm EDT on May 10, 2007

Anne Marie’s question

Anne Marie, I do think that faculty have a responsibility to rethink assignments in order to avoid cheating. If we make it easy for students to download papers or otherwise cheat, then the low-hanging fruit certainly contributes to a culture that accepts cheating.

In an early experience with cheating (about 12 years ago), I taught a class open only to those who had already flunked it once (damned at the start!). 1/3 of the students turned in papers with significant plagiarism. The most heart-breaking was a guy who struck me as terribly upstanding. When we discussed what happened, he said that his mother was in her final stages of dying of breast cancer and the temptation to cheat, with an easily plagiarizable assignment and a large cohort also doing the same, was a temptation too hard to pass up. I changed the way I assigned papers after that.

It helps to find ways to identify specifics each student takes on, which make their work unique. This would certainly fit business school thinking, while also limiting space for cheating. You can randomly assign variables or allow students to stake out specifics of interest early in the term.

There is a lot of good advice along those lines on avoiding cheating: jumble the tests (same questions, different order), revisit the subject of cheating in the classroom at crucial points (right before exams, etc.), develop trust...

But this requires more effort on the part of faculty (with no reward) and also demands that people accept that cheating exists. I am in my 40s; colleagues older than me sometimes suggest I am being overly concerned about a problem that does not exist. Others, like the Dean quoted at the beginning of this article, seem to have a very naive view of the world today. I would say the professions, with their greater reward, are MORE vulnerable to cheating!

Undergrad students always seem to apprecaite the efforts I go to in limiting cheating. They see that I am trying to keep a level playing field — and they always know how much effort this takes. Grads... I have seen both sides. Some get miffed because they share the view that they are above cheating, while others seem to recognize that efforts to limit such problems are necessary in modern society. I try to add a bit of self-depreciating humor and openness to discussion to help the more obvious restrictions go down more gently.

DB, at 7:00 pm EDT on May 10, 2007

Rational? Please ..

” .. Because they distance themselves from their unethical actions — they rationalize it .. “

Nice conceptionalization of the real world. There are lots of folks who still think Mr. Michael Milken (former junk-bond king/convicted felon, now educational donor) really didn’t do anything wrong. And Rudy Guilani was just picking on his group for using junk bonds to challenge the dominant paradigm.

Reality in higher ed? Too many colleges, chasing too few students. At the lowest tiers, one wonders how low the curve can go. Pity the newbie who catches a cheater red-handed and goes into a moral debate with herself.

At the higher tiers: what the little Einsteins don’t realize, cut a corner here, a boss/customer will catch you later. And it will be more expensive, later.

But they know everything, including how to ‘game’ the bureaucrats. Life goes on.

L.L., at 8:50 pm EDT on May 10, 2007

Goals of testing?

I agree with the observation that giving take-home exams is an invitation to cheat. But that format is also a good way to test for depth of knowledge and writing skills. So what is the goal of testing? Is it more important to prevent any student from passing the course through spurious methods, or is it more important to focus on challenging the future leaders in the class through a rigorous exam?

In some subjects (nursing, surgery, building construction) it’s vital that no student should pass without the requisite basic knowledge. But in many subjects the teacher has to decide whether to aim at the top or the bottom of the class.

Why not teach the course to best prepare the star students who will make a contribution, even if that approach allows a few cheaters to squeak by without learning very much?

West Coast Prof, at 8:50 pm EDT on May 10, 2007

What is Duncan Thinking?

Prof. Manley,

Well. It seems that you have clear thoughts on the need of calculation devices of your students. That’s great. Unfortunately, my point is simply to demonstrate that time has changed and resources available to students are growing and limiting students’ use of these resources in their learning process is simply not justified.

Instructors are the one that can decide what to measure and how to measure it. In deciding on what to measure, they should take today’s working environment into consideration. In deciding on how to measure it, they should device the test so that reliable measure can be made.

Devices, resources and even students’ ethic are here to stay and instructors are the one that control the measuring process. Who else do you think that is responsible for the fail of the measurement? — I do not mean that threaten students with legal action is not an option, but we do need to think about the effectiveness of getting things done.

Duncan, at 10:00 am EDT on May 11, 2007

Culture Bashers Ignore Near-Ubiquity of Phenomenon

There is a great deal of comment on this article that directly accuses American ethics and mores as promoters of cheating. One could certainly get the impression that the US has a monopoly on this behavior, a claim which anyone with any knowledge or experience at all of international education issues would find laughable.

I strongly urge those contributing comments to first spend some time reviewing non-US based national news sources to get some notion of how widespread this behavior actually is, before writing their comments. Particularly I’d like to draw their attention to Indian, Indonesian, Australian, and UK-based reportage on the topics of exam cheating and plagiarism in higher education.

Personally, I never saw anything quite as ludicrously bad — both in the sheer quantity and transparency of academic dishonesty and the lack of enforcement at every level — as a US graduate engineering program with high levels of international student enrollment.

Scrawed, at 12:20 pm EDT on May 11, 2007

foreigners cheat?

Scrawed, So basically you are saying that foreigners cheat. This has been my experience, but I have been told that it is culturally insensitive to say so.

Larry, at 12:25 pm EDT on May 12, 2007

I’ve Been Sleeping With Wimps!

I cannont let this discussion end without commenting on the post by Michael Pyshnov, describing his treatment by the University of Toronto. I went to the cite for which he provided the URL and (1) was overwhelmed with the data and (2) concluded that Pr[he described the situation accurately] ≥ 0.75.

I feel compelled to comment because I was fired from a senior faculty position once ... it was a university without a tenure system, and I had the highest-level faculty appointment within that system. I was fired essentially for being a thorn in the side of a very authoritarian, upper-level management vis-a-vis important issues related to education ... and, therefore, important issues that affected the best interests of students.

I won’t go into to detail, but I documented everything, and I seriously considered creating an on-line case for myself similar to the one Pyshnov created for himself. Indeed, when one has been treated unfairly in a situation like that, it is almost irresistible to describe those distortions, lies, and irrational decision mechanism that sealed one’s fate. While I appreciate and understand his efforts to defend himself – and, in the process, make a statement for the integrity of academe – I decided not to go that route myself.

And why? Truth be known – and over the years I have worked hand-in-hand with a broad range of Americans in a variety of different occupations – I believe there is such a preponderance of self-centered, self-important, professionally cautious wimps in higher education, I knew trying to defend myself was a waste of time. Academics, in my opinion, tend to be big talkers until the chips are down ... and then most of them scurry to that safe place under a slimy rock where they hope they won’t be noticed. In my case – and I assume in Pyshnov’s case as well — no one would come out of hir hiding place to say, “This is an abridgement of the principles that make higher education important. Let’s do something about it.”

I would love to see someone do a serious analysis of the fundamental character of those who make higher education their careers to see if I’m right (i.e., to see if there is a general theory that is consistent with my prejudice), but I can get you started. There follows what I think is called Hoyer’s Conjecture ... and it describes why so many of us choose academic careers in the first place.

“Step 1. At some stage of the game – grade school, junior high, high school, somewhere – I find that I have an aptitude for succeeding in school. This is not to be confused with having intellectual interests (K-12 is much more about socialization and conformance than it is about discovering intellectual pursuits).

Step 2. I go to college ... not necessarily because I was ’successful’ at Step 1, but because everyone goes to college. Oh, wow, for a reason I may or may not understand, I do fairly well in college.

Step 3. I graduate from college. Ouch! I’m confronted with a difficult choice. I guess I can go out into the hard, cruel world or I can – because I’ve got a feel for this sort of thing and it’s pretty easy for me – go to graduate school.

[Note: Some go on to professional schools and, although there’s a fork in the theory here, take my word for the fact that it still ‘works’ — albeit with a few variations — for those who take that route. Of course, only a very few go to graduate school for the purpose of getting a master’s degree. Master’s degrees are consolation prizes for those who are not up to what is required to get a Ph.D. Those with master’s degrees go on to be high school teachers (and coaches, counselors, or assistant principals). Community college ads for position vacancies frequently say, ‘master’s degree plus 18 credit hours in the field.’]

Step 4. I get a Ph.D. Ouch! I’m confronted with a difficult choice. I guess I can go out into the hard, cruel world or I can – because I’ve got a feel for this sort of thing and it’s pretty easy for me and because I was required to do some teaching/research as a graduate student – become a professor.

I know I won’t make much money – teachers are notoriously ‘underpaid’ – but society at large has these wonderful misconceptions about us selfless professors who eschew the financial rewards of our educations to devote our lives to their children. They also have the mistaken notion that educated people – and we’re all educated aren’t we? (that’s the easy part) – are also intellectuals and scholars. So I won’t tell if you won’t.

Step 5. I become a college or university professor ... and please call me Dr. Spectacular, Ph.D. Blaaauuugh!!!”

I will concede that not all of us become academics via the “insecurity route” described above, but I’ll give you ten-to-one odds on $100 that that was precisely the route that a majority of Pyshnov’s “colleagues” followed to their offices on the fifth floor. If Hoyer’s Conjecture is correct, then it’s not surprising that few would venture out from under their slimy rocks to confront the challenges of their little ponds, let alone the important issues confronting the world.

Words, words, words, and words ... and the courage of a rabbit.

RWH, at 4:05 pm EDT on May 13, 2007

Inappropriate Paraphrase

“So basically you are saying that foreigners cheat.” — Larry

If “foreigners cheat” is what I meant, that is what I would have said. “Foreigners cheat” is not what I said. What I said can be more appropriately summed up by “Get a sense of context.” Frankly that’s a lot less “culturally insensitive” than exclaiming “Cheating is the essence of American Society!” or throwing in the title “The Cheating Culture: Why More Americans Are Doing Wrong to Get Ahead,” and frankly too, it’s a hell of a lot more accurate.

Scrawed, at 5:25 am EDT on May 14, 2007

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