The outcome is predictable: unless there is a scandal of massive proportions, the issues just..."go away" on their own. With some discretion for the professor to either just look the other way, or ding the student enough to feel vindicated, but not so much as to actually hurt the university's interests.
As a TA, I once stumbled upon a bunch of students who had been copying each other's labs, because one student was brazen enough to turn in a printout with a the gmail header information across the top, indicating it had been received from another student. So I looked at that student's page, and noticed that they had somehow completely screwed up their rounding, and used way too many significant figures, which I recognized from another student's assignment. Digging through the pile, I found others that had rearranged stuff enough that I probably would have missed them if not for their exceptionally dull friend.
All told, 9 students had turned in the same exact assignment. 8 took up the offer to drop the course and switch majors, 1 faced the music, took their zero in the course, but did stick with the program.
this is funny except that it also isn't
Not only that, but if you accuse a student of cheating and they are expelled, you have fundamentally altered their life forever. Talk about a burden.
That's not a burden, it's justice.
If you’re asking me if there are situations where a student should be expelled because of cheating, the answer is yes. But I would say there are a lot of factors that have to be considered. It certainly can’t be one size fits all, which a number of institutions do. Otherwise it is not “justice” in the slightest. It’s taking a “tough on crime” approach to young adults in school enforced by their educators and peers, which is…well, let’s say “not effective.” At the end of the day these are institutions for learning. Plenty of people make huge mistakes, including massive breaches of trust, then learn their lesson and become better people for it. Giving a 0 on an assignment is often sufficient if we’re being honest. In a lot of cases that dig such a deep hole that your grade will never recover. If you want punitive measures, and one that hits where it hurts in a way that is relevant to the act of cheating, it doesn’t get much more appropriate than that. Not to mention the educator is going to watch them like a hawk for the rest of the semester.
I’m not even going to bother elaborating on how absurd it is to compare murder and cheating on a homework assignment or whatever.
The case of Katie Meyer at Stanford (not an academic integrity issue but a carelessly punitive disciplinary process nonetheless) shows that universities need to temper discipline with humanity and understanding, and to work for positive outcomes for all students.
> honor system has relied on individual accountability, with students pledging both to refrain from academic dishonesty and to report those they witness in violation
The last part is the weakness. As you note, nobody wants to potentially cause great harm to another student, even one who is guilty of cheating.
That being said, a cheating student should certainly not receive credit for the exam, as it is unearned, creates an unfair environment, undermines the assessment accuracy of course grades, and can disadvantage other students in courses with curved or grouped grade distributions. Widespread or prevalent cheating is particularly destructive because it creates bad incentives.
No one disagrees with this. No one wants to encourage cheating. The question is what works and/or are there any harmful effects of current systems
A random anecdote is that most of the people I know who went very far in theoretical math are relatively poor at basic mental arithmetic, because they always think in the abstract and offload addition and multiplication to the calculator. It doesn't mean they can't do it, they just aren't as practiced or as fast at it.
Also, they are leaning on a calculator, a specific tool with a proven use that literally everyone knows how to use. LLM’s are glorified beta tests where the VC-backed companies are begging the rest of us to figure out the billion dollar application for them. It doesn’t even remotely compare from a utility standpoint. I don’t need to promise you what a calculator will eventually do when it gets better or convince you of their usefulness. It is self evident and consistent
Need to type? Computer labs (“test taking labs” idk) are back baby. Simple machines, no Internet.
Pretty sure that solves 90% of the testing problem. If somebody is overly reliant on LLM’s and refuses to learn, they’ll pay with their grades on the big assignments. Bummer for teachers who don’t love blue books, but I’m sure it’s a hell of a lot better than trying to sniff out LLMs and constantly mistrusting your students.
Your work will be ‘graded’ by other humans who don’t know what they are talking about, or an LLM which will assume the median answer is correct?
Going back to the old(er) way of teaching may be a very good idea.
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 the only tangible, marketable value of graduating from a prestigious school was the raw knowledge and skill, I would agree with you. But it’s not.
Having worked with people who clearly got preferential treatment in hiring based on their school’s prestige, over more capable applicants from lower-tier schools, I absolutely lose respect for staff at universities who turn a blind eye to cheating.
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.
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 do they do? If they relate to/empathize with the person, they try to handle it without reporting it. If they don’t, they reported and “let the system handle it.”
As any reasonable person would expect, white people were not reported and marginalized groups were. Privileged groups also got exceptions (the football team had a massive cheating scandal that should have expelled about 15 players, and the professor reported it! But mumble mumble uhh they learned their lesson).
After over a century they finally ended the system recently and honestly? Good. I appreciated what they were attempting to do, but it didn’t work.
The point though is these “honor codes” can become incredibly discriminatory and often, when scrutinized, prove not be effective at stopping cheating.
Expulsion is far too harsh if cheating is widespread but there should be some penalty.
Public high schools in Georgia were still holding segregated proms no more than 10 years ago.
Especially so when you’re invoking the specter of racially discriminatory enforcement as a reason against rules that would be highly beneficial for everyone. You can’t invoke unproven allegations of racism to argue against having rules and enforcing them. That’s just a red herring for people who don’t like rules.
I don’t understand why you think it’s so impossible for people to prove this problem exists. For starters, they could simply survey the faculty and ask them how they handle cheating at the school to better understand how it’s reported. Which they did, and it was very revealing. Most did not feel comfortable reporting. They literally told the school. So out the gate you had less than half the faculty even participating, which immediately changes who is impacted (I.e. incredibly unfair enforcement). Before we’re even getting into race and other factors students are basically subject to a near-coin flip over whether or not their professors even report it. Then you have to take the professor’s own potential biases into account, since it’s basically all on them (and peers to a lesser degree. Do I need to explain 18-21 year olds can exercise poor social judgment and/or may not want to ruin someone’s life? Or worse, want to?) voluntarily report this.
Additionally, you could see the breakdown by race (and more) of people that were expelled. The numbers made no sense if you wanted to assert the system was fair - less than 20% of those reported or expelled were white at a school over 80% white. For emphasis: This was the case both for reporting them and verdict. It was common knowledge and over the years there had been several attempts by students to shut the one strike/expulsion only system down. There were also big gender discrepancies, with men being accused and expelled way more than women. Do you believe that claim?
The real issue here is why you immediately come from a place of “that’s impossible,” when it’s something that’s not actually very difficult to prove. That’s literally why it was removed. It was demonstrably discriminatory. Either way, this isn’t complicated and the data isn’t and wasn’t exactly hard to come by. So now it’s gone and the school is better for it.
"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 entirely illegal to give information that allows identification of students based on academic results.
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 by a specific group). They aren’t the same thing and they aren’t combined in reporting. I can’t imagine any school combines those two but maybe there are outliers.
The number of students expelled for cheating at my school was a concrete, annual number that was public knowledge.
So many of you keep asking all these random questions trying to poke holes. If you don’t believe me, just move on. I am giving you all the specificity I’m going to give you. You either believe me or you don’t. I have nothing to gain by lying on HN about a school I attended decades ago. I am relaying something I have a lot of firsthand knowledge of. You can find value in it or not.
There was a clear, demonstrable problem with the way cheating was handled. They've altered it because of this. That’s the story.
Even if most of the people who were disciplined are from URM groups, that doesn't prove racially-biased enforcement.
The fact that most teachers were uncomfortable reporting might suggest enforcement was self selecting, but what makes you think it was the particularly racist teachers self selecting into enforcement? And under Title VI, which is what your allegation amounts to, disparate impact isn’t a valid theory of of discrimination: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_v._Sandoval.
Again, strict rules against cheating are societally critical. Petty corruption and cheating is a huge tax on a society, and countries like Singapore and China have greatly improved the lives of ordinary people by taking draconian measures to stamp it out. So you have a very heavy burden if you’re arguing against such rules based on allegations of racial bias.
Why is multiple county and school district-wide segregation policies "personal racism" but as soon as it goes to a university it becomes "institutional"?
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. It’s completely different.
... specifically because their school districts specifically voted to drop school sponsorship of proms because of desegregation, to legally insulate the schools and districts. Rather ignoring the concept of cause and effect.
Again, the numbers spoke to the truth of the matter. White people were reported and expelled at a rate that was so much lower than their non-white and international peers that it defied credulity. Men were also accused and expelled at a rate far higher than women were - something tells me you won’t push back against that.
The school didn’t end an over century-old practice that was a major point of pride for them because of vibes. It ended because it was harming only certain groups and was not effective at curtailing cheating.
They know full well that what they are doing is awful.
Brilliant, charismatic people without any sense of ethics tend to do very well in school, in politics, and in most organizations.