<p>It’s a tragedy of the common’s type thing. Everyone goes for their own best interest when there is limited regulation. If someone cheats, he actually puts himself ahead of others, so the other people to be competitive respond in the same way or else that guy can be taking away their jobs in the competition. I think it is pretty hard to stop the few that actually get away with cheating in such a large population unless everyone cheats. Also it is important to think of the issue in a student’s eyes.</p>
<p>Also, I honestly think that cheating is more likely to occur at Ivies. </p>
<p>Due to the very driven student body, and all that they had to do to get into Harvard.</p>
<p>In addition, hard or easy class, it’s the same thing to many–a hoop you have to get through to graduate. There is the mentality that it doesn’t matter to me if it won’t affect my job. When someone cheats themself out of Physics and they’re going to be an engineer, I’m concerned.</p>
<p>Edit: As for the people who don’t cheat… Sorry, but you just have to deal with inevitable existence of cheaters. I discourage it but have succumbed to it before with homework collaboration.</p>
<p>No one knows what really happened yet, but my other thought is that any essay based exam that is “open internet” is just asking for trouble. Google or any other major search engine is going to produce the exact same results for every student. If the essays were “word for word” identical then yes, plagiarism/collaboration probably took place. But if they are basing the allegations on similar ideas or arguments, then that is to be expected with an “open internet” exam.</p>
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<p>I was thinking the same thing. Maybe not the exact same results, but some similar results with so many students writing on the same subjects. </p>
<p>People use the same search engines. These search engines prioritize the data results. People use the same writing software with the same editing features. THere are certain words people like to use. I’m sure “fatuous” and “diffident” show up more frequently at Harvard than “silly” or “shy.”</p>
<p>Where I work (government agency) we all attend the same writing training, we all are warned against using passive voice, “inactive” or “weak” verbs, etc. It’s highly likely if over 100 of us were asked to write on a topic some of our results would seem very similar.</p>
<p>But I assume they’re taking all of that into account before actually punisihng anyone. I don’t like cheating but for some reason my reaction to this is “meh.” Maybe I should care more, but even if I did I’d wait to find out “the rest of the story.”</p>
<p>Cheating on a honor code based take home test? How is this abnormal, it probably happens all the time. </p>
<p>It’s the schools fault for implementing a take home test rule…</p>
<p>Obviously there has been an investigation going on and they have been interviewing students. </p>
<p>For one, I don’t think they would even launch an investigation over similarily themed responses - as it is open note/book/internet. It’s clearly more than that. Give the school, administrators, teacher, TA’s some credit. </p>
<p>Not only did they launch an investigation but they believe that cheating occured, after looking into it further and interviewing students…etc. </p>
<p>“But if they are basing the allegations on similar ideas or arguments, then that is to be expected with an “open internet” exam.”</p>
<p>If they believed cheating occured only on similar ideas/arguments, then there would be an investigation launched every couple of weeks for every individual assignment/paper assigned! I don’t think you are giving the school enough credit - they don’t make a big deal out of something like this unless bad stuff was actually going on. I think that investigation is more about the extent of the cheating that occured (ie, how many students and who) and not so much about if it actually occured at all.</p>
<p>"It’s the schools fault for implementing a take home test rule… "</p>
<p>lol Doesn’t mean the students shouldnt be expelled/punished…</p>
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I don’t agree with that. The course instructor should be fired. People cheat under pressure, so it’s a problem with the course for allowing take home tests that give students the option for said behavior.</p>
<p>You should assume that if something is not done in class, people will “cheat” on it, whatever that means. Actually, I’m pretty sure collaboration (on homework for example) is one of the most important activities that facilitates learning. The smartest people do it. This is how you learn. </p>
<p>If you don’t want collaboration, have an in class exam with people watching everyone. Honor codes don’t work. It’s Harvard’s fault.</p>
<p>^ lol okay</p>
<p>Cheating is okay, as long as you are in a high pressure situation, and it’s easy to not get caught as a result of an authority figure’s actions. </p>
<p>THAT’S the message we want to teach these students! Can’t waint until they are out in the real world and deciding whether to defraud millions of people.</p>
<p>Of course the students need to be punished!!!</p>
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<p>I hate to break this to you, but there’s no such thing as a transcending honor code in this universe. People are selfish, and it makes complete sense that you should do what benefits you the most, whether you agree with that or not.</p>
<p>You can only prevent this behavior by institutionalizing a system that penalizes people for this (for example, all tests I have taken have been proctored by many people).</p>
<p>^Wow. I don’t even know what to say. </p>
<p>Obviously not everyone is honest/ethical. Does that mean we shouldn’t try to instill values into our students?</p>
<p>Also the fact that everyone isn’t honest/ethical, is the reason we have laws/punishments - both in schools and out in the real world. By saying we don’t need to dole out punishment to wrongdoers just because “there’s no such thing as a transcending honor code” and “people are selfish” doesn’t make sense - those are the reasons why we need to dole out punishment. </p>
<p>“People are selfish, and it makes complete sense that you should do what benefits you the most, whether you agree with that or not.”</p>
<p>I think that alot of people disagree with this and often take courses of action because it is the right thing to do and not because it benefits them. Obviously, not everyone takes the high ground, but can be pressured to by society, rules, and potential punishment for their actions - which is why we have rules in the first place.</p>
<p>Thanks for the article link, nohook.</p>
<p>I thinks it’s also odd that the teacher reported about ten suspicious papers and the board studied it and found 125. I mean, you would think the teacher would be the one most able to do the “smell test.” How did they come up with the other 115 “suspicious” papers? </p>
<p>It all seems very strange to me.</p>
<p>For curiosity’s sake, I looked up this professor on “Rate My Professor” and he only has one review. This makes me think he is probably a relatively new teacher.</p>
<p>IMO this NYT article doesn’t let any true cheaters off the hook, but if correct it does suggest that the case is not so simple nor so open-and-shut as it might appear on the surface.</p>
<p><a href=“Students of Harvard Cheating Scandal Say Group Work Was Accepted - The New York Times”>Students of Harvard Cheating Scandal Say Group Work Was Accepted - The New York Times;
<p>Excerpt:</p>
<p>"One student recalled going to a teaching fellow while working on the final exam and finding a crowd of others there, asking about a test question that hinged on an unfamiliar term. The student said the fellow defined the term for them.</p>
<p>An accused sophomore said that in working on exams, “everybody went to the T.F.’s and begged for help. Some of the T.F.’s really laid it out for you, as explicit as you need, so of course the answers were the same.”</p>
<p>So this is not necessarily a defense of the students implicated in this mess, but I do remember one of the most common ways of studying/prepping for exams was the creation of massive study guides. These study guides were often compiled by groups of students because there was simply too much reading material to summarize by one student in a short period of time. So the reading material/lectures notes would be divided among members in the group and then compiled in preparation for the exam. Now, normally, these exams were not take home, so usually nothing improper goes on. (still, I can see how similar paraphrasing may end up in the exams of different students without it being cheating…simply because they (study guide group) would have studied using the same study guide. </p>
<p>In this case, if study groups prepared a study guide in advance of receiving the exam, does it count as ‘having discussed’/‘collaborated with colleagues’ if the exam questions were not specifically discussed among students? Groups of 5-10 students may have studied from the same study guide with the same bullet points and summaries (and any mistakes and inaccuracies) It’s not unreasonable to find similar phrasing in the exams. </p>
<p>Again, I’m not necessarily defending the students, but this may not actually be as nefarious of a situation as it seemed when the story first broke.</p>
<p>(of course, we can ask why students didn’t just take copious notes of the readings during the semester and wait till the last minute to put together study guides assuming they knew the conditions of the course…but I’m not sure we should go there)</p>
<p>There are thousands of kids across the nation with the 4.0 gpa, 2390 sat, and amazing extracurriculars vying for these spots at Harvard. These kids aren’t irreplaceable. If I was H I would expel immediately, replace the cheaters, and set a firm honor code. The ‘ivy-league’ brand is still going remarkably strong after centuries and these type of scandals will drag that down.</p>
<p>Cheaters are cheaters. It doesn’t matter if there is an honor code, or if daddy is a senator who isn’t happy about this, or if the kids are smart. Expel because its morally wrong. Show that cheating isn’t the way to the top.</p>
<p>It sounds like the admin/school is still being quite vague/broad on the dirty details involved while they’re still uncovering new information and deciding what to do(as they should). </p>
<p>Of course the students themselves will say they didn’t cheat. What else are they going to say? That the class was unfair, people had “collaborated” in prior terms to no consequences, that the teaching fellows were inconsistent, the teacher bad? Oh, they said all that! The truth is that all of this could be true and would actually create a stronger incentive to cheat, but by no means makes the cheating okay. </p>
<p>“In this case, if study groups prepared a study guide in advance of receiving the exam, does it count as ‘having discussed’/‘collaborated with colleagues’ if the exam questions were not specifically discussed among students?”</p>
<p>I would say that only if anyone added to the study guide (such as a google document) after receiving the test, would it be considered collaborating (which is pretty easy to imagine happening). Furthermore, it doesnt seem as though the type of historical study guide your talking about would be ideal for the off-the-wall exam questions these students are complaining about. </p>
<p>“The students said they do not doubt that some people in the class did things that were obviously prohibited, like working together in writing test answers. But they said that some of the conduct now being condemned was taken for granted in the course, on previous tests and in previous years. (NYtimes article)”</p>
<p>This is the unfair argument. It was a previously easy class which is, probably, why many of these students purposely signed up for it. The professor probably had gotten pressure from his superiors to raise the course difficulty from the previous year. Lets just say, it sounds like his class was not pleased.</p>
<p>I’m amazed that anyone would think that having a take-home exam is any justification for cheating. When I was at Brown, the hardest course I took had take-home exams. People did not have the attitude that take-home exams meant you could cheat-- and this was a math test where cheating would have been a great help, provided you had no character and were willing to cheat.</p>
<p>It doesn’t make cheating okay. It does make some cheating inevitable, IMO. (Sorry, but I do not believe in these schools where supposedly no one cheats.) I think it’s silly to make cheating easy. </p>
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<p>Wow. That is sort of appalling.</p>
<p>I took my fair share of take home exams in college. Pretty sure there wasn’t much cheating going on. My school is very proud of its honor code though (rightly or not).</p>
<p>blahblah9393 - lots of professions are high stress and operate on time constraints… you can’t cheat at them to get an A. You have to do your best in the time you have.</p>