This is a hot-button topic and one that cannot be adequately assessed from touring or visiting, so I’m hoping there will be some insight from posters on this site regarding the practice of academic integrity at certain schools. I’m not so naive as to think that there is a single college or university in this country where academic integrity is always practiced. What I am looking for is an undergraduate program where it is routinely practiced and cheating/using tech (ChatGTP) to bend the rules is not. I’d also like a school where a large proportion of the school does not turn a blind eye to cheating.
I’ve been a student and have parented students at both types of schools, and once a student is in those environments, regardless of the talent level of the students or the competitiveness of the program, we have found that the presence or absence of this practice affects the overall school culture.
I’m not trying to show judgement against people for using advantages available to them. This isn’t a judgement post. I’m just looking for the right academic culture fit for my student and I know that one where academic integrity is practiced routinely will make him most comfortable.
DH24 is deciding between physics/engineering and economics. He might minor in one and major in the other. He plans to get a master’s degree after undergrad. We are full pay, will consider ED. He’s open to everything from big state schools to small liberal arts colleges. He’s visited both and liked both. We live in the Mid-Atlantic but would be willing to drive up to 8 hours for a residential college.
What level of school is he looking at? At some schools, the level of upperclass work required is likely beyond where Chatgpt would be of assistance. For my DD’s recent physics p-set, it took the assistance of 3 grad students and one tenured professor all working together to figure out how to proceed. Why this was homework is beyond me.
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University of Virginia is one of the leaders when it comes to requiring a strict adherence to its honor code.
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He’s a top student at his high school. I’m not going to post his stats because I don’t want this to devolve into a stat discussion. I won’t have him apply to a school where he isn’t qualified.
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Any of the military academies strictly enforce honor code.
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Washington and Lee is extremely serious about their Honor Code.
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As noted above, many schools have honor codes. Adherence to them varies greatly, and one study I read indicates math and econ are the classes with the greatest number of honor code violations. UVA does have one of the strictest; note that an unintended consequence may be students even more reluctant to report violations due to potentially draconian results. The Stanford faculty recently tried to reimpose proctored exams due to concerns about cheating.
In general, chatgpt will be less useful and thus less utilized in places like CalTech and MIT due to the type of assignments given.
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I should say too that we have a close friend who is Dean of Students at a college near us, he said they’ve already had multiple pitches from companies that say they can detect AI answers, etc. I imagine that’s not the case for math or science as much as it is for essay answers.
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Sadly, our son complains that other students at CWRU cheat, and that hurts the competitiveness of honest students. The biggest issue is students from the first section of the class tell students from the second section what was on the test. Admittedly, our son is a bit of a rule follower and tends to over-react (one of the ancillary effects of ADHD) so cheating may not be as commonplace as he thinks.
My D was a course grader during Covid at Purdue for a required class for chemical engineering. A number of students cheated on the first exam. There were issues in the CS department that semester with people cheating on code as well. My D said it was really interesting to see what happened behind the scenes. The consequences were swift and severe. She’s not sure if the students in her class were ultimately expelled but they were removed immediately from the class which meant that at very least, they weren’t able to stay in the major. The prof also implemented all kinds of fail safes with watermarked exams and worked on things with the IT department.
D said that ChatGTP isn’t sophisticated enough yet to help with advanced engineering and is super easy to spot.
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I am told that the honor code is taken very seriously at Princeton. Minimum 1y suspension if proven. Often if a case comes up in front of the honor board, the odds are 80-90% that the matter will be settled against the kid. Separately, a lot of higher level classes are open everything. Especially in stem.
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This happens starting in middle school and high school. So teachers gave different tests for different class periods.
Haverford is known for their honor code
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I can’t comment on your student’s experience, but I will say that my son never complained about it directly when he was around it. I did notice that when I removed him from the school where cheating was commonplace, he had anger issues that disappeared when I took him out of that environment. He went from a generally angry, moody kid to a happy, calm kid. More of a personality shift than anything diagnosable.
I hope your S gets in a more positive class. Thanks for sharing his views.
"Open everything " is often the case at MIT as well. Use a book, use last year’s final, phone your mom- nothing will help. Many professors construct exams and problem-sets that are so open-ended, that the answer isn’t nearly as important as showing your thought process and the steps you took to get there. AI just isn’t sophisticated enough!
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This might when attending a large school is better in certain situations than a small or medium one. At one daughter’s state flagship, all large STEM classes take their tests in the evening, at the same time, regardless of when their class is scheduled. There is no passing of answers from one section to another.
I don’t know about how the honor code is enforced there generally, but there are structural steps like the uniform test time that the school takes to prevent cheating.
My daughter is an upperclassman in a major where collaboration is encouraged, so I don’t hear many stories about cheating. The one instance she has mentioned in which a friend was caught “helping” another student outside of the boundaries of what the professor permitted was dealt with harshly, but that is only one data point.
Davidson has a strong honor code.
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The diligent teachers do. The professor who isn’t interested in teaching undergrads and just wants to work on research might not bother. Even if the tests are different, the same concepts might be covered in similar questions.
I wonder… is there any school that does not have a strict honor code, or does not enforce it if a student is found to have violated the code?
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I think there are definitely degrees of codes, enforcement, and (sadly) student adherence.