<p>My S was across the street and says all his classes were essays and final. I’m kinda surprised by the weight placed on quizzes, too.</p>
<p>Way way back, I TA’d for a large Shakespeare lecture-based course at UMich. There were three or four of us, plus the prof, grading the essays. Don’t know why Barnard didn’t do that.</p>
<p>A little more info:</p>
<p>[Students</a> in Barnard English course accused of cheating | Columbia Daily Spectator](<a href=“http://www.columbiaspectator.com/2013/05/09/students-barnard-english-course-accused-cheating]Students”>http://www.columbiaspectator.com/2013/05/09/students-barnard-english-course-accused-cheating)</p>
<p>“No students have been identified as having cheated.”</p>
<p>waiting for ivy: “The students cheating - many many people cheat on little assignments like this. Top students are not g-d, they’re just normal students.”</p>
<p>This is bogus. I’m not naive and I know people cheat, but saying that it’s no big deal because so many people do it is no answer. I’m not buying it and I don’t believe kids who think it’s ok deserve to be in college.</p>
<p>And why should they get a better grade than a student who did not cheat and had the wrong answer? I would hope these kids would be angry at the others who are messing with them.</p>
<p>“No students have been identified as having cheated.”</p>
<p>They don’t want a scandal, and get anyone in particular in trouble. Trying to sweep it under the rug, it seems like.</p>
<p>Not a good week on the Heights:</p>
<p>[Football</a> player charged with hate crime, students shocked by several players? offensive tweets | Columbia Daily Spectator](<a href=“http://www.columbiaspectator.com/2013/05/07/nbc-new-york-football-player-charged-hate-crime]Football”>http://www.columbiaspectator.com/2013/05/07/nbc-new-york-football-player-charged-hate-crime)</p>
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<p>…So they claim to be surprised people cheated?</p>
<p>So let me see - 123 students, paying on average, say $3,500 for the course, is $430,500. Pay a non-professor lecturer, oh, let’s be generous and say, $8,000, for the course. No TAs. A little bit of electricity, and janitorial services. A bit of administration - let’s be generous and say 10 grand. The building is all paid for. </p>
<p>Who is cheating whom?</p>
<p>One of the articles suggests that it was left up to the instructor whether to have an investigation that might result in expulsions, or to have a proctored final. Since her own lackadaisical grading practices are at least partly to blame, I’m not surprised she chose the latter.</p>
<p>They didn’t want to - she is such a cash cow for Columbia/Barnard.</p>
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<p>And at an LAC too. I thought one of the supposed beauties to attending an LAC is the small class sizes.</p>
<p>Word apparently got around too - more than 40% of the students, apparently, were from Columbia.</p>
<p>Perhaps if she was a world famous something or other, but…(but then she would have had TAs, even if they didn’t speak English. ;))</p>
<p>More likely, this class is an opportunity for certain groups of students to satisfy a distributional requirement painlessly. Now those kids will have to look for something else.</p>
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<p>Says nothing about Columbia students, of whom there were apparently many in the class. :)</p>
<p>I think what they mean is “no specific students have been identified” . . . like, “we know there was a lot of cheating, but we can’t pinpoint the individuals.”</p>
<p>For the record, I have had classes where students peer-graded little quizzes and as far as I know there was no cheating, and certainly not widespread cheating. Changing grades for your friends seems so . . . grade school.</p>
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<p>And at an LAC too. I thought one of the supposed beauties to attending an LAC is the small class sizes.<<<</p>
<p>Not all LACs are cut from the same cloth. Barnard is quite unique with its affiliation with Columbia. Cross registration and combined uses of facilities create a different environment. Lots of ink has been spilled about Barnard being an integral part of Columbia, or a mere backdoor entry to the Ivies. And, yes, that includes that nebulous diploma and the use of a columbia.edu email. Not to mention Columbia not including “its” affiliates in admissions’ statistics when convenient.</p>
<p>There can be larger classes at a LAC, but the beauty -if one sees it as such- is the lack of reliance on teaching and grading by peers who are just a bit more educated and not necessarily trained or qualified to be thrown in that position. In simpler terms, that means a lesser reliance on that boondoggle called the TA model. </p>
<p>I hope people would realize that calling for TA grading in this class is just as silly as allowing the organized cheating. It is just one more testament how students are cheated of a real education, regardless of the prestige or cost of a school. </p>
<p>Perhaps time has come to adopt the TA model in our K-12. After all, high schoolers could be great teachers in middle school. /sarcasm</p>
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<p>Why risk it? Pay someone $15/hr to grade. In the scheme of the school’s finances, that’s nothing.</p>
<p>One of the primary duties of a university is to train the next generation of academics and professors. TAs leading sections under the supervision of a regular professor ought to be part of that. I don’t see why people get bent out of shape about it. It is like being treated at a teaching hospital. Occasionally seeing residents and students is part of the deal.</p>
<p>^Agreed. I am not a big fan of large lecture classes (especially for LACs) but if training graduate students to teach is part of an institution’s mission, the undergrad students should expect TAs–at least in introductory-level courses.</p>
<p>I so disagree.</p>
<p>That’s fine at universities where people aren’t paying – literally – a fortune to attend. For $50 or $60 K a year, one can expect to be taught by a professor. Or do you think they are only paying for the name on the diploma?</p>
<p>What are students paying for? Are they getting an education? Are they learning? Or are they warming up a seat, paying the bill, and getting the piece of paper? It’s bogus.</p>