<p>I saw this article on my Google News feed and thought it might be interesting to get all of your thoughts on it. </p>
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Harvard University said Friday it issued academic sanctions against approximately 60 students who were forced to withdraw from school for a period of time in a cheating scandal that involved the final exam in a class on Congress, drawing criticism from a high-profile alumnus.</p>
<p>The school implicated as many as 125 students in the scandal when officials first addressed the issue last year.</p>
<p>The inquiry started after a teaching assistant in a spring semester undergraduate-level government class detected problems in the take-home test, including that students may have shared answers.</p>
<p>In a campus-wide email Friday, Faculty of Arts and Sciences Dean Michael D. Smith said the school's academic integrity board had resolved all the cases related to the cheating probe.</p>
<p>He said "somewhat more than half" of the cases involved students who had to withdraw from the college for a period of time. . .
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<p>What are your thoughts about this incident and/or Harvard's reaction to it?</p>
<p>Not sure what to think about this. We really do not know how these determinations were made. The process doesn’t appear very transparent. When I was in school I often learned much more through collaborating with other students and TA’s than sitting in formal lectures. I hope Harvard does not lose sight of how much students learn from each other. Collaboration should not become a dirty word. I agree that out right cheating is totally unacceptable, but I spent many hours working on problem sets in groups, and that was where the real learning took place. It appears that there was a breakdown in communication and students took liberties where none were intended. I hope this does not squelch peer to peer learning at Harvard. If anything it should be encouraged broadly.</p>
<p>Did anyone ever see “The Paper Chase?” It’s a classic 1973 film about the rigors of Harvard Law School starring John Housman, Timothy Bottoms and Lindsay Wagner. In the film, a group of competitive law students form a study group and share notes hoping that by collaborative team-work all can ace the final exam. Back in 1973, you had to hand-write a study sheet for each group member and distribute them among your group. At test time – which were always proctored, you never had take home tests – you hopefully remembered half of what was on the study sheet and regurgitated the contents, again handwritten, into 8.5" X 5.5" blue note books that were then graded by a TA.</p>
<p>The same thing recently happened in Harvard’s Government 1310 class. What has changed between 1973 and 2012 is the internet and the ability to easily “copy and paste” from a Word document into a test booklet. That’s where the 125 government students made their egregious error. If they just had rephrased the contents of the study sheet into their own words, none of this would have ever happened. I would have thought that intelligent students would have learned this lesson in high school but I guess not. It just goes to show that you can have plenty of “book smarts” but lack basic common sense.</p>
<p>When the story broke last year there was some speculation that the TF had condoned collaboration and the Prof had cancelled office hours which left students to decipher some ambiguously worded questions.</p>
<p>The matter was dealt with on a case-by-case basis - the dean certainly had more information that was presented in the media. I’m satisfied that the principle of intellectual integrity was upheld.</p>
<p>There is a difference between collaboration and cheating. Collaboration means you talk about the issues with other students, go online to see what others have written on a topic and share sources with others, discuss problems encountered as you INDIVIDUALLY write your paper, and perhaps have a student or T/A review YOUR final product. Cheating means you copy a study sheet/internet site and/or the work of another student and perhaps change a few words. That is not collaboration. </p>
<p>This “collaboration” defense to me sounds more like the brain child of a lawyer advising students/parents “how to beat the wrap.” As danstearns says above, Harvard dealt with this on a case by case basis and had different tiers of penalties for different students likely based on how closely the student’s conduct came to the cheating or collaboration model. These students, who after all were smart enough to get into Harvard, have been taking exams all of their lives and they know that “collaboration” does not involve blatant copying.</p>
<p>If Harvard professors are so stupid that they can’t clearly communicate exam instructions and Harvard students so stupid that they can’t really understand them or ask for clarity about them, it says a lot about all of the so-called geniuses who occupy the Crimson’s hallowed halls. A course that has a reputation about being “easy” and encouraging “collaboration” sounds like a real academic challenge for the intellectually curious. Code word: “gut course.” Take home exams? Are you kidding me? A set up for cheating plain and simple.</p>
<p>I’m really glad my kid wasn’t interested in the Ivy League schools, particularly Harvard. She’s at a university where she is working hard, taking academically rigorous and challenging courses, and actually trying to learn something. </p>
<p>Honestly, in the large scheme of things, this will have little impact on Harvard’s image. It will be forgotten within a few years. The university actively attracts top students and faculty from around the world. It’s prestige may be temporarily dealt a blow, but has been in no way diminished. It is and will likely remain one of the most sought-after schools in the world.</p>
<p>To your point, ClarkAlum, on the professor and students miscommunicating/misunderstanding insturctions, yes, it may seem ridiculous, but in all honesty, even the best students and professors are just human. And being they are human, their attraction to one mistake or another is inevitable and merely a question of time. I say give them a break, as many of the students have been handed down a rather harsh punishment (academic probations and forced withdrawals for as long as 2 years). </p>
<p>After all the points above, there is little left to discuss about this specific event. What we need to make sure of is that a University like Harvard can make a solid balance between academic integrity and the encouragement of developmental collaboration and discussion between students. It would be awful if the latter were left to wither away from this one-off event.</p>