<p>Class</a> of 2013 Senior Survey | The Harvard Crimson</p>
<p>Students at Harvard feel that 53% of their classmates have cheated, and over 30% say they have cheated. Pretty sad situation.</p>
<p>It’s a pretty interesting phenomena, this cheating, not just at Harvard, but in general. What causes cheating? I mean, when did it become so prevalent and why is it worth it to these students?</p>
<p>What’s changed?</p>
<p>I think in general people believe there is more to be gained from cheating (at anything)than what they might lose if they get caught. I also think people believe they are special and will not get caught.</p>
<p>I am not sure if it is more prevelant today or if I just have been very naive and am only now realizing how manty people lie and cheat at will.</p>
<p>I was just at my 35th Harvard reunion and this year our survey also had questions about cheating. I was unable to attend the results session, but I am hoping they’ll put it up on line and I will report what our class says.</p>
<p>Those numbers are a little less shocking when you see the breakdown by kinds of cheating. Some of the other survey results are pretty interesting–the one that shocked me was the percentage of respondents who had sought mental health help while at Harvard.</p>
<p>I agree Hunt, the mental health question stunned me. Almost 1 in 3 of the guys and almost half the girls. While I don’t generally consider statistics, that one would make me think abit since I believe the national average among college students is something like one in four.</p>
<p>There’s a lot I find surprising in that survey. 30% of the women and 23% of the men are virgins at graduation? Men are more than six times as likely as women to identify themselves as “gay”, and about 50% more likely to identify themselves as gay or bisexual?</p>
<p>It’s a popular topic at conferences at the moment. My things are all boxed up because I’m being moved to a new office as part of a major renovation, so if I have a few of the details wrong or names misspelled, forgive me. A study in 2007 by McGruder (?) found that just over half of students self reported that they had cheated. Given that not everyone will self report, the actual incidence is probably higher.</p>
<p>There are also 5 reasons why people cheat. I think this discussion is probably centering around three. Students want to get ahead no matter the cost. Students see the work required as irrelevant or “stupid” so it doesn’t matter if they cheat. Students become overwhelmed and cheat out of desperation.</p>
<p>@ordinarylives: “There are also 5 reasons why people cheat.”</p>
<p>I thought that there is only one reason: to get a better grade.</p>
<p>Not exactly a big surprise:</p>
<p>15.18% going to work in finance.
15.84% going to work in consulting.</p>
<p>But only 4.59% and 0.92% hope to be there in 10 years.</p>
<p>The largest disparities the other way were health with 7.16% going to work there but 19.82% hoping to be there in 10 years (probably successful pre-meds going to medical school), and entrepreneurship, with 2.17% going to work there but 7.74% hoping to be there in 10 years.</p>
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<p>Cheating has always been around, but it does seem to be more prevalent today. I think it’s just an overwhelming sense of pressure to succeed. Some kids are raised with the attitude that winning/being the best/making it to the top is the most important thing in life and anything less is failure. And it’s not just Tiger parents; many parents send the message inadvertently: “If you get all A’s/hit a homerun/win the meet, we’ll buy you a new iPhone.” The message is the same: results are more important than effort or integrity.</p>
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This actually surprised me less. I turned out to live in a house with a lot of gay guys, though I was not aware of it at the time. I knew exactly two out gay guys at Harvard, and no lesbians. An entire table of people couldn’t think of a single lesbian at Harvard (though we all suspected they lived at North House), but everyone knew a handful of gays, and I think the gay guys may have known more than a handful. What a sea change between spring of 1978 and fall of 1979 - or maybe the difference between Columbia and Harvard. Everyone was out by then.</p>
<p>As to the cheating if no one ever snitches, will it ever stop? I remember my son being disappointed that the “biggest cheater in the school” got into Cornell. Somehow he’d convinced himself that cheating would catch up with him someday, but the sad fact is, that mostly it doesn’t.</p>
<p>What always struck my kids was that in high school the biggest cheaters were the ones who had been at the top of the class since kindergarten, and they were cheating not to turn a C into a B, but to push an A- up to an A. They were determined to keep their status as the best and the brightest even when challenging classes, burdensome schedules, and excessive EC and sports involvement threatened their grades. It doesn’t surprise me that a large number of this ilk continue their habits once they reach the Ivies they have been striving towards.</p>
<p>The cheating thing makes me feel sad for these kids. </p>
<p>I remember sometimes we would take a class for the challenge of it, to see how far we could go with something. But, if you are cheating, how can you even know your own limits? Or find out where you need to challenge yourself next.</p>
<p>The strange thing to me, and my peers were these kids growing up, academically, is that none of us would have EVER asked to cheat from a friend. It would have been a complete taboo. </p>
<p>Maybe I was in a different type of group back then? I don’t know. I don’t think so. I think this was a general consensus back then.</p>
<p>So, I wonder if, in some ways, grade inflation hasn’t caused this.</p>
<p>How many of them get caught?</p>
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<p>Sadly, this reflects my kids experience as well. Not all of the top students did this; it was more the type who cared about the grades more than the actual learning, ie the less intellectual ones. Many of them were under a fair bit of parental pressure and many were doing it more for the “status” aspect of being considered top students. I wish the faculty had been willing to do more about it but they seemed to have given up trying to stop it except in the most egregious cases.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, many of them were the ones who were admitted to “elite” universities which contributes to my belief that the admissions offices at these schools are not as all-knowing and infallible as some think.</p>
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<p>I completely agree with this analysis and with Joblue above. For those who perceive the reward as external to the learning itself, there will always be the temptation to cheat. If such cheating is not scorned by peers and if others who cheat get away with it, a check on bad behavior is lost. It certainly does not help that so many of our leaders get caught cheating, either through insider trading, sweetheart deals or illicit affairs.</p>
<p>"And it’s not just Tiger parents; many parents send the message inadvertently: “If you get all A’s/hit a homerun/win the meet, we’ll buy you a new iPhone.” The message is the same: results are more important than effort or integrity. " </p>
<p>The message isn’t always that subtle. I know students whose every school project and paper is parent-assisted and parent-edited, often by parents who are very well educated (graduates of ivy league colleges, PhD holders, attorneys, etc). The grades these students earn in high school are bumped up by the parental assistance and the assistance doesn’t necessarily stop at graduation. I know of young people who attend local colleges and have mom and dad edit and help on their college assignments. I know of young people who email their papers home, sometimes to parents who have earned graduate degrees in the same field.</p>
<p>Joblue – this may be why more colleges place more reliance on SATs than grades.</p>
<p>At my high school, I would seriously place money on the claim that over 90% of the people cheat or have cheated. (I’m including copying homework, splitting up homework, googling answers to tests, wandering eyes, etc.)
It might sound like a lot, but I go to a very underperforming school in one of the worst areas of Texas. Average SAT is 1330, ACT is 17. I have friends in the top 1% who personally have asked to cheat off of me. It’s absolutely out of hand.</p>