<p>Been debating what to do for weeks. Here is my situation.</p>
<p>I am in an advanced undergrad class of 9 people. The professor left up solutions to last year's midterm on last year's webpage (accessibly by simply changing <a href="http://www.-----.edu/...../sp11.html%5B/url%5D">www.-----.edu/...../sp11.html</a> to sp10.html. The midterm counts for 30% of the grade. The grade system is set up so that there is some type of distribution...the scores of the top couple people decide what an A is, etc.</p>
<p>The midterm was extremely long, but was also open note/book. I know for a fact that 2 out of 9 people cheated on the exam, and likely 1 or 2 more. Today we got our grades back....the 2 people that cheated got 100, while I got a 70, and several people below me got 50's/60's (again, it's an advanced undergrad class). I've been conflicted what to do.</p>
<p>My parents are donors of the university, and I happened to have lunch a day after the exam with one of the school's directors. This director is good friends of the Dean of the school and suggested I talk to him. I was scared of being reprimanded myself, or having the professor take things out on me if I came forward. So I decided to drop things until we got our exams back (3 weeks later..today).</p>
<p>I don't know what I should do. On the one hand, I could have done better if I had studied harder (although I do have over a 3.6 and a 4.0 over the past 3 semesters). I decided to email the professor, who said that he'd make the final exam easier so that a distribution wouldn't be needed, and we would do a straight 90 and up is an A. Needless to say, I'll need close to 100% on the final to get an A in the class, while the people that cheated can get in the 70-80's. While this seems okay, I still feel it's unfair that people that cheated are getting away with it, and it is also so evident that they did cheat. </p>
<p>A couple people did do well (80's) that didn't cheat. I feel like I should take it to the dean's office and try and get the exam thrown out, but I'm scared of any repercussions from the professor (who admitted he used the same exam as last year, and left the webpage with solutions up). </p>
<p>I’m confused at how those other two students cheated?</p>
<p>Are you saying they cheated because they studied the past exam that the professor provided (left on his website), and that same professor used the exact same midterm for your class?</p>
<p>How is that cheating? It seems to me those 2 other students lucked out, and the professor is the one that you should be mad at.</p>
<p>He didn’t admit publicly that he used the same exam as last time…he admitted when I emailed him today. I’m not sure what type of college you go to, but finding solutions to old exams and copying from them is considered cheating at most places. (When they aren’t meant to be publicly available – he took the solutions down about 3 weeks into class, but people had already saved them to their computers).</p>
<p>As for proof, one of the persons was a friend that admitted it to me. </p>
<p>And yes, I am more mad at the professor than the students that cheated. I had the option to use the material as well, but opted not to…call it morals. It is clearly against our school’s academic integrity code.</p>
<p>Edit: Is it sour grapes? Yes partially. I’m not denying that I’m not ****ed off at the situation. That, however, doesn’t mean I don’t have a point that the whole situation was unfair for everyone that didn’t cheat.</p>
<p>Cheating: Hacking into a professors computer to get a copy of the exam. </p>
<p>Studying: Using a copy of an old exam you found online to study for an upcoming test.</p>
<p>I’ve had several professors post copies of their old exams for students to study from. These professors aren’t lazy/stupid enough to then give the same exam to his current students.</p>
<p>If you go on MIT’s open courseware website they have copies of old exams from hundreds of classes. There they are, free to anybody that wants to look at them and study from them. Are you not supposed to study from an old test because the professor might give a test similar (or the same) as that?</p>
<p>Professors need to stop being lazy and create new exams if they don’t want that to happen.</p>
<p>There’s a difference between posting previous exams (knowingly and on purpose), and finding a website of a previous year that has homework and exam solutions on it. Yes, it’s the professors fault for offering the same exact exam, but I don’t see how people don’t consider it cheating. I suppose it differs by college.</p>
<p>From the Wash U academic policy:
“To avoid cheating or unauthorized collaboration, a student should never:
Refer to, study from, or copy archival files (e.g. old tests, homework, solutions manuals, or backfiles) that were not approved by the instructor.”</p>
<p>This is in clear violation of our academic policy, and I assume many others as well. I do blame the professor more than I blame the student, but it is still considered cheating by my school’s definition. Furthermore, it adversely affected my own grade because of distributions.</p>
<p>Five years ago people wouldn’t even be debating this issue…there’s definitely been a change in what students consider acceptable…which I find interesting (although on a complete tangent).</p>
<p>…“that were not approved by the instructor”.</p>
<p>Big gray area here. He had the exam easily accessible on his website. While he may have taken it down before the test, he was the one that actually provided the exam at one point in time on his website. He was the one that “approved” the exam being posted, because he was the one that posted it. If he didn’t want the exam getting out and wanted to avoid future students from studying from it he should never have posted it. The act of posting it can be interpreted as “approval”.</p>
<p>^Agreed. The very fact that the professor made the answer key accessible on the internet without the need to hack or perform any illegal activity can be construed as him giving his tacit approval to use, irrespective of whether he announced it to the class. Not cheating. </p>
The majority on CC is generally pretty moralistic, but I think its tendency to oppose whoever complains about something supersedes its better judgment.
I don’t see how this is a gray area. “Easily accessible”? They had to edit the address to access a page that they weren’t supposed to be on, to use a resource that was posted for reference after taking the test. How many professors intend to give out the exact answers to their open-note tests, such that they can be literally transcribed?</p>
<p>Any professor should realize that if you post something on a website that it really never goes away.</p>
<p>I hope he’s not a computer science professor…that would be pretty bad.</p>
<p>If a professor is dumb enough to post a test on the internet with the answer key, and then use that same exact test a year later…that’s on the professor, not the students. If you don’t want your tests to be viewed by the whole world, don’t post them on the internet.</p>
<p>I was with you until you started to pull the whole “my parents are donors” “I didn’t study as hard as I could have” stuff. I’m thinking you’re just having some entitlement issues. Maybe take a leaf out of their book(s) and study the way they do. I don’t think they cheated.</p>