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Cheating Via the Internet at College
Electron Barrage writes, "An anonymous professor writes that last year about half of the seniors at his US university were suspected of cheating, mostly due to the Internet and community sites such as Wikipedia. He guesses that perhaps 25%-30% were actually guilty, a huge increase from earlier levels. According to this professor, it's nearly impossible for the universities to keep up with the new forms of cheating enabled by the Net. Will academic institutions learn to deal with this new reality? It sounds a little dubious from this professor's viewpoint." The article mentions the anti-cheating services Turn It In and iThenticate (while decrying their expense), but expresses worry over the new countermeasure represented by Student of Fortune.
"Imagine if the engineers that built our transportation systems, buildings, and other structures that we rely on, cheated through school and on the engineering licensing exams? Imagine if our doctors cheated their way through school? Cheating may be the easy way out of a test or class, but it is very detrimental to the cheater in the long run, even if the cheater never gets caught. And, in some extreme cases, cheaters may cost other people money, or even lives." Look part of the problem is that all of those people cheated at some time. I've cheated and I would say most of the people I know have cheated. The thing is I haven't cheated in every class or even in more than a few classes. I'm a senior majoring in economics at a fairly top placed university so I've been going through the system for a while. The thing everyone realizes is that there is no way to cheat through every class, or even a reason to cheat through every class. You can be a great chem student and still want to get an easy A by cheating in a Am Hist class. I know more than a few people (non-majors) that cheated through an intro econ class but are good students in their fields. Is it fair to me as someone that likes econ to have cheaters in intro econ classes, probably not. Is it fair for english majors to have to take an econ class with someone who naturally excels at economics, probably not. They cheat and get an A and go on to write poems and think about butterflies or whatever english majors do, and I work hard and get an A and go on to fun things like GDP and inflation. We all win. I understand cheating in GE courses, cheating in upper div coursework is weird to me considering you should enjoy what you are studying and should really have to cheat. If my doctor cheated and didnt actually write that paper in 8th grade on Burma I'm not going to try and take away his medical license. And if that structural engineer wrote on his hand that monetary policy = federal reserve fiscal policy = congress, I'm pretty sure I'll still drive across her bridge.
the 'spur of the moment' exams which you refer to are more difficult for women in fields like this because, for the most part, they need to devote a much greater amount of time on a topic to grasp it to the same level as an intellectually mediocre man.
likewise, men can't usually begin to understand the social complexity of women. this is why women make excellent politicians*, entertainers, educators, and other "people persons" where such abilities are necessary and valued.
(thankfully, men have been logical enough to see this as a bad thing, and hvae largely kept them out of it for most of history.)
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