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Survey Finds Cheating Among Students At All GPA Levels
An anonymous reader writes "Over a third of undergraduate students admitted to some form of cheating at one of America's top research universities, according to a survey published November in the journal Science and Engineering Ethics (abstract). The researchers expected to find more cheating among the top-performing group — and at the minimum at least some students with excellent grades cheated. Not so. As it turned out, the overall cheating rate was similar to that found in other studies, but the types of cheating and stated reasons for cheating were all over the map. Researchers uncovered one trend among the cheaters: the perception that teaching assistants either ignored or didn't care about cheating."
Not to mention that many students use adderall and other amphetimines, even methamphetamine as study aids, especially during finals and almost always without prescription.
Students cheating and getting higher grades.
How much of the cheater is in the filler classes?
How meany class is there cheating where just the final test is the grade?
Grades are there to make one look good. Nobody wants their grades to be accurate (unless "accurate" already means "perfect"), so everyone shares the same basic incentive to cheat.
Here's an idea. Just give everyone a degree for a specific price. Fuck the learning. If we're going to devalue the meaning of a college education, let's go for broke. We can figure out how to fix the problem later.
And they don't see coping all or some of another report or doing the work as a group and all turning in the same paper as cheating.
Tech the test and just reading from the book lead to it being all about cheating or cramming for the test.
The brighter the student, the more devious the means of cheating.
Also, I've seen (and caught) students cheating to get into a prestige university school with a highly competetive enrollment. The greater the reward, the greater the desperate measures sought to achieve that award. One student in particular was found guilty of Academic Fraud and expelled from the university - criminal charges may or may not have been pressed as a follow up.
One can well imagine the anger and frustration of those students who didn't make it, when they find someone did and did so through cheating.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I guess intelligence doesn't really have any correlation with morality. Smart student cheated just as much as dumb students. Everybody is just equally immoral.
So people are forced to show what they learned and not just show it on paper.
A good way to prevent cheating. Let them build new things. This is of course not possible in the first year of a study. An ideal curriculum will impose projects in all study phases. Group projects can use agreement on objectives to evaluate single student's performance. And the overall project result can be 50% of the grade. In the end grades in a master highly depend upon the person who checks your results and the topic of your study.
They did a study of cheating, eh? With a survey? How do we know they didn't just fake the data?
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Out of 11 posts you have already posted 3. All of which are painful to read. Slow down and think about what you want to say or scoot closer to whomever you are cheating off of.
And, I don't mean getting busted by the graders. I mean, if you're not really learning the content, how do you get away with not understanding the fundamentals when you get to higher class levels. Seems like it would eventually catch up with you.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Students cheating and getting higher grades.
yet the headline says cheating occurs at all GPA levels. So unless cheating is so sporadic (i.e. negligible) that it does not alter your GPA then this seems to suggest that cheating has as much chance of raising your GPA as lowering it. that is, on average it does not work, but the average is composed of individuals it "helped" and those that it "hurt" in terms of GPA.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
A little off topic, but there's no such thing as a filler class. Only people who don't realize the full value of a well rounded education seem to consider breadth courses as a waste of time. At a time I did too, but instead of going into those classes with a bad attitude I went in and learned as much as possible. Sure I wasn't interested in things like social psychology, medieval history or graphic media, but I can talk with a lot more people about topics they're interested in because of taking courses like that.
And at most schools, if you have enough foresight you can craft your breadth courses to reinforce your major. One of my history courses I could take for my Physics breadth requirements just happened to be about the ethics of the Manhattan project... something every physicist should have to learn.
Regardless, people who choose to only expose themselves to a single subject or viewpoint are almost universally boring or close minded, or some combination of the two.
The slashdot summary is attributed to Soulskill, but parts of it are taken directly from TFA. Using quoted material without attribution...kind of ironic, given the topic.
TFA, including the parts copied into the summary, is so poorly written as to be unintelligible, and if you want to look at the article, only the abstract is available without going through a paywall. So...not much to discuss, is there?
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I TA'd classes during my PhD. I'm in no way surprised that there is a perception that TAs don't care about cheating - the fact is that very few of them really want to catch cheaters.
I used to try hard to catch people cheating during exams, on homeworks etc, but this is actually very difficult to do. Typically you have hundreds of papers/worksheets to grade in a week and if you don't get two identical ones in a row, the odds of you remembering that a solution was done in the same way by two students is fairly low. It sticks out when two students get the same wrong answer, but even then it's difficult to prove.
However, the main thing that turns TAs off catching cheats is what happens when you do. First, you have to prove that the students in question were cheating. This is a LOT of extra work on top of your normal workload which usually exceeds your contracted hours by about 50%. Then you have to report it to the ethics committee in your department. This takes a long time, the student has the right to challenge you on everything - and believe me you'll get everything thrown at you from claims of sexual harassment to racism because you're accusing some kid of cheating. This has the knock-on effect of showing up on your SRTE (student rating of teaching effectiveness) if the cheater has friends in the class, and so you get pulled in to see the dept. head at the end of the semester because 6-7 students have called you racist on your evaluations, which in turn doesn't help if you want recommendation letters for a teaching job afterwards. Even worse if the kid is on a sports scholarship, you'll get the coach attesting to his 'good character' - so there's no way he was cheating, you just have a thing against him for some bizarre reason.
Finally, when you show that two students mysteriously answered the same wrong way to the same questions in a row on a test, and you caught them talking during the test, what punishment does the university give out? They make the kid re-sit the test. So the upshot of your efforts are that you've wasted a whole bunch of your time, got a ton of hassle that you didn't need, and the cheater simply has longer than his peers to prepare for a new test which the lecturer is often too lazy to make sufficiently different from the previous one, so the cheater is ready for the questions.
I'd still try to catch cheaters as often as I could, because it was the right thing to do. But it was so much trouble for most people, and you became a 'troublemaker' if you did it, that most of us didn't want the hassle. Even when you explained to the classmates that the cheater was cheapening their degree and ruining their scores, they still thought that you were some kind of monster for punishing their friend.
Some cheaters are good at what they do, and so they get an A. Some of them are good, just not great, and they get a B. Some of them are alright, but not really much better than average and they end up getting a C. Some of them just didn't try hard enough, and they get a D. Then there are the cheaters who get caught, and they get an F.
It's not surprising that cheating crosses all GPA levels. Only if we could catch them all, would they all be failed.
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"They often come from a very different academic culture, where cheating is seen as perfectly acceptable."
Yep, it's the ungodly heathens. Americans don't cheat as much, because they are too dumb to go to college.
I would bet at least another third are brimming with resentment because of the third that is cheating. This is unfortunately one more reason that so many bright students become bitter and cynical.
As a TA, I caught people cheating. Reported it to the professor in charge. Who gave them zeros for the assignment and a letter in their file. No other punishment. They all appealed. Someone even brought in a lawyer. When the lawyer heard an appeal would result in a new and potentially worse punishment, he dropped the appeal. Most people admitted to cheating during the appeal hearing. It was a nightmare for me. I learned my lesson and never caught anyone cheating again.
Some pretty jingoistic racist shit, about foreigners seeing nothing wrong with cheating.
Citation needed.
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"They often come from a very different academic culture, where cheating is seen as perfectly acceptable."
Yep, it's the ungodly heathens. Americans don't cheat as much, because they are too dumb to go to college.
The best exams are the Open Book ones - yes, you can see answers in front of you, but your grade is based upon your understanding - if you don't already get it, you don't have enough time during the exam to read the entire book over.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
If group work leads to better learning and is like the REAL WORK place then maybe need to get away from the idea of your own your own when it comes to class work and tests?
Is so it the old fashioned ideas of the college systems for the middle ages that need to change?
At least in the tech field we should be looking at what the tech schools DO right and use that to make CS better and we should also look at the trades / apprenticeships to make the tech schools better as well.
A lot of cert tests are the same people cheat and other take bran dumps (see as a forum of cheating).
Maybe we need to test people in groups on projects and not on there own.
Judging by your previous also incoherent comments, including:
"When I used to have cable it sucked they cut out the sound even on the local channels so you can't even hear the local live weather report that is more detailed then then in there is a alert in $county."
I'm starting to think you're a bot, or, a partial bot. Cyborg.
*Cough* Chinese, Hong Kong, Taiwanese, Southeast Asian, South Asian, and Middle-eastern students *cough* are the worst offenders. These students think they're entitled to cheat because they paid significantly more than American students (especially true for public schools). Agree on the first-strike rule.
Since you posted AC I just wanted to echo what you said. I'm at a Computer Science graduate school where 90% of the students are Chinese. The other day in class homework was due, and I saw students copying homework in class, just passing it down the row. They all turned it in at the end of class. Best part is, the TAs are all Chinese grad students as well, and are friends with the students. The professor didn't even come to the exam, and the Chinese TAs were almost overtly helping their friends cheat on the exam. It was absolutely infuriating. I saw it in my undergrad too, but there it was Indians. It just seems like something that these people aren't taught.
Some pretty jingoistic racist shit, about foreigners seeing nothing wrong with cheating.
Citation needed.
While I won't cite anything, there is plenty of evidence of Bribes required in many cultures - these aren't new practices, but harken to the days when they may have been viewed as Tribute. What are you to make of such a culture, where a little dishonesty is the norm?
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Did anyone really think that smarter = less chance of a cheater?
The smarter the person, the smarter the cheating.
And these were only the cases that were found out.
Those who really excel at thinking skills can get away with it, not ever being found out.
That even with all these high-tech scanners that cross-check papers and answers with databases and each other.
Morality has no place in it, when it is their future on the line, anyone will do anything to get it.
Self-preservation. It is at the very heart of it.
Only those who tend to be self-destructive don't particularly care much about it. (by that, I mean people who abuse drugs, don't care about life, not nearing-suicidal arm-cutter types, they are busy not working while being classified as "disabled")
If you were to ask almost any person if they have cheated at one point in there life, they will answer yes.
Even if it is something completely harmless but still technically considered cheating. (such as cheat-sheets. Seriously, examination cheat sheets? That is enforcing mental laziness!)
The only way you will truly prevent all cheating is stupidly rigorous enforcement of rules. Change of clothes, bodily examinations, whatever.
People will find ways to cheat.
I remember even reading about someone who created some method of what looked like complete gibberish that was actually encoded information. They wasted effort to learn some visual encoding scheme instead of learning the stuff they were supposed to...
Well, not as if you can blame them.
It's not like schools are out there to teach you how to be a knowledge sponge.
They put you through an entrainment program to make you in to a "productive" employee, not a genius.
We can't have geniuses running around everywhere, how will the lower-tier jobs get done if everyone wants a manager position or higher? (that they don't deserve since managers should HAVE EXPERIENCE)
some people cheat on the history courses or off breadth courses so they have the time to work there main courses? Why wastes time of that 10+ page history paper when you have a big work load on your main courses.
It's not racist or jingoist to point out a phenomena that people from different nations often have different cultural and value systems. You certainly can't pretend to know the motives of the poster either, that is just as bad as the prejudice that you ascribe to him to begin with.
At least then employer get people who have REAL experience and skills. Not just paper skills.
And they act like theirs is the only class you have. One of my friends is taking five classes in graduate school, and she had five papers due in the same week - followed by three midterms.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
Most of the /. posters in this thread were at one time asking about a `curve', a `way to improve the grade' which just a more `benign' form of cheating ...
Georgia Tech to be exact, although I doubt it's different elsewhere. The faculty that I TA'd for in electrical engineering actively discouraged me from trying to catch cheaters. On the very first assignment, I found three students with the same answers to all the homework questions, including short essay portions. On approaching my boss, his reply was not to worry about it and that they'd suffer on the exams. Given that TA's have no power to enforce cheating rules, I was forced to turn a blind eye. Turns out, he gave almost everyone an A, so the students went wholly unpunished.
WTF is that even supposed to mean? I've seen several of your posts on this thread and most of them are incomprehensible gibberish. Is that some new meme I am too old to follow or are you just drunk off your ass and can't type what you are really thinking? Whatever it is - please - don't post until you figure out what you want to say and write it out in at least semi-complete sentences. Or just continue with "Tech the test" - whatever.
"They often come from a very different academic culture, where cheating is seen as perfectly acceptable."
Yep, it's the ungodly heathens. Americans don't cheat as much, because they are too dumb to go to college.
Perhaps because the cheaters here on academic visas have all the seats?
A problem easily solved, as already stated - expulsion upon the first incident of cheating.
There are indeed filler classes. Consider that some people who go to college already have the skills in question but are forced to take the class for the sake of the credit.
English 101, for example, is a class I would have totally cheated if I knew I could have gotten away with it. We were forced to write canned responses to Dick and Jane stories and the grades were wildly inconsistent, even though the quality of the writings were consistent. At one point a group of students complained, saying that the grading appeared to be totally random! English, being a more subjective subject, can be quirky like that - especially when the professor hates your writing style or color of your shirt. I think the only reason why I got an "A" was because I told the professor that I wasn't a snitch and that he was doing a fine job.
Why didn't I get the credit in high-school? My AP English teacher was a former Mormon missionary who forced us to read Stephen Covey, who also happens to be a Mormon. Yeah. I spent the whole class farting and drawing dicks in my notebook. Art history is also known as a throwaway class, but I learned tons from it. An artist would consider it throwaway class, but the difference between art 101 and English 101 is that English is a requirement. If you'd studied art in your spare time you could choose something else like psychology and actually learn something. English not so much.
Memories can be tricky, but my recollection of high school was that the "smart kids" who got good grades were generally the most rampant cheaters. These were the kids who were in the honors society and went to ivy league schools, and they cheated every damned day so I wouldn't expect that the behavior changed when they went to college. It was almost an institution: They would copy each other's homework at lunch. They would help each other plagiarize the papers they wrote. They would get together and devise ways to sneak answers into tests. It was cooperative and competitive cheating, as much a part of the process as studying.
If you asked them about it, they'd tell you that it was because they were taking tons of AP courses, and they didn't have time to do it all. Of course, part of the problem was the school's approach to honors/AP coursework: it wasn't necessarily more advanced, it was often enough just *more*. More memorizing, more busywork, and more time consuming. There were kids going home with 10 hours of homework for the night, and so they'd cope by splitting up the work and copying each others' answers.
And I'll repeat: these were the "smart kids". They were the "good kids". In a sense, what they were doing *was* smart. They were stuck in a bureaucratic system, and so they gamed the system. They got what they wanted, even if it wasn't "fair".
It's been argued in the past that schools do not prepare you for the real world, and I think this is an excellent example.
When you get into 'the game' (i.e. a job), cheating is simply part of it. Others will routinely take credit for your work. The people that deserve the promotions the least are often the ones that get them. Hard workers with good ethics are overlooked, cheaters & fakes get ahead, and nice guys get foreclosed on. If anything, hearing that 1/3 of students cheat and got away with it makes me glad that they are learning valuable skills that will be used for the rest of their lives.
But clearly you have something better to say...
I mean I guess they're counting only science courses but my impression of the coursesin the language requirement that was inflicted on me is that more than 30% were engaging in "Classic" Cheating. (IE copying off of others, looking at the book during tests. Having someone else do their homework.) Actually if you count in what I call class 2 cheating (IE taking a class where you already know the subject matter very well and are only taking it for an easy A) then I'd bet at least in the language courses I took cheating was well above 50%. (Man, I should have cheated.)
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
If you think someone is cheating, you collect the evidence, and provide it to your Prof. He will deal with it (or not); dealing with it is not your job.
I've catched students cheating, in both test and homeworks, both loudly and silently. If I suspect cheating in a homework, i send the assignments to the profesor. If two students speak in a test, i'll tell them to shut up as respect to their peers and afterwards write their names and email the profesor. If i see something weird in the exams, i'll send them to the professor. If he doesn't want to deal with it, i'm ok with it. But i'm not going to deal with it because it is not my job, is his, he is the one signing those students grades.
This one always annoys me. Half the time it is the students who understand the material that make up data because they know exactly how it should look, based on what the book said, but when they actually try to do the lab the data isn't perfect. It completely defeats the purpose of a lab course, and yet I get the impression that most teachers don't emphasize the fact that experiments are never perfect and subsequently the students miss out and don't learn what real experimental science looks like. I'd much rather have students turn in real data and try to explain why it wasn't perfect, but usually they're too afraid of being marked down.
Bribes aren't cheating on a test. In fact, it's typically done to dodge a "test". I will grant you though, that there are some cultures where bribes are expected. There are also cultures where the government is overthrown in a violent revolution every 50 or so years, and the rebels under the banner of "We're fighting corruption!" soon become just as corrupt and vengeful as the people they were replacing.
But then none of this is academic dishonesty.
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You usually only take one breadth course a semester. It's not that big a deal. In my experience people who complain they don't have enough time really mean they don't know how to properly manage their time and prioritize their life. I dual majored in physics and computer engineering at at top ten university and worked part time on the side and yet managed to find time to write history papers. People who resort to cheating either deserve the lower grade for being weaker or should spend less time partying or playing video games.
I'm so glad that the real world is open book.
Bottles.
It seems you're complaining more about the quality of a particular course. My university had an English 101 type requirement and my writing style definitely improved as a consequence of that course. Since it was a university requirement there were students from all disciplines in my (smallish) size class and I heard a lot of complaining like "this is BS I shouldn't have to be here." We had to do a lot of peer review and from what I could tell, the ones who complained the most were the ones who needed the course the most. It seemed they didn't want to take the course because they weren't good at the material... which is understandable to some degree, but at the same time it's probably healthier to treat it as a learning experience rather than a chore.
It's pretty obvious that the things that earn you a good grade in a class (like recalling an obscure fact from memory, being able to eliminate 3 obviously wrong answers from a finite set of possible answers, or writing a paper with a minimum length requirement) are not at all related to what makes you successful in the "real world". In the real world, talking with your co-workers about a problem, searching Google for the answer to a problem that has already been solved, or using a reference book to find out the capital of "Ubeki-beki-beki-stan-stan" is not only not cheating, but is something everyone does and is expected to do. By the time people get to college, most have realized this and can't justify conforming to the grading standards...
"It's not sexist to say that women are bad drivers. Look at the roads, all crashes are caused by women drivers. I'm just speaking the truth, so it isn't sexist."
"It's not racist to say that black people aren't achieving success because they're lazy. They have a culture that frowns upon academic performance, and doing well at a job. I'm just speaking the truth, so it isn't sexist."
The problem with these statements is that they are dubious and not the "self-evident truth" that the commenter would have one believe. Thus, the "citation needed". Because he's making a generalized claim on a stereotype that foreigners are raised to be dishonest cheaters. This claim is also dubious, and it deserves to be challenged as racist, and jingoistic.
Now, sorry, it could be that a person highly respected in population studies, and with academic or at least scientific credibility did a study, and found that this was actually a true statement, and published a peer-reviewed paper about it to rave criticism. And so he just popped onto this here Slashdot, and anonymously posted something that without proper citation and backing would be clearly racist.
Of course, that requires inventing a pretty crazy outlandish entity with odd and unusual methods. I may as well believe in the Easter Bunny, Santa Claus, or any of the number of gods that have graced human mythology.
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Regardless, people who choose to only expose themselves to a single subject or viewpoint are almost universally boring or close minded, or some combination of the two.
Yeah, but to become great in your field, you have to be single minded and concentrate on our field and only your field. Look at historical great figures and very few of them were "well rounded". I'd even argue that DaVinci was a one trick pony - all he did was draw. His "engineering" was mostly fantasy. I mean really, a helicopter that used a big screw? Or a "tank" that would weigh tons propelled by a couple of guys? Plah-ease.
Being well-rounded is just an excuse to be mediocre in a many areas as opposed to being awesome in one.
Since you posted AC I just wanted to echo what you said. I'm at a Computer Science graduate school where 90% of the students are Chinese. The other day in class homework was due, and I saw students copying homework in class, just passing it down the row. They all turned it in at the end of class. Best part is, the TAs are all Chinese grad students as well, and are friends with the students. The professor didn't even come to the exam, and the Chinese TAs were almost overtly helping their friends cheat on the exam. It was absolutely infuriating. I saw it in my undergrad too, but there it was Indians. It just seems like something that these people aren't taught.
Just based on raw percentage (I don't have statistics on this), it is very competitive amongst foreigners to get into an American university (especially without any on-shore academic experience). Perhaps a larger percentage of these students cheated to get to the top and come here?
I didn't witness much cheating when I was in school, but I have seen grad students who seem to barely be able to write a hello-world app.
So, you work in academics then?
I'm so glad that the real world is open book.
It's really the best way - discourages lazy exam creation and shows how resourceful the student is in the subject matter.
I'm a conceptual learner, always had difficulty with memorising everything. Once I have the concept down pat, I can go seek the help I need from references. If I do not understand the concept, no number of references is ever going to bail me out.
I've certainly seen some "gifted" students hit the wall, face-on when expected to think through a problem, because they only memorized enough to fill in blanks they knew were coming.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Not sure why you need a citation when it's something you can witness with your own eyes.
If I have seen further it is by stealing the Intellectual Property of giants.
some people cheat on the history courses or off breadth courses so they have the time to party? Why wastes time of that 10+ page history paper when you have a big party to go to.
It doesn't really matter how you justify it. Some people do the work assigned to them, and others feel it is beneath them because they have something more important to do. A university won't let a student take only science classes and graduate, nor will they allow only history classes to get a degree. Virtually every academic in the world agrees that an educated person should be well rounded in a variety of subjects, and not just their "main courses". This is why the class requirements exist.
There is some truth to this. I teach at an Australian university, and there are a number of people from specific cultural backgrounds who try this every year, because they come from somewhere that, what we regard as, plagiarism is acceptable.
I completely disagree with the "don't give them any chances, just send them packing". This is ludicrous. We catch a lot of these guys out (a lot of them are REALLY stupid and I actually feel embarrassed for them when we do catch them out) and, most of the time, pulling them up on it and explaining the rules to them sorts out the problem. You will always get a small minority who will try to work the system no matter what, but it is exactly that: a small minority.
It's easy to get indignant about it, but if they come from a culture which has different views on what plagiarism is at what point are they supposed to have this explained to them? It seems pretty unfair to let these students come into the university, pay their fees, and then throw them out when they break the rules that they were not aware of. Yes, you can find the university policy on academic misconduct etc if you dig through the website enough, but having the rules buried in some difficult-to-find legal document is hardly sufficient*
*Yes, I am aware that this is exactly how the "real world" works
Personally I wouldn't worry about it too much. Eventually they'll have to do a thesis or dissertation and there's no way they can easily cheat their way through that. If you really dislike them that much, show up to their defense and give them some tough questions, especially if they've done shit work. Really I feel as though anyone cheating is only cheating themselves, especially in graduate school.
I recall one of the professors from my undergrad made three separate versions of his tests that had some very subtle changes. The problems were all very similar, but some of the tests would have problems involving variable n, whereas others used m. You'd also see things such as 6 instead of 8, and the exam questions in a slightly different order. If he suspected that a large amount of the class was cheating, he'd use the modified exams, catch a bunch of people and fail them on that exam, which pretty much limited their ability to get anything better than a C in the class, especially if they had no idea how to do the work themselves.
I wasn't cheating, I was crowd sourcing my exam.
I wasn't cheating, I was engaged in a team building exercise.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
This. I had an English writing course at a junior college. I had done a fair amount of writing in high school, wrote tolerably well, knew how to use proper grammar and punctuation, etc. Most of the students could just barely put together a proper sentence on paper; most of them could not write a full paragraph that actually made a distinct point. Most of the time, I heard that the students felt like the class was a waste of time. I guess they figured they would never need to communicate in a correctly written fashion.
There were a few in the class that did know how to write and did so effectively. Interestingly, those who could write and reason in writing were the ones who were the best at class discussions... as well as the ones who were actually able to rationally and critically think about a different viewpoint that had not occurred to them before. Those who could not typically dismissed foreign ideas with something along the lines of "well duh, everyone knows that's not right."
Oh wow, you can talk with a lot more people! I sure feel a lot better about my education stalling. I bet that's what colleges have in mind when they shove courses down our throats that will never be remembered because we only have enough motivation to cram a day before the test and forget it. There's no way it has anything to do with the revenue that they gain from tuition.
Seriously, if I want to learn about history, I'm old enough to research on my own. Colleges are there to confirm that you have the proper knowledge/aptitude within your given field, not make up for a shitty public education system.
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I agree that these classes aren't filler. They are political indoctrination masquerading as "breadth" or whatever they want to call it. And as you say, most engineers would just craft their major to make as many of these classes reinforce their major as best they could. For those classes they couldn't, they'd either lap up, grit their teeth or mindlessly absorb the Marxist viewpoint, depending on their predilection.
If I have seen further it is by stealing the Intellectual Property of giants.
Some UK universities reported a problem when I was doing my PhD that relatively rich people in south-east asia would hire someone to do a degree for their son. This person would turn up, enrol in the son's name, do all of the course, and then send home the degree certificate. The son would then get a job with none of the knowledge or understanding that they were supposed to have and people would complain to the university. A few got caught because the employers sent photographs and they didn't match the ones in the student database, but it's difficult to spot.
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You realize this is not a counter-argument, and she has not benefited from you saying this?
Now, sorry, it could be that a person highly respected in population studies, and with academic or at least scientific credibility did a study, and found that this was actually a true statement.
Controversial studies are done all the time(nature vs. nurture, indicators of success, and intelligence with respect to race) but they're kept hidden or put on the media's back-burner because they're too dangerous for a touchy-feely culture. The fact that stereotypes are often offensive does not mean that they are the exception rather than the rule.
Speaking of stereotypes, I know what you need - you need me to feed you Ben and Jerry's Ice cream while massaging your callused feet, building up the foreplay while we watch Law and Order and discus what pigs men are. You want to cuff me to the bed and slap me around for being the naughty boy that I am. Oh Yeah, give it to me, baby!
I hope they were either monitoring the survey takers, or had them isolated while filling it out. Otherwise, how will we know how many of the people taking the survey just cheated off their neighbor?
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A little off topic, but there's no such thing as a filler class. Only people who don't realize the full value of a well rounded education seem to consider breadth courses as a waste of time.
That's your own opinion. Some people find no value in some classes because they believe that they'll never use them.
I wouldn't want to bother learning things that both don't interest me and that I don't believe I will use (and I'm willing to take that risk).
Regardless, people who choose to only expose themselves to a single subject or viewpoint are almost universally boring or close minded, or some combination of the two.
Again, your own opinion.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
Considering co-authoring industry and overall dilution of academic education (percentage of people having degree rises steadily), it is perfectly normal and reasonable, given the stagnated education system. I would say that the education system is tuned to train future professors (all other not reaching that status are rejects and do not count much in conjuring the educational policies). If you have other goals, then system is formally too inflexible so you cope with gaming it in all possible ways (and it is half legal already). Lets see if online education forces changes - it is probably disruptive technology and major pressure to universities.
I never worried about students copying homework from one another. The proportion of a student's grade that came from homework was typically low enough that wouldn't have mattered if every student in the class turned in an identical assignment. However, I'd often use multiple versions of exams; especially when teaching in classrooms where students were seated close together. Surprisingly, when offered a choice between multiple choice exams (with no partial credit) and work-the-problem exams where partial credit was a possibility, most classes opted for multiple choice, even after I warned them that I've probably made every common mistake they're likely to make, so that my wrong answers would often look reasonable. Overall, grades on multiple choice exams seemed to be lower by about half a letter grade.
Geology - it's not rocket science; it's rock science
Not to mention that some people don't want to take the classes that they see as mere "filler" because it would take time away from the things that they do care about and will actually use. Not everyone cares so much about talking to others about things that they don't even care about/won't use.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
What's weird is how the "filler" classes are all connected. Say you are majoring in IT project management. You should minor in business as well. Then you have to take economics classes, and you realize that that's related to how your project performs. Then you have to take psychology for a gen-ed requirement, and realize it's related to the marketing class for your business minor too!
I think it's similar to how biologists and chemists realized their field is closely interrelated, and how astronomers and particle physicists study the same phenomena but at different scales.
Yeah, because rote memorization is SO useful in the age of being able to look this shit up nigh-instantaneously.
Instead of spending hours upon hours upon hours memorizing specific dates and names, I'd rather pump my time into courses that require actual process and understanding instead of just making me good at trivial pursuit. In the age of information, why is memorization of random facts in a field you have no interest in and will benefit you not even slightly in the field you're going into (I'm looking at you, names of cloud formations... I could care less about you in the Comp. Sci. field) a requirement?
Sorry, but irrelevant facts are irrelevant. Maybe they shouldn't make X number of "voluntaries" a requirement to steal my money, so I can concentrate more on things that actually matter to me.
See, this is what happens when you start publishing statistics about the most active commenters. People like the parent try to get to the top by posting single sentences that look like they were constructed by markov chains.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Take the case of one test I had in a digital logic class. I, or someone, asked my professor if we could use graphing calculators. He said yes. This was before professors came up with the bright idea of requiring students to clear their calculators, so I put some stuff on it.
Then, this particular article is about physics labs. In my physics lab we were required to finish writing up our results on the physics lab computers. The physics lab closed rather early, and I was slow to finish my write-ups. But the lab had a PostScript printer. So I printed my incomplete work to a file, took it home, and edited the PostScript to finish my labs. Was that cheating?
I'm an instructor at a university, and about 10 minutes before I saw this story, I overheard some TA's deciding that trying to deal with the cheaters wasn't worth the extra time it would take in consultation with the professor.
Yep, the biggest thing enabling cheating is that it's a major inconvenience to punish.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_dishonesty
Generally though, race, nationality, and class all show little correlation with academic misconduct. ... [41]
However...
In the University of California system, international students make up 10% of the student body but comprise 47% of academic dishonesty cases.[43]
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Cheating is prevalent at all levels of the economy. The students themselves are being cheating when you consider how much they are paying for their education.
Democracy Now! - your daily, uncensored, corporate-free
I won't say how or why but I have access to a subset of a group of college students emails and text messages. I can verify that cheating and use of adderall are quite common. This generation is quite fond of gangsta talk as well.
Why not announce to your class in the early part of the course.
"Last Year I caught 20 people cheating. They got 0 for the assignment. They all appealed as is their right. They all dropped their appeal during the appeal process. Cheating will not be tolerated."
My Father was a teacher with a course that had prerequisite assignments before you were allowed to sit the exam. Legend has it one person did not hand in the assignments. He waited for student to hand in exam and tore it up in front of him. A legend was born that day. Whilst it soon became illegal to take that action (The completed exam being the students work) Everyone knew where they stood when it came to prerequisite assignments and cheating.
A sig is placed here
To display how futile
English Haiku is
Maybe it is different in Australia, but here in the US at least some portion of the Academic Misconduct Policy has been clearly stated on the syllabus in just about every class I've had, during both my undergraduate and graduate studies at different universities in different states.
I just googled valedictorians and changed my name to match by deed poll.
Nullius in verba
As a personal anecdote, semi-related, my girlfriend is from India. She has a cousin back home who is paying somebody to attend college for her, so she can get a teaching degree. It blew my mind that yes, it's considered acceptable to do this--her whole family knows, and at least the ones over there don't see any problem with it.
Klingon programs don't timeshare, they battle for supremacy.
Makes perfect sense to me. All the real cheaters copied the "no" from the smart kid in the class. The 30% just half-assed it.
I have never met anyone from anywhere that was much different than anyone from anywhere else. More Americans are in school too. You might just as well blame cheating on the rising enrollment of women. Also, the ability to cheat is easier and the methods to track it easier. Both of which would make it surprising if cheating were going down.
Because memorization of random facts will make you twice as smart, of course! Also, it's because some people believe that there is value in taking irrelevant courses. Therefore, that is a fact.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
This one time we took 27 hours studying every problem in the book- including making a test of all the example problems and doing them until we could see the answer and write the problem.
For 2 of of us- it turned out the professor had gotten cute and made a test entirely out of example problems. They finished in 15 minutes and aced it. I finished mine in about 40 minutes and aced it.
Oh wait.. I guess that wasn't cheating. And I was working a full time job taking 13 hours at the time. So anyone who isn't working full time just doesn't have an excuse.
The closest I came to cheating ever was buying solution books with every category of problem with solutions and working them until I understood them and buying an extremely powerful calculator which was allowed.
Cheating doesn't pay. You don't know the material - it makes the next class even harder. The only class you'd be justified to cheat in would be one that didn't matter at all to your degree. In which case- why are you taking it?
The more you know- the less afraid you are and the easier later classes will be.
---
Also was a student judge for one cheating case. Was a girl- she even copied the exact errors from the other student. She got an F for the class and that was it. I think that's fair-- the penalty should not be completely draconian. Kids make mistakes.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
A little off topic, but there's no such thing as a filler class. Only people who don't realize the full value of a well rounded education seem to consider breadth courses as a waste of time.
That's your own opinion.
I would say that is also the "opinion" of every state academic board in the US, along with almost every education board in every country in the world. I also think it ceases to be an opinion when you can use a multitude of data points to prove that a broad education makes for a better life. YMMV
The System in Germany has good ideas like that people learn a skill on the job.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/14185334
"Germany has a "dual system" - the apprentice spends some time learning on the job and the rest learning broader theoretical subjects, relevant to the job, at a college."
"But if you only learn theory, it's like learning swimming by reading a book."
Even more so in the tech fields where CS theory is very far from working site of IT.
If you don't want to take important classes like history, nobody is shoving it down your throat. You should've gone to a tech school with all the rest of the philistine loser nerds. Me? I took computer science at a liberal arts school. I did math, history, Spanish, Chinese, philosophy, literature, drugs, and sex. Today I'm a fucking great programmer with a happy marriage, an active social life, and an ever expanding breadth of knowledge on a wide variety of subjects because I learned how to learn about unfamiliar things while I was in college instead of wasting my time exclusively studying things that felt natural to me.
This. Well-roundedness my ass, its all about the profit. If they cared about you learning History, they wouldn't cram you in a class with 200 other people that's taught by an underpaid and uninformed TA. And don't give me that budget bullshit when the football team just got a new $20 million stadium, the President just had his salary doubled, and the UU gets torn down and rebuilt when it was perfectly fine. Fuck. That. Shit. (btw, this is a personal anecdote from my stay at Cal Poly SLO, 2005-2010)
Of course, if you're someone who wants to play by the rules and earn your degree fairly, you should probably be pretty pissed off that it'll be worthless when you finish school. Maybe you've been quietly ignoring the cheaters up until now. Feel free to keep doing that. You can always memorize a PowerPoint presentation when you're done with all that, and have twice the credentials going for you!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Which comment are you quoting? I don't see any in this thread with that content.
I also think it ceases to be an opinion when you can use a multitude of data points to prove that a broad education makes for a better life. YMMV
No. You talked about "value." Therefore, no matter how many people hold the opinion, it is still an opinion. Whether it leads to a "better life" or not is also subjective.
It is up to the individual person to decide if that is what they want (or should be, in my opinion). I find no value in such classes.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
Seriously, if I want to learn about history, I'm old enough to research on my own. Colleges are there to confirm that you have the proper knowledge/aptitude within your given field, not make up for a shitty public education system.
for you, there are The University of Phoenix and The Devry Institute.
As long as there are filler teachers, there are filler classes. If the school district (or university staff) knows damn well you won't learn anything, they've wasted your time.
Relatedly, a lot of public school classes will teach to government-mandated tests, and a bad teacher there can kill your curiosity about a subject, which can be worse than ignorance. With the internet, ignorance and curiosity can foster more growth than minimum understanding and a crushed spirit.
Depends. Some are, some aren't.
E.g., foreign language classes are generally filler. Not totally, but most of them don't teach you enough to be useful. But they aren't political indoctrination. Or at least they didn't seem so to me. I found Philosophy 12 a total waste of time, as it was introduction to symbolic logic. For many students, however, it may be the only encounter they ever have with precision reasoning. But I'd worked my way through much or Russel's Principia Mathematica in high school.
U.S. History I thought would be a waste of time. It wasn't. I hated the exams, because I could never give the "correct" answers. (There usually weren't any.) But it covered aspect of US history that just about nobody ever hears about. As a result Ronald Reagan's character was no surprise to me. I'd already heard how when he was president of the screen actors guild GE hired him to give speeches to the workers about why they shouldn't unionize. I'm afraid I left that class as a bit of a cynic, so perhaps it was successful indoctrination. But I believe it was indoctrination with the truth.
And I definitely learned that if you want to take a class in a subject, don't take another department's version, even if it has the reputation of being easier. I nearly failed statistics given by the Psychology department. And Statistics ended up being my major. But "Introduction to..." classes taught in their own department were often well worthwhile.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
If you want to stop the cheating. Compartmentalize them like a prison camp, students can go through metal detectors, tsa scanners, dhs interrogations, and isolation, if they won't cooperate blacklist them for life.
With everything private, spiritual, intuitive, creative, artistic now stripped from planet earth through the law of godless bullshit you have to keep in mind, they're
only students after all; they don't have jobs, pay bills, just eat, so they have no constitutional rights as our new debt slaves, they are (PS4L) public servants for life. They will be the ones trained properly to maintain absolute authority over god and man, putting down with a titanium em pulse fist on anyone with a insolent intent. there will be no thinking, no churches, no religion, no hope, only horrific torture and despair for the time left upon the surface of this ball of dirt.
Bless these cheaters for they are our future fucked up, treasonous, murdering, raping, stealing, mayors, congressmen, senators, presidents, they are our future keepers of state secrets, our designers of ssl e-voting, our fios tappers, our fukushima plant operators, our genetic modified food shamans.
They are our chessmen in the future war against the filthy domestic american god and constitution loving terrorists.
This is what "Satanic New World Order" looks like!
My area of study is not academic dishonesty, but occupational fraud and more specifically the impact of corporate culture on employee behaviour. If you look at organizations that have problems with rampant fraud, what you see is a pattern of unethical behaviour in the top ranks that trickles down in such a way that ethical players can't compete in that environment and are driven out. This article leads me to suspect a top-down unethical culture that is separate from, but not necessarily unimpacted by, the home culture of its participants. What I mean by this is that the school itself, including administrators, ethical committees, professors, and teaching assistants are either turning a blind eye to cheating, creating opportunities for cheating, or actively participating in it, or they have created an environment where cheating is perceived as necessary to get ahead. In addition, the metrics (grading schemes, rules for dealing with academic dishonesty) the school uses may be flawed in such a way that they inadvertently punish honest students or reward cheaters. However, you also have to look at the students who are being accepted. Have they overwhelmingly paid a great deal to go there or made significant sacrifices? Do only the most competitive students get in? Do they have a lot to lose if they do not perform to the same standard as their peers? This is where personal and family culture can come into play, and more often than not does, but I would be careful not to assume that the differences between American and Asian cultures are having the impact suggested above. 'Cheating' behaviours do seem to be more socially accepted in Asian cultures, and the school environment is more competitive, but I have never seen any relevant comparison of unethical behaviour while studying in a foreign environment, as compared to foreign students. For all we know, the differences are the result of the administration's behaviour in Asian schools, or hyper-competitiveness resultant from poverty or overpopulation, or any number of localized variables. It may well be that Asian students actually behave more ethically than their American counterparts, given the right environmental cues.
I cheated. I brought a slide rule.
Have gnu, will travel.
Filler classes exist to take students money. If these courses were so critical to producing well rounded individuals then they could have been provided in the previous 12 years of publicly funded education. I find it hard to swallow the idea that it is necessary for a science major to take an entire years worth of history courses following the previous ten years that the already took in their primary and secondary education.
I do a lot of student testing a part of my job (I design testing methodology as well as designing psychological instruments) and I can tell you this...on exams that are not even for grades but ones just for placement purposes, I have NEVER caught an American cheating. I catch foreigners cheating all the time. Again, these are not even for grade...it's to pick the most appropriate course.
The funny thing is, getting caught cheating will actually keep them from taking courses because of the academic dishonesty...where failing and getting a big fat zero won't...
The problem is, in other parts of the world, if you fall on your face you are done...this as far as you get. It's not racism, it's culture specific. The more authoritarian a country, the more likely they are to cheat. And it's understandable...I would probably cheat if I were given the odds they were as well. If it meant more freedom for me and my family, there is no question...sure I'll want to do well on my own as well, but id do what I can to minimize the odds.
There are two countries in particular that I ALWAYS have to watch for...one guy actually offered to buy me a car to have me look the other way...I told him I was stopping his test because I hadn't actually caught him cheating (I was 99% certain, but I couldn't get to the phone in time and not allowed to search students) but I was planning on dismissing him (he could take it again later). I told him I was going to have to report this, and told him that this country wasn't like his and to go to his advisor IMMEDIATELY and beg for forgiveness about the 'joke' that he tried to bribe me...
Over the years, I actually got to know that kid and I know he actually has the resources to have bought me a car, but his ethics are far better these days. And we've discussed this once or twice about the differences in our cultures and school...
But there is nothing racist or jingoistic in pointing out that other countries have different values...quite a few things I hate about American culture that should be thrown back in our face as well...all cultures have weak points...
As a student at the Australian National University, I complained to the dean (or professor - I forget which) about cheating. He told me he "didn't want to stop people talking to each other", and I think he implied I must be a bad team worker.
Before you hire an Australian engineer, check if they know how to invert a matrix, and why you would want to do such a thing. Don't let them ask a friend, who will ask a Chinese student (who asks another Chinese student, who asks another Chinese student, and so on and so forth - with an infinite number of Chinese students *one* of them somehow has the answer), get them to do it on the spot.
I'm so glad that the real world is open book.
I'm glad too. The fact that everything is available online means that I can remember the large concepts and consider the best way to do something, but then go look online for exactly which parameters are in which order for function foo.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
I don't think most people want to become legends for being douches.
*Cough* Chinese, Hong Kong, Taiwanese, Southeast Asian, South Asian, and Middle-eastern students *cough* are the worst offenders.
I'm sure it varies by school. In my school, it was the Arabs. And don't think I single them out because of our recent exploits, this was back before most people in the U.S. even had any idea that the Arabs hated us.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Society rewards cheating and punishes honesty. That will not change so no great need to worry about it.
Our masters are essentially free to seek advantage by deception. If anything we should embrace that and learn to out-fuck our enemies.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
This is one reason I cringe when I hear about impromptu programming tests at interviews.
I am not a programmer but I do a lot of programming and list a handful of languages on my resume. I could probably answer all of those questions just fine in some mix and matched pseudo-code but even in a language I use all the time at work (sas and some python right now), I probably couldn't write you a solution that would compile and run on the first try without using reference materials or googling the syntax.
My early CS/programming courses didn't have a lot of written tests, but when they did, they were either open book or not graded on syntax.
Most of the students could just barely put together a proper sentence on paper; most of them could not write a full paragraph that actually made a distinct point.
Oh, they probably COULD, but if you had ever loitered around outside the library 30 minutes before the paper is due, you would see your classmates asking you whether you finished yours so as to validate themselves.
Seriously, if I want to learn about history, I'm old enough to research on my own. ...but you never will.
You don't need two semesters to learn how to build a linked list, but there are colleges out there that make two courses out of elementary data structures. I've taken three courses dealing with data structures, and learned more in the first (at a junior college) than the following two *combined*. Filler courses are not only out there, it's how the university system makes a profit - the longer the student spends in college, the better.
That's your own opinion. Some people find no value in some classes because they believe that they'll never use them.
And that is their folly. If you want to be a leader in your field, you pretty much have to be multidisciplinary. Knowledge does not exist in a discipline vacuum; it's all connected. You may not know it, but probably most of the techniques and methods that are core to your specialization have roots in other fields. Look at the development of Computer Science itself for an example of this! Personally I've incorporated ideas from psychology, statistical mechanics, and industrial engineering into my own research in robotics with tremendous success.
My philosophy is that you never know when what you know will come in handy, so learn as much as possible. You seem to feel that that you are prescient enough to anticipate every turn and challenge in your life and know exactly what you need to and no more. That's fine I guess, but when someone upstages you by pulling out some crazy shit you never considered because it wasn't interesting enough, you might feel differently.
And that is their folly.
That depends on who you ask.
You may not know it, but probably most of the techniques and methods that are core to your specialization have roots in other fields.
I don't care. If you want to, go learn to be a rocket scientist. Just leave me out of it.
My philosophy is that you never know when what you know will come in handy, so learn as much as possible.
As much as possible? That's a lot of things. In that case, you had better spend your entire life in college and work to sustain that lifestyle. Otherwise, you might come across a piece of knowledge that you don't know yet (which is just 'horrible')!
You seem to feel that that you are prescient enough to anticipate every turn and challenge in your life and know exactly what you need to and no more.
No. It's just that I don't want to waste (to me, it is a waste) tons of time learning things when there is only a minuscule chance that I will need them. Especially things I'm not even interested in to begin with. I have no desire to learn how to be a rocket scientist or anything such as that, for example.
That's fine I guess, but when someone upstages you by pulling out some crazy shit you never considered because it wasn't interesting enough, you might feel differently.
And when that doesn't happen to someone, they might feel differently (just an assumption on my part).
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
wasting my time exclusively studying things that felt natural to me.
Uh... I don't think that most people would say that they wasted their time. Nice anecdotal evidence, though.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
And he'll probably just forget most of it even if he had to take some class, anyway.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
Oh wow, you can talk with a lot more people! I sure feel a lot better about my education stalling.
You should... I don't know how old you are but by your tone you sound pretty young. You're going to meet a lot of people in your life, some of whom you might need help from one day. Most of them aren't going to care about anything you do or are passionate about. However, if there's one thing I've learned it's that people love talking about themselves and what they like. I know enough about psychology, philosophy, history, and art to have a conversation with someone about their field and ask them relevant poignant questions without sounding like an ignoramus.
It's really true that highschool never ends. If you're an engineer and all you know is engineering and all you can talk about is engineering, you're only interesting to engineers. To everyone else you're just a nerd. Do humanity and society a favor by culturing yourself a little.
Except that you're wrong. Taking these classes are good because being "well-rounded" is good because I said so. You might use it in the future (even if you already know it) so you had better waste extra time and money learning something that you might use but probably won't.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
I'm not sure which oz university you work at, but the University of Western Australia has an Academic Conduct Essentials course which is compulsory for all students, covers the various types of things that are considered misconduct (cheating, plagiarism, etc), and covers the punishments which will be received for misconduct (for conduct considered less serious, it is a sliding scale depending upon which year of uni the student is in, prior history, etc).
I know some other Australian universities also have this.
So even if they come from a different culture, at UWA at least, they have done a course and sat a test forcing them to think about these issues, which means that ignorance really is no excuse.
You can never know everything, and part of what you do know will always be wrong. Perhaps even the most important part.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_dishonesty
Generally though, race, nationality, and class all show little correlation with academic misconduct. ... [41]
However...
In the University of California system, international students make up 10% of the student body but comprise 47% of academic dishonesty cases.[43]
Having taught in the UC system...let's just say you should mod the parent up.
I am probably missing something, but why is this post tagged "China"? The post doesnt mention China and the abstract that is linked to doesnt mention it either.
no university would ever do this.
cashed-up imports are their lifeblood.
some universities actively advise tutors and lecturers to ignore cheating from certain students, citing "cultural differences", but really just wanting them to stay as long as possible to extract the most cash out of them.
perhaps it's a subtle form of industrial sabotage - sending incompetent graduates to our economic adversaries.
Sounds like you only care about a particular skill. A trade school is just right for you, not a college.
It is up to the individual person to decide if that is what they want (or should be, in my opinion). I find no value in such classes.
That's fine, I guess. But it if you really don't value a liberal arts education then you really shouldn't be going to college. It sounds like what you're looking for is a vocational institute.
it's a case of Fractional Strawman Distillation.
I don't see the point in forcing everyone to take classes that they don't want to take just to make them go to vocational institutes, either.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
. And as you say, most engineers would just craft their major to make as many of these classes reinforce their major as best they could. For those classes they couldn't, they'd either lap up, grit their teeth or mindlessly absorb the Marxist viewpoint, depending on their predilection.
Sounds like you believe engineering should devolve/evolve into a trade school.
And Hojima who argues that courses meant for breadth are because colleges want to "shove courses down our throats" for tuition, I think you also would prefer a trade school.
A university education is about expanding the knowledge and mindset of an individual with a wide variety of subjects. If all you gave a damn about was passing your course for your major for your job, I guess we should turn more universities into trade schools and leave *real* universities for people that desire an education, not job training.
I didn't like some of the books my AP English teacher had us read either: Ethan Frome, Wuthering Heights, The Red Badge of Courage. But I still learned what I needed from that class, got a 4 on the AP test, and didn't take any "filler classes" at all in college.
Wow. Sounds like someone who is out of touch with the modern university experience. There are filler classes, and the closer you get to state school, the more there are, less so at more expensive schools. Usually in the US, they're there to meet state mandated education requirements / accreditation requirements. Basic grammar, any subject you may have encountered in high school, etc - these are 'filler'. Find me a course catalog and I will find you filler.
No, I'd argue the exact opposite. We live in an age where the most advanced topics are increasingly interdisciplinary. Neuroscience, biomedical engineeringm, robotics, artificial intelligence, biochemistry, nanotechnology, materials science.... these are all inherently interdisciplinary fields. Moreover, when you delve deep enough into a subject, if you have some breadth of knowledge, you begin to recognize how your work is readily applicable in a different fields. In some cases, what you are working on in your physics research might be much more useful in say chemistry or materials science.
So punishing students for cheating and giving the next batch fair warning (due to the rampant cheating the previous year) is being a douche?
So a student facing a penalty for not doing the required work in order to take an exam is a douche move? Granted the description is theatrical but it's not like the stated policy implied the exam would ever be accepted in the first place.
Espeshully inn spehling.
A little off topic, but there's no such thing as a filler class. Only people who don't realize the full value of a well rounded education seem to consider breadth courses as a waste of time.
If universities took them seriously, maybe students would too. As it stands, there are plenty of courses where you sit in a gigantic room, listen to a TA talk, and then memorize things out of a book. There is such thing as filler classes, and they exist only to make universities money.
what class did you take that homework can just be copied? can't be any classe that you write any report or a paragraph? are they multiple choice questions?
the real world doesn't care, there is no such thing as plagiarism. How many times do people Google something and take it as there own be it scripting, programming, troubleshooting...etc? How many times has your boss asked how you came to the resolution of the problem (being honest) and you give credit to some on the net, zero. Bottom line who cares who cheats and who doesn't because:
a. most of what your taught is useless, first two years of crap ( I never almost never use cal or trig. )
b. it doesn't apply to an enterprise (real world) see above
c. no one cares how you came to the solution as long as your resolved it
Or the Commonwealth. And probably continental Europe and Asia as well, though I'm not sure about those.
While I know a couple of women who roll that way, they would probably charge you extra for that kind of fantasy play.
Sara
Designer, Gamer, Macgrrl in an XP World
I am exactly like this. As such, I've always avoided work as a programmer unless it's as a secondary job function.
As it turns out, I'm usually much better at it than anyone at the same company... but I know I'd have failed an interview test.
First of all, since when is UC San Diego a top research university?
Second of all, wtf are they doing with a picture of Harvard (Widener library) on this article when Harvard has nothing at all to do with this? Insinuating that this survey, "research", has anything to do with Harvard is an asshat move. Harvard goes to such crazy extremes to combat cheating that it's unreal.
I'm undoing mod points here because I felt the need to respond. I disagree that class requirements exist to make people "well rounded". The well rounded things (literature, writing skills, math, history, etc) should have all been covered in the previous 12 years of your education. General ed classes normally don't cover much more than what was covered in a high school level class, it's just done at a faster pace. While some people do need to do remedial classes due to their high school being crap, they should simply take those remedial classes and not force every student to do it. I strongly believe that there are two justifications for having general ed classes: 1) to provide more money to the school by forcing students to spend more time there, thus paying more for tuition and 2) because many of those departments, such as Philosophy and English, have so few students majoring in their field that the only way the school can financially justify keeping the faculty around is to force every student to take low level classes in that field.
I'm not saying that those subjects are useless - far from it. I'm simply saying that there's no realistic need to force students to go through that when they have already been exposed to it and it will have little or no impact on their future career (which despite the "well rounded person" bullshit, is the real reason almost every person goes to college - those who have the luxury of never having to work for a living get to go to school to become a "well rounded person"...the rest of us have to work for a living).
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." ~Thomas Jefferson
Kind of in the same vein about what a pain it is to deal with cheaters.
When I was taking my AP tests in high school everybody else in the test knew an individual was cheating except the proctor. Every new section he would get up and go to the restroom where he hid the textbooks for the class and looked up any concepts or material he didn't remember and he bragged about it to the rest of the class in the days after the exam.
Why didn't we turn him in? Because if we did ALL of us would of had to retake the test over summer vacation because one person was cheating - that would of nullified the rest of the class's results. That's a pain in the ass and if the proctor didn't catch him then I don't see why the rest of the class has to shoot itself in the foot because of him.
I cheated the humanities - History of Science and Technology =)
What is cheating, really? I mean this to be completely serious. There are some interesting stories here already on how someone cheated on this or that test. Some of them sound like 'studying' to me (like working every sample problem until the answers are memorized? Cheating!?). Some of them just sound like study groups.
I got a B.A. in 1992 and I recall only one or two times where instructors gave any guidance at all about what level of cooperation among classmates was appropriate. Since that had never happened in high school, I had no experience applying those guidelines. So with only one or two classes as exceptions, I did all of my homework alone. The one large study group I attended regularly was a logic class in the Math Dept. that had tremendous overlap (in subject matter, not students) with a formal logic class I had already taken in the Philosophy Dept. I would *always* do the proofs first, in my room, then join the study group. I acted more like a TA, trying to explain why something was, or was not, a proof. I was probably more rigorous than was necessary (imho: Mathematicians use logic as a tool, like an Engineer uses math; Philosophers study logic as a subject, like Mathematicians study math) because of my prior exposure.
I remember most clearly how worried I was that I was cheating with my fellow classmates. I didn't know the boundary lines.
I also worried I was cheating when I was not the leading light in a class and I needed help, badly. Since I didn't know how much help was too much, I never asked. When I took a class where I was completely over my head, I simply sank like a stone.
With social skills that come from loving Logic like a Philosopher, it's clear that I needed *practice* with group work. The few sentences at the beginning of the course from the prof simply do not cut it when you're halfway through a Data Structures assignment and need help (serious help) just getting the $%^&* code to compile. When the guideline is vague ("You may discuss assignments outside of class, but I expect you to turn in code that is your own") is it cheating to ask the code-god in your residence suite to just find the syntax error and just tell you what it is? Don't explain it, I won't understand, just tell me!
The original article says their survey included the option I "received unpermitted help". You tell me? Did I cheat?
If a well rounded education were really what was being attempted, colleges would require courses on electrical wiring, plumbing, and carpentry along with the math and physics. Claiming that a physics major is going to have more use for medieval history than he is carpentry or plumbing is ridiculous. The "well rounded" education claim falls apart when you look at what courses are required. What is being called "well rounded" is closer to a complex club hand shake than anything else. It isn't secret, but it is trivia that all of the colleges train their graduates to know in common so that they can make claims about being able to carry on conversations in a wide range of subjects. It is still trivia though.
Don't forget that they leave out the courses on things that you WILL have a use for. Things like basic plumbing, electrical, sheet-rock repair, and carpentry. Apparently, they expect knowledge of medieval genealogy to be used more often than knowing how to fix a leaky toilet.
If you don't know how to sweat a copper water pipe or safely change an electrical outlet, you are NOT well rounded.
It's really true that highschool never ends.
I just don't bother even so much as humoring the people who never move on. If it makes them so angry that I don't know about something that they like, then they do not sound like a person I'd like to interact with, anyway.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
in my experience. As a group they were bright but completely amoral. In fact they are the first group whom I have ever seen who would sabotage each others' work (lab experiments, incorrect notes, etc.) whenever possible. Just the sort of people you want as doctors.
Indeed and in the information culture we are living now the most important thing is conceptual understanding. Once you understand a problem and it's properties retrieving details is a trivial task.
On the story: what the article actually says is that people are open to cheating no matter what their measured competence is. I didn't need an article to tell me that but hey no harm done.
-- no sig today
There are filler classes, and sometimes they are mandatory. The capacity of the brain is limited, and you have to prioritize. Studying for a class through a whole semester just so you can mention it in a discussion seems like a waste of brainpower to me, as you can achieve similar effect by watching TV or surfing on the net for far less time. They are not good to extend your horizons because filer classes usually get assigned to bad teachers. Also, there is a lot of evil pseudoscience that damages your mind instead of building it, like the mandatory legal courses.
I had a horrible prof for Communications Systems. She simply couldn't teach: absolutely unintelligible and incoherent. Do you have any idea how hard it is to learn Fourier transforms if you can only understand every third sentence coming out of your prof's mouth?
So, I obtained a copy of the solutions manual for the textbook, studied, taught myself the concepts, and worked through the textbook problems. I even stopped going to the lecture because it would end up causing "negative learning" (ie. she would confuse me about subjects I had already mastered). Bonus: there was nothing ethically dubious about this because her assigned, graded homework didn't come out of the textbook anyway. However, because I was actually able to learn the material and how to solve the problems I always got very high marks on the homework too.
As a matter of fact, I believe I got the highest grade in that class. It was also the most memorable, positive experience in my Computer Engineering undergrad. I learned the material, mastered it, and retained it — all because I realized I needed to triage away my prof and ignore anything she said.
This is one reason I cringe when I hear about impromptu programming tests at interviews.
Um, don't those same tests allow you to ask questions and look things up if needed, ie. they're the opposite of what you're claiming.
No sig today...
To me the douche in the story is the one who didn't do the work but still wanted a pass.
Somebody saying "no" to that person? I wish we had a few more of those.
No sig today...
That's why there are sites all over the net selling cheap essays.
No, trade schools make sure you have proper knowledge/aptitude within your given field. Colleges (try to) ensure that you have a well-rounded education and aren't just an automaton pushing the buttons you've memorized to do your job.
at all levels. Read all about it...
Oh, the beautiful gloss of greality!
And don't give me that budget bullshit when the football team just got a new $20 million stadium
We have no football team and don't know when or if we will ever get one.
-VCU (2006-2010)
This is all anecdote. While what you're saying makes sense and is internally consistent and philosophically valid, that does not mean it is true. The same holds for things being hot because they contain massive particles of caloric.
WARNING! This girl exceeds the MAXIMUM SAFE standards established by the FDA for BRATTINESS
One of the strongest demographic correlations with academic misconduct in the United States is with language. Students who speak English as a second language have been shown to commit academic dishonesty more and are more likely to be caught than native speakers, since they will often not want to rewrite sources in their own words, fearing that the meaning of the sentence will be lost through poor paraphrasing skills.[42] In the University of California system, international students make up 10% of the student body but comprise 47% of academic dishonesty cases.[43]
Please quote all the material rather than quote mining it. The cause for increased academic dishonesty is apparently due to less-than-optimal English skills. Which makes more sense than "their cultures tell them that cheating is ok". And certainly not the case that their culture is teaching them that "cheating is absolutely ok".
WARNING! This girl exceeds the MAXIMUM SAFE standards established by the FDA for BRATTINESS
Entirely different line. Everything you said could be true, and the GP that I was responding to could still be false and racist.
Namely, he states that their culture is teaching them that "cheating is perfectly acceptable". Even in an authoritarian government, you understand that cheating is not ok. You just justify the cheating. Like speeding. We all know that speeding is wrong, but we all do it anyways, despite it being wrong, and us knowing that it is wrong.
WARNING! This girl exceeds the MAXIMUM SAFE standards established by the FDA for BRATTINESS
A little off topic, but there's no such thing as a filler class.
Your point has been pretty well covered but when I read the discussion about it I remembered something. Hamlet.
I had to formally study, ie for a graded class not on my own time, Hamlet no less than 4 times during my schooling. Four, motherfucking, times. I mean I dig me some Shakespeare but...damn.
Once in a early level high school gifted English class and hey that was ok. We were the smart kids and you are not going to get very far teaching the smart kids the standard bullshit short stories that you get in some 9th or 10th grade reader. Then again in senior year gifted English. Oookkk. By this time I at least had likely read more stuff over all than some adults do their whole lives but whatever.
Then again in English 101. Fuck. Me. Really? I was reading, for 'fun' mind you at the time, The Brothers Karamazov. I would have been thrilled to have a chance to analyze Crime and Punishment in a college setting. Or how about some really hard hitting and awsome sci-fi like the Foundation trilogy? Nope, I clearly needed to learn Hamlet...er some more.
And then finally to add insult to injury I remember filling out one of my elective requirement with English Lit or something like that and guess what was on tap?! Hamlet! Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him...and even I wished for death at times then as well.
Really, I know what I'm doing...Ohhhh, look at the shiny buttons!
Controversial studies are done all the time(nature vs. nurture, indicators of success, and intelligence with respect to race) but they're kept hidden or put on the media's back-burner because they're too dangerous for a touchy-feely culture. The fact that stereotypes are often offensive does not mean that they are the exception rather than the rule.
Right, but I wasn't asking for media articles that show that foreigners cheat more than Americans. I was asking for scientific papers.
In fact, if you cared, you could feel free to actually present papers to support offensive stereotypes. And I'll grant you that some of them do hold true. However, intelligence with respect to race most certainly isn't one of them. An average IQ gap exists with respect to race, but IQ != intelligence, and as well, IQ is pretty poor at accounting for social factors. People with lower income also score lower on IQ tests on average. Black people are disproportionately lower income, and Asians are disproportionately high income. Surprise! IQ gap shows up. This is of course but one theory, but it's possible, and it's not racist. And the professional institutions widely accept that there is no evidence to support the notion that there is an intelligence difference between the different races.
WARNING! This girl exceeds the MAXIMUM SAFE standards established by the FDA for BRATTINESS
The well rounded things (literature, writing skills, math, history, etc) should have all been covered in the previous 12 years of your education.
I have never understood this about American higher education. Why is there a need to extend the learning structure already done in normal school? Should the idea of further education not be to focus on one area of interest that (presumably) is the thing you want to do for a living? In the UK and Norway (and likely most of Europe) at University you take one degree course and all the classes (more or less) are directly related to your "major" (to use the American term).
I did Computing, which is a bit of a broad term, but even so all the classes were related to either software development, networking, or some other aspect of "computing" that would be relevant in a professional situation.
Saying that, however, I did do one year at a different University where the idea of "credits" meant you could take an unrelated subject on the side, which I did out of curiosity. I liked the fact that it was an option rather than a requirement, though.
Studying is just an advance form of cheating--you look at the answers before the exam!?
~Less think, more do
None of the interview programming tests I've ever had has allowed any outside reference material. They did, however, tolerate bad syntax and pseudocode.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
"The well rounded things (literature, writing skills, math, history, etc) should have all been covered in the previous 12 years of your education."
Learning is useful because it connects new ideas to ideas you already have. Knowledge is grounded in experience. Connecting to adult experience in a fully formed brain is probably more useful than connecting to childish ideas in a neural net that is still under construction.
For example, consider comparing national military strategies used in WWII. A 13 year old is not likely to find it a life changing experience. A 21 year old may very well say "Holy crap, Hitler's technology project management doomed Germany. I'm going to make sure that the right hand always knows what the left is doing and not duplicate efforts. Also, operations research rocks."** That's why many folks consider a broad university education to be worthwhile.
Also, the brain undergoes a massive restructuring (neural pruning, activation of the frontal lobes) starting around age 12 and finishing around 15. For most people, only the last two years of high school are learned in a more-or-less adult way. A new high school junior does not have 11 years of school, they have 1 year of school repeated 11 times. Covering the basics again during university is not as repetitive as it seems.
**It is mandatory reading for software engineers to learn how Germany managed to throw away first mover advantage and superb technical prowess. The total destruction of Netscape was written in history books in the 1950s.
Oh, I don't know about that. "American Short Stories" was definitely a filler class for me. (I was an Electrical Engineering major.) I've read more (and learned more about) good literature since I left college.
"Medieval East Asian History," on the other hand, was not.
There's a need to extend the learning structure because a cabbage can graduate from high school in the USA. Students are given 'social promotions' in situations where, in another country, they would fail and have to repeat the year.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
Your thinking of an associates program.
A Bachelor's degree is intended to indicate a more well rounded education. Even arts majors should be able to do some calculus. Even math majors should be able to critique literature, etc.
'If you ain't cheating, you ain't trying...just don't get caught!'
Wasn't relavent to my point and I felt it added noise. ... and reference numbers [41] [43] to show it was a partial quote. Plus a link for anyone who wanted to read the chapter and verse.
There were elipsis
Plus your conclusion is incomplete.
For those who cheat on essay type material, one factor is lack of english skills and a fear when they paraphrase that the meaning will be lost.
This is not a factor for those who cheat in calculus, physics, mathematics, or other non essay material, or any form of multiple choice test.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Instead, the Java programming language specifies that an exception will be thrown when semantic constraints are violated and will cause a non-local transfer of control ...
Explicit use of throw statements provides an alternative to the old-fashioned style of handling error conditions by returning funny values, such as the integer value -1 where a negative value would not normally be expected. Experience shows that too often such funny values are ignored or not checked for by callers, leading to programs that are not robust, exhibit undesirable behavior, or both. ...
This process continues until a handler is found that indicates that it handles that particular exception ... thus every effort is made to avoid letting an exception go unhandled. ...
The exception mechanism of the Java platform is integrated with its synchronization model (17), so that locks are released as synchronized statements (14.19) and invocations of synchronized methods (8.4.3.6, 15.12) complete abruptly.
(From here, emphasis mine) The lessons here seem pretty clear. If colleges want to stop cheating, they should:
I dislike dealing with Java exceptions as much as anyone (try/catch everywhere.) Considering what it would take to really handle cheating, it seems clear why colleges are structured to suppress any allegations. It's just easier, and after all, they don't have to catch every exception.
tomorrow who's gonna fuss
It's impossible not to cheat on a True or False quiz where the Teacher/Prof/TA reads the questions aloud.
True answers are noted as a "T", you make two lines on your paper to make a T.
False answers are noted as a "F", you make three lines on your paper to make an F.
All you need to do is listen to the number of lines/scratches the people around you make. if you hear most people making two lines, the answer is true, if you hear three lines the answer is false.
Once you know this, it's impossible not to cheat on a True or False quiz. So there, I just made you all cheaters.
Only people who don't realize the full value of a well rounded education seem to consider breadth courses as a waste of time
Apparently, the definition of "a well rounded education" is "Can beat your friends at At-Home Jeopardy or Trivial Pursuit." At least the requirements for pointless filler let me take Ancient Mythology, which was at least enjoyable (though not really $900 worth of enjoyable).
Pft; no "A" for you...
Colleges are there to confirm that you have the proper knowledge/aptitude within your given field
That's what tech schools are for.
I know it's a common misnomer, but Devry actually requires Histroy, English, etc., just like other colleges. They're fully accredited and most of their credits transfer to other colleges. You may be of the opinion that they don't offer the same quality of education as a football college, but they aren't a vocational college, either.
It sounds like you should have attended a vocational school instead of a college.
I find that in the workforce, three classes became invaluable to me that I would not have normally taken.
My second English class (102 at most universities, 1102 at mine) was critical in really pushing me to flex my muscles when it came to writing. It also helped that my state has a standard writing exam that you can exempt with an appropriate SAT score and a B or better in ENGL 1102. The last two assignments were actually set by the department your major was at, not by the professor. They were generic enough the professor could easily help and grade them, but geared towards your chosen field. I had to write an explanatory and persuasive essay, with the explanatory topic having something of a technical bend. I also got mad props for my literary analysis of the resurrection of Jesus when compared to common Roman ghost stories of the period. (It's a very fun topic, angry how-dare-you bigots aside, and well written about if you actually go out looking for it.) Because of this class, I am the go to guy at work for writing emails explaining to others why something is their fault, how they should prevent doing it again, and somehow they feel all fuzzy and warm inside after having a new arse hole ripped in Corporatese. :-)
The next class was public speaking. I'm sure I don't need to go into the reasons this class applies so well to life in general. At work, I'm also the go to guy for running conference calls. Everyone feels the love and gets to speak, but we somehow always stay on topic despite a few bad actors. We finish perfectly on time, if not early, when I'm presenting.
The final class was Philosophy, whose lessons in logic and arguing were later leveraged into my mathematics courses and serves me well in design and planning meetings. Often times, when troubleshooting and debugging software, I'm stunned by what appears to be random guessing and button mashing, with no regard for using process of elimination. Even more so, just hearing Descarte's argument for the existence of God, while I didn't buy it, made me more aware and careful about how negation of a concept can fall very short of defining it's opposite. (I.E. Infinity can't really be best defined, conceptually, as "not finite".) Hearing St. Anslem's version of the ontological argument and Guanilo's response brought home that sometimes, logic that makes perfect sense step by step can lead you on wild goose chases that only a rabid schizophrenic could believe. Because of that, I always try to keep the big picture in mind as I go down any sort of logical construction.
I think that General Education classes and the concept of 'well roundedness' do make sense. However, I disagree that these sorts of courses belong in our current mandatory education system. I think we really need a shift where we go back to College or Technical preparatory programs in high school. You take lots of shop and trade classes so you know what you want to get certified in at Technical School, or you start delving into some high level academics in preparation for College. Of course, the reason this whole paradigm went away was because of the shift to College For Everyone by parents.
In its current incarnation, the compulsory education can't handle this sort of diversification. Especially with the hammer the square pegs into round holes style of devolution imposed by NCLB. Your kid may not know how to read when he or she graduates, but god damn it he or she will know how to bubble in their name and student ID number!
I can speak from my experience as a graduate student at Stanford who has TAed. Cheating among the undergrads is very prevalent and essentially impossible to prove. Stanford has a honor code and part of it is that during exams professors and TAs cannot be in the room to monitor the exam. The one person I know who has gotten caught cheating by resubmitting an exam for regrade and replacing several pages of the exam only got one quarter suspension (over the summer) and was still allowed to finish the class and receive a grade as if he never cheated.
yeah, and in my filler classes the profs at a "research institution" usually didn't even bother to show up and had their TAs teach the class, even though they were supposed to only be assisting the professor. Apparently (and I found this out years later) TAs teaching a class needed to be listed in the class bulletin, and a couple of years after I graduated, a scandal broke about the profs not teaching. Too bad they had fired two of my favorite teachers the year before the scandal broke because those teachers didn't do enough research and didn't publish enough papers. At least the department head got demoted (he encouraged the practice in the department, but it was found to be against school rules, and he also was a rat-bastard IMO - he always talked down to students and whenever I left a chat with him I had a barely controllable urge to punch him in the face), but unfortunately, the worst teacher I had (he did show up, but I didn't have him until year 3) became department head and kept the research first students second policy. At least my user interface and design professors survived the cuts (both published a lot of papers and were great teachers, which is a rare combo) - too bad my computer graphics and C/C++ professors did not (both were awesome teachers).
Probably varies by company and sanity of the gatekeepers, but I've never heard of these tests being open book. Then again, I'm not a programmer so most stories I've heard are of The Daily WTF variety
In one of my grad classes, the professor announced that he would run a web search on random parts of students' homework assignments and that in the past, he frequently found answers that were copied word-for-word from online sources. Looking online for answers was perfectly acceptable, but it was expected that the student could take the information online and express the concepts in his own words (or at least a slight re-wording of the source material). Despite this, the pattern continued and more cheaters were found. Cheaters will still cheat even if it is assured that they will be caught.
... later on in the workplace it is called "effective collaboration and asset reuse". Could it be, that the way test are administered is out of sync with live's reality and "cheating" the the adjustment to that?
Wasn't relavent to my point and I felt it added noise. ... and reference numbers [41] [43] to show it was a partial quote. Plus a link for anyone who wanted to read the chapter and verse.
There were elipsis
Oh, I knew it was a partial quote, that was clear enough. You did everything that was required to indicate it is a partial quote and allow people to read the quote in question. However, the text that you removed described the motivations and causes for academic misconduct by students who do not speak English as a first language.
Plus your conclusion is incomplete.
For those who cheat on essay type material, one factor is lack of english skills and a fear when they paraphrase that the meaning will be lost.
This is not a factor for those who cheat in calculus, physics, mathematics, or other non essay material, or any form of multiple choice test.
While you're certainly correct about that, the data about how much academic misconduct occurs from foreigners at UC does not indicate what they were caught for. Plagiarism is likely the most common form of catching academic misconduct, because it is the easiest to prove, and spot. How do you catch people who are cheating on a multiple-choice test? You certainly can't do it reliably, and you cannot pick it up after the test has been performed, because the test material itself contains no apparent indications of cheating. Meanwhile, with plagiarism, you have a document that is supposed to be unique, but yet contains significant portions of text produced by the original sources without attribution.
So, let's say that non-native English speakers are more likely to plagiarize out of fear of badly paraphrasing material, and plagiarism is also the most commonly spotted form of academic misconduct. Now, let's assume that this same group of students cheats no more often than native English speakers on all other forms of academic misconduct. The way statistics works, the non-native English speakers will reliably and certainly be over-represented in cases of academic misconduct. In fact, if the detection rate of plagiarism in relation to other forms of academic misconduct is high enough the same situation could be true and account entirely for the UC numbers.
Again though, this very specific incident of plagiarism being more common in non-native English speakers does not support the opinion of the original poster who claimed that their culture teaches them that cheating is perfectly acceptable. These students were likely taught no such thing, and are simply cheating now because they don't want to ruin the meaning of the original author's words without realizing that what they are doing is considered to be plagiarism.
So, unless you have citations to prove that some cultures teach their children that cheating is perfectly acceptable (à la "Cartmenez" from that South Park episode where he teaches inner city children to cheat like the rich white people), then your whole argument is pointless, as that was not my original argument.
WARNING! This girl exceeds the MAXIMUM SAFE standards established by the FDA for BRATTINESS
My argument isn't that teaching them to cheat is acceptable.
I only quoted two statements.
1) Cheating isn't related to race and a couple other factors.
2) A lot of cheaters at one university are international students.
There are a lot of assumptions in your quote. The cheating I saw was not plagiarism but on math and other tests. Copying other people's answers. I had to judge one young girl who was a fellow student. And I saw people caught and busted.
OTH, I never had the teacher bust anyone in an english, polysci, or government class for bad essays. Just my experience. I'm sure it happens too.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Oh and universities have repeatedly busted people for cheating on multiple choice using pagers and then cell phones.
One professor also told of an attempt to bribe him... $50 in the blue book.
He related how he told the entire class... "I'm not saying I can't be bribed... but $50 is not my price."
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
There was no cheating in his story. If it was actually required work then the students wouldn't pass the test if they didn't know the material, if they understand the material what the hell do you care if they dance to the busy work for some teacher? If you want homework to matter make it 50% of the grade, don't do the retarded bullshit of "It's worth 5% but you can't take the test or pass unless all assignments are turned in."
All anecdotal?
I keep track of the types of tests and the students that were suspected of cheating. I've been doing this for 10 years. A few years back, I was asked to see which tests were being cheated on the most. A large international exam testing English speaking skills (not going to say the name) was the one that by and far was the largest group of suspected cheating. Note: suspected cheating is most likely actual cheating, but in a lot of cases, I couldn't take the risk of accusation. For instance, I can dismiss someone for talking to someone else, but I can't really say its 'cheating' unless I knew what was being said.
When I went in to names and otherwise, sometimes I have their country of origin...and sometimes just the names...but I can make a pretty good determination that over 10 years that students from certain countries by and far elicit more cheating than others. And not just a little...a LOT. Even when I look at the other tests other than this English Language test...its the same thing.
Who knows, you may be right...unless I went to another large university and repeated these results, I don't know if it is just the locals that have congregated here and not an indictment of the countries...but an indictment of the locals that just happen to cluster from those countries and have heard it was easy to cheat. However, though friends on the national collegiate testing association...this is generally true anecdotally -- even if they haven't kept the same records I have.
You seem to have a lot invested in your belief that it is systematic and not just localized to cultures. I've spent a LOT of time with two diverse cultures -- I am white, but I really don't have many white friends -- living with one family for 15 years, and growing up with another where I spent more time with them than my own family I can definitely tell you they have very different values and norms compared to the average 'white' family (what ever that may be). There are things that make you say What The Fuck...and then when you leave and go back to your 'own' culture...you realize in some ways theirs is so much fucking better and you sit around going WHAT THE FUCK about your own...90% of it all is going to be the same. But where it deviates...it really deviates. And understanding the cultures...it makes sense why.
But going around believing everyone is the same? No...cultures differ and values differ and this is why its great to get out of a monoculture and live with others to see the world for what it is...you might end up agreeing with your own more...or you might go back sickened by your own...I did the latter...
We do not all believe speeding is wrong.
A large percentage of people believe speeding to be perfectly legitimate because speed laws are artificially low to increase revenues from fines and otherwise. Or may believe that they are good enough to speed, but most others shouldn't. Or that disregarding the law is perfectly legitimate if there is an excuse.
Not one of these tells us they feel speeding it wrong...they feel it is justified under many many circumstances.
I don't speed...and yet I don't find speeding wrong. I find breaking laws that were made that don't affect my life to be wrong. There is nothing that the speeding laws stop me from doing that wasn't my fault to begin with (i.e., get up 5 minutes earlier to get to work). As such, I find it moronic to break the law. I also feel the same about drug laws...I don't like drug laws, but I don't make up excuses as to why the law is bad when all I'd want to do is to get high. I don't see this as a human right that needs to be protected by breaking the laws. At the same time, I don't judge someone that wants to get high...its their life. I do find people that go to jail for this to be morons that took a risk for no apparent reason knowing its against the law.
Taking these ideas out, lot of people could believe that cheating might be wrong EXCEPT IF IT IS JUSTIFYABLE....i.e., they know the material, but just didn't study. Or feel more worthy than someone else. Or otherwise...cheating isn't wrong...others cheating is wrong.
This is the problem with a decade of psychology behind me...these things are not simple questions nor answers...
this is generally true anecdotally -- even if they haven't kept the same records I have.
Exactly, it's anecdote. Your records aren't even good data.
But going around believing everyone is the same?
I NEVER FUCKING SAID THAT.
I said that it was racist and jingoistic to say that foreigners are taught a culture that says that cheating is "perfectly acceptable".
No...cultures differ and values differ and this is why its great to get out of a monoculture and live with others to see the world for what it is...you might end up agreeing with your own more...or you might go back sickened by your own...I did the latter...
People widely mistake me for being a German, even though I was raised in the USA. And not just anywhere in the USA, but New Mexico, where Hispanic and "generic white culture" converge. You're preaching to the fucking choir here about cultures having varying attitudes and opinions.
However, to blanketly say that foreigners are all cheaters and quite happy to cheat, is fucking racist and jingoistic.
WARNING! This girl exceeds the MAXIMUM SAFE standards established by the FDA for BRATTINESS
None of your argument touches the idea that our culture teaches us that speeding is "perfectly acceptable".
As with all crimes, there are justifying exceptions, that in fact, some courts will even recognize. For instance in Washington state, if someone is "holding a gun to your head", you are excused from any crime except murder. As well, causing property damage is better than killing someone, so while driving your car such that you take out a light post is usually illegal, if you're doing it to prevent someone's death, it becomes justified via "necessity".
The idea that "something is wrong EXCEPT IF IT IS JUSTIFYABLE [sic]" is some crazy thought that only some people believe is fundamentally wrong, because EVERYONE thinks that way. That being said, we now can discard the notion that only other cultures are teaching kids that cheating is ok, if it is justifiable, because Americans teach that as well. (For instance, some students have committed outright plagiary in order to catch biased grading by a teacher.)
And having discarded that notion that only other cultures teach their kids that, there remains no rational reason to state that "those damn furriners are taught cheatin' is ok!"
WARNING! This girl exceeds the MAXIMUM SAFE standards established by the FDA for BRATTINESS
Speaking of stereotypes, I know what you need - you need me to feed you Ben and Jerry's Ice cream while massaging your callused feet, building up the foreplay while we watch Law and Order and discus what pigs men are. You want to cuff me to the bed and slap me around for being the naughty boy that I am. Oh Yeah, give it to me, baby!
Apparently, someone did not learn the difference between "want" and "need".
Stereotypically speaking, someone can also easily be seen as having a father that was a control freak and a mother who took it "like she had to."
Not pointing fingers or anything.
Speaking of stereotypes, I know what you need - you need me to feed you Ben and Jerry's Ice cream while massaging your callused feet, building up the foreplay while we watch Law and Order and discus what pigs men are. You want to cuff me to the bed and slap me around for being the naughty boy that I am. Oh Yeah, give it to me, baby!
While I know a couple of women who roll that way, they would probably charge you extra for that kind of fantasy play.
What's the charge nowadays for a woman who cares about the feelings of a man and enjoys spending quality talk and activity time with them?