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Dozens Suspended In Harvard University Cheat Scandal
johnsnails writes "Around 60 students at Harvard University have been suspended and others disciplined in a mass cheating scandal at the elite college, the campus newspaper reports. The Harvard Crimson quoted an email from Faculty of Arts and Sciences dean Michael Smith that said more than half of the cases heard by administrators in the scandal, which erupted last year, had resulted in suspension orders. 'After professor Matthew B. Platt reported suspicious similarities on a handful of take-home exams in his spring course Government 1310: “Introduction to Congress,” the College launched an investigation that eventually expanded to involve almost half of the 279 students enrolled in the course.'"
The new generation of kids cheat as if that's how things get done.
I was talking to a 15 year old kid, how his grades suffered because he decided he wasn't going to cheat anymore. He admitted he previously cheated freely and openly, without shame. Why? EVERYONE cheated, so there was no shame in it. But he realized that cheating was shortsighted and sooner or later, he would have to actually learn stuff. So he resolved to stop cheating, but at the cost of his previous good grades.
HE is an encouraging example. But the rest of his classmates aren't. Cheating is the norm and our future is screwed.
One has to be careful with these sorts of stories. A few years back at my University, newspapers went wild when an entire engineering ethics class was given an F for cheating. The reality of it? The professor gave no instructions on how to properly cite things, gave an assignment, and 'taught everyone a lesson' by failing them all for plagiarism when they didn't follow the exact standards of reference citing. These were engineers- imagine how little they know or care about perfection in reference citing. Nobody was intending to cheat the system, except for a professor who wanted to make some kind of point, by ruining the GPAs of a hundred students.
In this situation, I see certain similarities- one professor, one paper, and few details.
There's your problem right there.
I wonder why oral exams aren't more common in the United States. When I came to do graduate studies in Europe, they really forced me to shape up and learn my stuff. Not only do they make cheating impossible, but when you are judged on how fast you provide the answer, you also internalize it better.
Sure, written exams are the norm for science fields where one must note down specialist notation like mathematics or chemistry, but in the humanities -- and the "political science" of this article -- they seem an excellent way of judging student progress.
The funny thing (sad thing?) is how lenient the punishments were. Suspension? At my school, a lowly community college, cheating usually results in expulsion, with a 0 in the course being the minimum consequence.
If you can't convince them, convict them.
Truly poor people pay no tuition, true. I'm not sure what the room and board policy is (fairly safe bet it's not cheap) nor about books, etc., but even if they are covered there are substantial costs associated with college that do not have to do with the college itself, such as transportation to and from (e.g., dorms aren't open over holidays). Most students in that situation are better off taking a proper full ride from a slightly lesser school, since it will not be taken out from under them if they or their parents make some extra money one year (unlike need-based aid, which will be affected by expected family and student contribution).
Yes, I was admitted, no, I didn't go, and that is why. I needed security, something my parents were ill equipped to provide. Why do you think high expectations Asian father macros (just making a point, I'm not from an Asian or immigrant family) all talk about med school or engineering? Reliable professional jobs are a great place for middle class kids with brains; they can send their own kids to the big name schools. Was it the right choice? I aimed too low for my lesser school and although I made about $5000 a year from excess scholarship money and graduated without debt I probably could have gotten the same offer from a better place, so it is hard to tell - but then I make mid six figures in an area with a very low cost of living, so it's not like I ended up in the gutter.
GP never said it was unique to the US, sounded to me like it was just implied that was all the poster had experience with, rather than painting the entire world of politics with the same brush. Sounds rather sensible for someone named MickyTheIdiot!
One of the problems with Capitalism is it can force Managers to compete with each other to screw everyone; their employee's, customers and ultimately the environment; the best. The classic method of constraining it has always been to involve government. For example; The Red Triangle fire resulted in 120 Americans dieing on the 8th floor of a high-rise factory floor from a fire that started on the 10th; the bosses surmised they only needed a few buckets of water in the corner, locked their workers in, and weren't around to let them out when the fire started. The result of this was a "general strike" and hundreds of laborers unionizing overnight as everyone came to the realization they were putting up with something they aught not to put up with.
The lesson here is, if management and labor don't work together, neither of them will be employed for long. The pride of management blinds them to the obvious dangers they place labor, and ultimately themselves, at, and labor if they follow management down the rabbit hole will lead inevitably and invariably to injury.
I work at a company run by lawyers, they're always fighting over the slightest nuance of communication instead of looking at what's really going on; a infrastructure built with products promised to last decades but because foreigners cut corners as there was no real repricussion for doing so, thus it is in decay. An entire generation retiring oblivious to the peril management has placed their pensions in. Men Dieing or getting injured in the field from too many hours of overtime worked. Managers putting in 16hr shifts because their managers need to feel like the lower managers are "with them". Accountants oblivious to all of the above.
Great example of the level of discourse in the USA today. Let me point out the pattern:
Thinking person: In the USA this problem is evident to me.
Knee-jerk apologist: You said the rest of the world is better than the USA! You are a bad person and not a patriot! We can ignore your point and concentrate on how evil the rest of the world is because they all have this problem at least as bad!
Thinking person: Wait, what? I never mentioned any other country because I live in the USA and am not prepared to comment on other cultures I only know from hearsay!
KJ apologist: Fuck you traitor! Go live in Sweden/Iraq/Russia/Somalia since you like Socialism/Arabs/Commies/pickaninnies so much!
Thinking person: .......
If Harvard took cheating seriously, it would fail and expel these students from the program and not let them back in. It is (or was) exceptionally easy to get decent grades at Harvard. Last time I checked, very nearly 90% of its students graduated cum laude or better.
Academic dishonesty at Harvard is not a new thing, either. Ted Kennedy was caught, red-handed, cheating at Harvard when a hired person took an exam for him. Kennedy eventually got his degree anyway and went on to be a career U.S. Senator.
What Harvard and many of the Ivy Leagues are is an institution for developing the next generation of elite, white-collar criminals. The 2008 financial crisis was caused entirely by rampant fraud perpetrated by the private institutions that overwhemingly are run by and hire Ivy League alumni.