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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.'"
I guess all of these students were planning on going into politics.
Sports figures, politicians, business leaders, Ivy college students... all cheat to get what they want. At least Beyonce wouldn't lie to us. Oh, wait...
Ha-vahd students too lazy and ignorant to get a clue about Congress. What will they do when Daddy buys them a seat? (besides feel up the interns?)
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
1+1=2 they all had. Obviously cheats.
No wonder.. take home exams... open book exams.. what do you expect from the low level colleges... Then it actually hit me that this is Harvard.edu we are talking about.
I guess I was just lucky to finish eng and comp sci from a place where they filtered us from 450 in first year to 5 with diplomas in fourth, without ANY of this open-book-exam nonsense.
Then again, I'm unemployed at the time and work is tough to find... if I only went for a bigger name university... had the grades, didn't have the money... ah the ways of the world :)
Anyone else looked at the syllabus for some of these classes? I was looking at one online and I thought it looked more like it belonged in a community college.
I was surprised at the poor quality of classes I found, maybe actually being there in the class with the other 150 students makes a difference.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
The course is Government 1310: "Introduction to Congress" so I'd think cheating was required.
Ever notice that Cobra Commander sounds an awful lot like Star scream?
Fight fiercely, Harvard, Fight, fight, fight!
Demonstrate to them our skill.
Albeit they possess the might,
Nonetheless we have the will.
How we shall celebrate our victory,
We shall invite the whole team up for tea (how jolly!)
Hurl that spheroid down the field, and Fight, fight, fight!
Fight fiercely, Harvard,
Fight, fight, fight!
Impress them with our prowess, do!
Oh, fellows, do not let the crimson down,
Be of stout heart and thru.
Come on, chaps, fight for Harvard's glorious name,
Won't it be peachy if we win the game? (oh, goody!)
Let's try not to injure them, but Fight, fight, fight!
And do fight fiercely! Fight, fight, fight!
(by Tom Lehrer)
For sure!
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
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.
Clearly these esteemed institutions have failed in their mission.
Seastead this.
Seems to me that cheating would be a requirement to pass that course.
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.
Cheating on a take-home exam is just plain lazy!
I see some new, expensive buildings being donated to Harvard in the near future.
Look, how surprising is this really? I'd say about as surprising as the sun rising. Our cultural icons don't just cheat (think performance enhancing drugs) but when they are caught the repercussions are so minor (at least as portrayed by the media) that it makes cheating almost mandatory because everyone does it and when things are competitive or, say, graded on a curve, you're kind of screwed into following suit.
I do not respond to cowards. Especially anonymous ones.
Even fewer are those who will continue to do this after the first few times. After a while you begin to believe that the real rules and the stated ones have little to do with each other, and anyone following the stated rules isn't any more moral or ethical or in any way better; they're just a chump.
If so many cheated on a gut intro to Congress course, it must be rampant for difficult courses.
Harvard forgot to offer the course: Cheating 101 - How to cheat without getting caught
well real IT is open book and not based on cramming for tests.
Actually most students do not cheat. While the number of cheating incidents is sadly on the rise - probably by about a factor of 2-3 since I started as a prof 10 years ago - the vast majority of university students do not cheat. So while it is always bad to hear of cases like this it is worth getting a little perspective: many students work extremely hard for their degrees and we should not devalue that because some idiots insist on cheating.
Who could have seen that coming?
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and with loads of theroy as well that does not really help you in a real job. Also lot's of the fluff and filler classes are loaded with BS busy-work.
need hands on based tests and they test understanding of a topic and not just cramming.
Getting caught!
Our colleges are supposed to train our students to succeed in society. That means, we need to wee out the ones who are going to get caught when they cheat. The truly successful in our society are the ones who cheat without getting caught.
I feel so cynical today.
You can take this course on line. for $1,045 to $2000. At Harvard, I would have expected "Introduction to Congress" to be taught by an former member of Congress, but it's just an ordinary instructor.
I'm watching the first video. At the beginning, the instructor says that all you need to know to start this course is that "Congress" exists. At 00:02:35, he's talking about the proposal to change the rules to prevent filibusters from stalling Congress (only the Senate, actually). The speaker is interesting, but if you don't already know a lot about American politics and the structure of Congress, you'll be totally lost.
With rampant grade inflation going on these days, especially at the high end schools (where everyone is above average, remember) these kids didn't have to cheat - just wait for the As to roll in.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Or maybe - just possibly - the Ivy League universities continually turn out entrepreneurs because they teach the same material better.
Maybe it's because they foster a culture of exploration and innovation.
Maybe it's because people are surrounded by other self-starters.
Maybe it's because people wanting to kick something new off have access to wealthy individuals.
It's definitely there, I suspect it's a combination of several of those things, and I know that if I were seeking a university in the US I'd be applying straight to MIT and fuck the cost.
But I went to university in the UK, at one of the top five business schools in the world (when I was there - only in the top 20 or so now). I did fuck all on my degree but gained skills I'm still using personally and professionally two decades later.
A university education is almost nothing to do with the details of the subject matter.
Can't Tell The Difference Between Reality And The Onion.
sig fault
And how on Earth do you benefit from cheating in school? Aren't you there to learn or something?
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
What were the instructions to the students taking the exam? What restrictions or instructions?
I'm a teacher in a post secondary institute and all of my quizzes are take-home 'do it at your own time" within a specificed time frame using whatever resources you can find. It allows me to create exams that test more than just rote memorization and I can ask higher level questions that require an understanding of the problem. If you can't understand the question then you won't even know what to google for. I also expect that there will be collaboration between students. This is real life testing, in the real world (job/career), you are asked to solve problems with whatever resources are available to you: google, library, references, friends, colleagues, etc..
There is an added bonus, in that if you don't know the answer, you have the opportunity to research and learn about it. In my assessments, you are assessed on your ability to come up with solution and you have the opportunity to learn while you are doing it.
The final exam is open book, open computer, randomized questions, randomized answers, online with a limit of 3 questions per page in a monitored environment - no friends or colleagues to help you. The exams typically span about 20 pages which makes collaboration very difficult in the limited time frame. The final exam mark is the real indication of your abilities.
Open book exams are always harder than closed book. I've found that the struggling students will do just as poorly in an open book exam as a closed book exam. They figure that all they have to do is look it up in their notes or text. Unfortunately, it is usually the first time they crack open the text and the first time they realize that they were too busy checking facebook, playing world of warcraft, instagramming, etc. to take good notes.
On the lab side, you receive 0% for doing the actual lab work. It triggers an online quiz that tests your understanding of the lab and the lab results. The lab quiz is worth 100% of the lab work. I've found that giving marks for the actual lab work artificially raises the student's grade, it becomes a mark for attendance. I feel that it separates the learning (lab work) from the assessment. I also feel that it is not fair to evaluate someone's ability on the first time that they attempt a procedure or lab. Do the lab, do it right then get graded on how well you understand what happened.
Plus logic dictates that with this number of people it's not the first time it ever happened.
When you realize that the discovery was made because of:
similarities on a handful of take-home exams in his spring course Government 1310
you have to wonder if this professor was clueless, idealistic, or engaged in an "honesty" research project of some kind.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
You wonder why oral exams are not more common?
There were 279 students enrolled in this class. Assuming a ten minute oral exam for each and two minutes to grade the answers it takes 55.8 hours to examine all the students. This oral exam would take at least two weeks in a 14 week semester, and ten minutes is really too little time to judge the work of an entire semester.
If anyone other than the professor grades the student, then they cry foul.
If the exams begin in the fifth week of the 14 week semester, the students examined last cry foul since they must study significantly more material.
There should be only twenty students in a class? Good luck with that. I suppose you could raise tuition and hire more professors or have the classes taught by lecturers.
Actually, in the USA most classes are taught by lecturers, and the classes are still huge.
And how on Earth do you benefit from cheating in school? Aren't you there to learn or something?
Collaborative learning (study groups) are ok, and often encouraged, sometimes required. Why: Because they AID learning.
Since the test was a take-home exam, I could see where the students, in the absence of any instructions to the contrary might thing it was just another co-op assignment. (Not saying there wasn't any warning not to work in groups, just tossing that out there).
In any university testing environment the test answers are usually stored under lock and key. Even most essay style exams have bullet point lists (again secret) that have to be mentioned in passing in the composition in order to be score-able on anything scale other than a whim. So throwing this exam out there to "take home" seems pretty reckless, if not hopelessly naive on the part of the professor.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
I wonder how many of the suspended students were from China. Having papers ghost-written, paying for smuggled out exam questions and answers, is quite an industry there. Then, they come to the US, and expect to be able to game the system the same way. In some schools, that works. Harvard is a bit more careful, generally, though this take-home exam was a really bad idea.
You're there to get a good job too and with the job market as it is you can't really afford being filtered out on GPA.
n/t
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Usually, in most cases where co-op studying is allowed, students are told that while discussing ideas is OK, verbatim (or similar enough) answers that are used by multiple members of the group will be considered cheating.
Moreover, when you take an exam, the questions are meant to be thought about, and the answers to those questions have to come out of your own ideas, or so I'd imagine would be the case for a PoliSci class.
If the students in question did anything like what has been mentioned in the summary, then they deserve harsher punishment than what they are currently getting.
on 2 Harvard is not a sports school or a place with people who are there for sports to take easy classes.
what mass confusion?? and what clarification?
Did most of people all hit the same errors? and did they do about the same with what the clarification said?
279 students seems a bit extreme to me, but whenever we had large classes, the lectures were complemented with exercises run by other teachers or TAs with around 20 students/excersie. Of course I studied engineering, but even with the humanities I can imagine smaller seminars to discuss the material from the lectures would be useful, the lecture is very much a one-way street in terms of learning, there's not much room for discussion, at least for the vast majority of the class.
But there is remember stuff and not even having command /? to look up commands. airplane pilot have checklists or do you want them to have to remember the full checklist?
These are your new elites, America.
We got tired of upper middle class white kids. That's gauche.
Now, we have a multicultural empire of elites, who are selected for their obedience as much as anything else.
It seems they cheat a lot. When you prioritize obedience and detail-memorization above the ability to think, that's what you get: little robots that do anything to get the grades.
That's your future, America.
Now transferring my investments to Europe and Asia...
Futurist Traditionalism
MBAs do what at Uncle Harold's conglomerate?
cheat sheet. I mean when there were 60+ papers that said the speaker of the house was hooked up to the stereo system of the house you know something is up.
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
The truth of the matter is that crime does pay (and I don't just mean drug dealers or the thieves on Wall Street).
I finished my Master's at Harvard last year, and it seems like the name is the only reason this made the news. I bet most people are just happy to see the smartest and often hardest working students in the country fail.
Yes. But with integrity comes an air of cool indifference of what "others" think.
I have some of that too. Just ask my mother. Still, the coolest stuff I have experienced people do, didn't care for praise nor blame. I hope I can inspire someone the same way.
So University is more of a self-challenge to me. That's _learning_. Social manoeuvering is simply strategy, and lost when you are alone or in front of a mirror.
Defining Statistics and Social Research
You're probably not at Harvard. At Harvard, social maneuvering is one of the major skills you're there to polish.
Not in the US at all.
If this is a school of strategy and politics, then I don't understand why they call it cheating. Pragmatically, a good politician is a good actor.
Defining Statistics and Social Research