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Dozens Suspended In Harvard University Cheat Scandal

Posted by Soulskill on from the go-big-or-go-home dept.

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.'"

11 of 264 comments (clear)

  1. My Theory by Javagator · · Score: 5, Funny

    I guess all of these students were planning on going into politics.

    1. Re:My Theory by MickyTheIdiot · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I know this is a joke, but it's more than relevant.

      I am guessing the people getting off in this case are getting off more for lack of evidence rather than exoneration. Plus logic dictates that with this number of people it's not the first time it ever happened.

      What upsets me most personally about the United States is that we've developed a culture where doing the right thing is NEVER rewarded and doing the WRONG thing usually is. We've got a political culture right now where a politician MUST be a huxster or they can't compete. The US Government does suck at every level, but it's an outgrowth of the sickness of the culture itself. Nice guys don't finish last; nice guys don't finish AT ALL.

    2. Re:My Theory by Intrepid+imaginaut · · Score: 5, Insightful

      What upsets me most personally about the United States is that we've developed a culture where doing the right thing is NEVER rewarded and doing the WRONG thing usually is. We've got a political culture right now where a politician MUST be a huxster or they can't compete.

      What on earth makes you think that's unique to the US?

    3. Re:My Theory by prisoner-of-enigma · · Score: 5, Insightful

      we've developed a culture where doing the right thing is NEVER rewarded and doing the WRONG thing usually is.

      I'd argue that it's not so much about right versus wrong, it's more about the end result trumping the method of getting there. A "win" is considered vindication of the means. If the means are "right" then that's great, but if the means are "wrong", it's too often considered OK to look the other way. The more rewarding the win, the more likely people are to overlook the wrong, especially if those who *should* be doing the looking stand to benefit from the win in the first place. Look at Lance Armstrong. Do you think *nobody* in his inner circle knew he was doping? Sure they did. But they also knew fame and fortune would come from Armstrong's wins, and they could bask in that to considerable benefit. Thus they became complicit.

      In a perfect world, there would be ample benefits and public glorification of the person who came forward to expose cheating. Instead, they typically have everything to lose and very, very little to gain by doing so. Hence the culture of cheating prospers in sports, business, academia...pretty much anywhere the stakes are high enough.

      --
      In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
    4. Re:My Theory by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

    5. Re:My Theory by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The heartening result is that Harvard takes cheating seriously. They suspended about 60 students over it and a bunch of others are on probation -- probably because they couldn't prove those students cheated.

      You call that 'serious'?

      Harvard admits somewhere in the range of 5-6 percent of those who apply. Even if we assume that the bottom 75% or so of the applicant pool are just deluded optimists, Harvard could replace its entire class two or three times over with people who would love to have been admitted. If they were remotely serious, they could have banhammered everyone involved in cheating and called it a day. Instead they are being 'temporarily asked to leave'. That's crazy lenient given how trivial it would be to replace them, and how meaningful a degree from Harvard is supposed to be.

  2. Cheating in Congress by HybridST · · Score: 5, Funny

    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?
  3. Not Surprising by RearNakedChoke · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  4. Re:First reaction was... by DarkOx · · Score: 5, Insightful

    well sure your community college does not have an outraged parent who just cut a $45k check to answer to; there is little in the way of them having standards.

    --
    Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
  5. Their real error by rknop · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.

  6. Re:Details would be nice... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Here are some details, from the various Harvard Crimson articles on the topic.

    The cheating occurred on a take-home exam. The instructions for the exam stated that it was open notes, open book, and open Internet, but that talking to other people about the exam was forbidden.

    The exam was a different format from previous years' final exams. Previously, the only questions on the exams had been essay questions. This year, short-answer questions were added to the exam. Many students thought the short-answer questions were more difficult than the essay questions. In fact, in previous years, the course had been widely regarded as easy, in part because of the easy exams, but students in the year in question did not find it to be easy. Many students also thought the short-answer questions were confusing. During the period in which the exam was assigned, the professor sent out at least one email providing clarification on the short-answer questions due to mass confusion.

    After the exams were collected, it was noted that many students turned in very similar answers on the short-answer questions. This suggested that they had collaborated, in violation of the exam instructions.