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10 Percent of Harvard's Popular 'Introduction To Computer Science' Class Accused of Cheating (thecrimson.com)
theodp writes: The Harvard Crimson reports that more than 60 of the 636 students enrolled in last fall's CS50: "Introduction to Computer Science I" course appeared before the College's Honor Council in a wave of academic dishonesty cases that has stretched the Council to its limits over the past few months. Former students and course staff, though, said course policy was unclear about what constituted cheating, creating the potential for unintentional violations. Consistently, one of the most popular courses at Harvard, CS50 is known for an unconventional atmosphere, complete with flashy promotional videos and corporate-sponsored events.
learning how to cheat was just part of the curriculum.
Come on. Zuckerberg copied - and he's a billionaire now.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
Of course they won't though, Harvard is already trying to redefine cheating to sweep this under the rug.
This begs the question, if people there need to cheat at an intro computer class, how many of them are cheating for actually difficult classes? 20%? 50%?
If Harvard wants to truly save face, they'll expel these losers. But they won't.
I don't see how a course that encourages collaboration between peers can then turn them in for cheating when they come up with the same answer. You can't collaborate without often coming to the same result using the same methods.
While coding, in its purest form, is a creative act the same is not so of most 'coding 101' problems. They are often rote mechanical pieces, intended to highlight a particular software concept, with little room for creativity (especially if, like any sane student, you're trying for the simplest and shortest solution).
Unless they are monitoring the entire typing history for students, and they only brought students up on charges where their submission was created with a single keystroke (Ctrl+V), I don't see how this is a fair system.
"I will trust Google to 'do no evil' until the founders no longer run it." Hello Alphabet.
Well, yes? Institutes like this are places than where the wealthy launder privilege into credentials. Anyone who thinks otherwise has bought into the propaganda. Get a good look at your elected representatives; in a few decades we'll be arguing over which one cheated the least.
In my day you wouldn't get into Harvard if you used commas like that.
Not even to look around.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I taught myself to program on a Commodore VIC-20 reading magazines. No internet. No BBSes. I slept through my CS101 class and aced it.
In this day and age, if you need to cheat in Intro to CS, you probably shouldn't be in CS.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
They are guaranteed an A no matter what they do.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
What's the news here - that only 10% cheated, or that they were accused of it?
You throw that 15% around like it was a big number.
The entire undergrad enrollment at Harvard is about 6700[1]. If most of those who take CS50 take it in their freshman/first year, that 15% is only about 100 people in any given semester or term.
I dare say you could take any intro CS course at a school like University of Michigan, or UC Berkeley, and sit in an auditorium filled with over 100 people. And that'd be for just one of several of those classes.
And no, I'm not defending Harvard, or cheating.
[1] http://www.harvard.edu/about-h...
In going through Engineering Calculus and Engineering Physics, it became fairly obvious that some of the students were collaborating in team homework sessions, and labs, borrowing text and illustrations from each other. Apparently this is considered normal nowadays.
I'm not saying that working in a group and "hey I'm stuck on 5, this is what I get, what did I do wrong" kind of thing, but more of a "from our twenty people, two each work on 1,11,21,31 and so on, and if we agree, pool the answers and randomize the text you write it down with" and a "here are the six sections of the lab, you four redo this graphic differently for each team and write down this text in a different order" kind of thing.
Sad.
The easy way to tell was many of them would skip the class sections.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
If only 10% were caught cheating, that's actually pretty damn good by international standards.
Upwards of 90% of H-1B's from India either outright purchased their diploma, or cheated to pass.
Source: My H-1B co-worker who was very honest in explaining to me why there are so many Indian programmers. He's pissed off because he actually worked for his diploma.
Trump went to Harvard?
The cheating is partly an indication of just how popular that course has become.
So what you're implying is that "normal people" cheat more than CS students?
lucm, indeed.
I've heard that argument before. The student caught copying someone else's work first denies, then pleads, then goes into "lawyer" mode, trying to argue that what he or she did wasn't really cheating because the syllabus was either badly worded, or didn't specifically say not to do it.
I recently had a situation where a student taking a lab course did not attend several labs, and then tried to turn in lab reports and have the TA grade them. This student was shocked ... shocked ... when told that this was academic misconduct. After all, the syllabus said that data could be shared between lab partners, and the person he got the data from was his partner from one of the few labs he did attend. Furthermore, he argued that the syllabus did not specifically say that lab reports would not be accepted for labs that the student did not attend. I kid you not.
Anyone smart enough to get into Harvard knows exactly when the line between collaboration and plagiarism is being crossed. Unfortunately, some of them also have learned that denial, pleading, "lawyering", and then threats of legal action by their parents are quite often sufficient to avoid the consequences of their actions.
Don't worry... Ellipses are a...renewable resource...
The school where larval politicians go to pupate.
This is also the august institution where, in 2012, nearly half of students taking 1310 "Introduction to Congress" (~125 students out of 279 in all) were investigated for cheating on the take-home final exam. (The jokes practically write themselves.) "Somewhat more than half" were forced to withdraw.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Oh, sure, argue with actual math.
Wait. I support that.
NVM.
Considering how many students are actually cheating in college now a days, this goes to show Harvard mostly only admits students smart enough to not get caught.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
So what you're implying is that "normal people" cheat more than CS students?
People are more likely to cheat if they take a course they are not prepared for, and get in over their head. So, yes, in a CS course non-CS people are more likely to cheat. Likewise, in an English course, CS students are more likely to cheat than English majors.
Thank you. At least someone has a brain.
This is why you didn't go to Harvard
(Neither did I, but I can do math.)
After seeing the video with so many smiling faces basically doing cool-looking anything, I cannot even imagine how anyone could cheat. Some of the students didn't accept the terms of the cool site from where they downloaded the cool videos submitted to their assignments? Were some of the smiles in the evaluation provoked by beyond-acceptable amounts of alcohol/drugs? Or perhaps some of them cheated in the tough cool-and-serious-looking-while-holding-a-laptop part by taking forbidden yoga lessons? Poor students! Their daddies might reduce their monthly allowance by over $5000! They might even have to be in the university for another whole semester before the company they want hire them to do the "work" they feel like doing!
Note that I am not anti- rich, spoiled, living-in-a-bubble, etc. people for as long as they accept themselves and don’t unfairly affect others. But what I saw in that video was too much! How can anyone think that all this is appealing and/or related to college-computer-anything at all?
Custom Solvers 2.0 = Alvaro Carballo Garcia = varocarbas.
Harvard is for the plebs, Trump went to Wharton.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
A few months back, Slashdot was united in their agreement that a similar incident of cheating that was exposed in some Indian school was confirmation that Indian education is of low value, Indian degrees meaningless, and Indian programmers lack basic understanding of CS fundamentals.
Interesting to note that the arc of discussion in this case is completely different.
What, we are not willing to consider the possibility that this indicates that a significant % of `US programmers' may lack an understanding of CS fundamentals, which may be the reason why US multinationals like H1Bs?
That's a pretty low number for an Ivy league school.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
In the second week of my freshman year, 1960, I had an emergency appendicitis operation. The TOTAL bill (doctor, hospital and medicine) was $750.50, and BlueCross & BlueShield paid it all. The premiums were paid by the company where I had worked. The insurance companies competed to get the company's business.
Then Nixon listened to Halderman about Kaiser's HMO's and got government into healthcare, to "save the people money". Costs have been rising and coverage falling every since. The insurance companies stopped competing and started colluding on price. They also stopped using standard mortality tables and began dividing the population up into groups based on age and previous health.
Today an appendectomy will cost about $10K and the patient would pay anywhere between $100 copay to 50% of the total cost. Obamacare has pretty much set the premiums for a family of four living on $48K/yr at $1,200/mo or $14K/yr. The ACA amounts to a tax on employment. It penalizes those who work and funds those who become dependent on the government. Backdoor socialism, which was its main goal. The ACA will cost $2 TRILLION dollars over the next ten years. For that money we could have put a free clinic in every town in America.
Running with Linux for over 20 years!