I am in Intro to Computing this semester at GaTech, and we had a 20 minute lecture yesterday about this very topic. They do not automatically kick you out of school if your homework or project gets kicked out by the program. In fact, my professor told us that he got 87 of these papers that he had to hand check over christmas, all of which were found to be cheating. The program checks for similarity where there should be differences, and takes the purpose of the program into account, so that variable names can be changed and you'll still get caught if you are cheating. The program is very sophistocated, it is not merely the 'diff' command.
The reason that so many different people get caught is that they only review the cheating at the end of the semester, so it gives everybody who wants to cheat the opportunity before they are caught. EVERY student is told all of these details in lecture at the beginning of the semester, so it should not be a shock, but some people don't believe that it actually exists and don't even try to change things. Some people put their CS programs on the network, or leave them on a shared computer and other people steal them without even knowing the other person.
The administration is generally pretty good about finding those who are guilty, and those who are merely ignorant. But as the article indicates, most people are just plain cheating.
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I am in Intro to Computing this semester at GaTech, and we had a 20 minute lecture yesterday about this very topic. They do not automatically kick you out of school if your homework or project gets kicked out by the program. In fact, my professor told us that he got 87 of these papers that he had to hand check over christmas, all of which were found to be cheating. The program checks for similarity where there should be differences, and takes the purpose of the program into account, so that variable names can be changed and you'll still get caught if you are cheating. The program is very sophistocated, it is not merely the 'diff' command.
The reason that so many different people get caught is that they only review the cheating at the end of the semester, so it gives everybody who wants to cheat the opportunity before they are caught. EVERY student is told all of these details in lecture at the beginning of the semester, so it should not be a shock, but some people don't believe that it actually exists and don't even try to change things. Some people put their CS programs on the network, or leave them on a shared computer and other people steal them without even knowing the other person. The administration is generally pretty good about finding those who are guilty, and those who are merely ignorant. But as the article indicates, most people are just plain cheating.