This is a depressing story about the inability to enforce rules against plagiarism, and the comments more so. I don’t think it was this way when I was in school.
And of course, it’s of a piece with a general decline of ethics among the young. And why should they care? The system doesn’t. I’m starting to think that Glenn Reynolds is right — academia is the next overfunded speculative, empty bubble about to burst.
Interesting…I went to a military college and was thus subject to the honor code:
“A cadet will not lie, cheat, or steal, or tolerate those who do”.
You do any of that, or knowingly tolerate it, and you’re hauled in front of an Honor Court to defend yourself. The court is made up of seniors nominated by their peers. If you’re convicted, you’re gone. No appeal, no chance to come back. It’s pretty much the same deal at all the service academies and military colleges, and is the keystone to an education program that emphasizes developing character and leadership.
I hate to think how all that might be interpreted by a crafty lawyer or squishy judge. I’m sure some disgruntled ex-cadet has probably tried to sue over it in the past.
A&M has a pretty large cadet corps, I wonder if they have the same kind of code?
Where I went to college the instructor waked in at the beginning of the class, handed out the examination, and then left to return at the end of the test period. There were no “monitors” present.
Many things transpired during the examinations but cheating was not one of them.
I am proud that.
In later years I’ve attended various junior colleges to to pick up classes of interest and have been absolutely amazed at the difference.
I once caught someone changing a returned homework and claiming that the grader (I had an undergraduate grade for my class) had made a mistake. The first time I couldn’t be sure. So next homework, I photocopy his paper before I return it to the students. He does it again.
Given actual hard evidence, I go to the “honor court” that made decisions about cheating (after consulting with my supervisor professor at the time who advised doing that). While I’m not familiar with the system (then or now), I talked with who would have been the prosecutor (a high year student). Basically, he told me that he’d go ahead, but that my case would be weak because I didn’t prohibit such actions in my syllabus! Not his fault, that was the way it was.
There was definitely a “you’re on your own” feel from the whole affair. Given the absurdly dicey chances of a conviction despite the evidence, I dropped it. And even if I were a professor, I couldn’t mete out punishment. Only the honor court held that power. So I ended up putting a mild scare into the student (“Ve are vatching you!”). He didn’t cheat (at least in a way I noticed) in my class again for what little that’s worth.
I never really thought about it, but this was probably the final straw that changed my mind about entering academia.
Part of the problem is that kids stay kids too long these days.
An older man told a story about when he went to med school. His first semester they had an unproctored exam and as soon as the prof left the cheatsheets broke out. He stood up and said ‘I put my wife and kid and myself into an attic room so I could go to med school and I’ll turn in every last one of you.’ He was really young but he was an adult and he had more important things to worry about than some tyros thinking he was a snitch.
Why bother to be honorable, if cheating through life is shrugged off – why should kids think trying to be stand up means more the they are working to hard?
It amazes and disgusts me how as a nation, honor and responsibility are openly laughed at as something only a dork would do. Ripping off others whenever you can is what smart cool folks do.
I don’t think it’s so much the nation as a whole that’s gone bad as it is those parts of the culture that don’t deal primarily with hard facts and accountability, i.e., “Soft America,” including the educational system at all levels. I doubt that standards of personal integrity in the military academies, military services and other “hard” institutions and professions have declined significantly.
As a EE undergrad I had to endure a wicked brown nose who always shouted out answers to the prof’s queries one after another until he hit the right one. He was actually a good student, but I couldn’t stand him. As we passed back exam results to each other once I quickly and deftly crossed out his A and made a red F. He furiously looked all around the class seeking out the miscreant.
Yes, I am a terrible person.
It’s because you can take more and more classes online nowadays. The sit down classes are gravitating to the standards of the online classes.
Final exam? No problem — open book and open internet.
Have a paper to write? No problem. Online libraries have periodical search engines. They will find the article for you. Once you see an article that looks relevant use your browser search utility to drill down to the key words you think pertain to your subject matter. Copy and paste the sentence into your paper. Then, the web library will ask which style of reference citation you would like. Select the style and copy and paste into your bibliography. Just fill in colorful opinions between the meat and potatoes of your citations.
The old ways of gauging knowledge through empirical testing methods are out. Now it is more a abstract analysis of your critical thinking ability pertaining to the subject matter. High levels of classroom participation in critical thinking exercises are expected. How often one injects salient talking points into classroom discussion garners much higher percentage of your final grade.