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Con-starn It, These Kids Today...
Today, Victor, Scott, Ron and I were having a discussion in the lab about the role of cheating at the high school and college level. It seems that many of the new freshmen this year experienced rampant cheating their high schools that, even if it is discovered, goes unpunished.
Back in the Dark Ages, I attended a corrupt private school fraught with favoritism and nepotism (link added for Google's webcrawlers), where both the valedictorian and salutatorian of my graduating class (among others) were caught cheating in Calculus. The entire episode was covered up, however, as one of the cheaters' parents worked at the school and the others' had donated a considerable amount of money to the school and had a haughty southern-money first name.
Part of the problem seems to stem from the fact that when people are paying an institution for an education, they feel like they are also paying for good grades and a good recommendation. "I paid [x] dollars so you could prepare my kid for college, if they get caught cheating they won't be able to get into a good college so why have I paid you anything?" seems to be the attitude. This is a problem.
In reality, when parents pay for a private high school or for college, they are paying for the opportunity to get what they perceive is a better education. If their kid screws it up by cheating, breaking school rules, etc., then it's their own fault. They still got what they paid for, the chance to learn something.
Ron argued that it's not his job as a professor to catch cheaters. It's his job to do research, work with students, and teach them about Computer Science, and indeed it's a waste of his time to go to extreme efforts to thwart those few who choose the less-moral path through school.
However, it's also not fair to those students who work hard or just know the material and get good grades if their neighbor who decompiled code gets the same grade. Sure, the first student gained more knowledge, but in the eyes of any objective outsider, the two students are equal.
Both students are assumed to have a mastery of CSXXX at a top-ten university because of their grades, while this is not actually the case. Shouldn't WashU have a responsibility to its students that pay 30-whatever thousand dollars a year to maintain that their diploma means something and isn't just a piece of paper that everyone who paid 30-whatever thousand dollars a year got just for showing up and surfing the internet for answers?
Nathan has been quite vocal in his blog recently about WashU selling out their students in a race to build buildings and move up in the US News rankings. I can't say I agree with his view, but by having a spineless Academic Integrity policy and not making an effort to find cheaters, isn't the school risking an erosion of its own public image when these people get out into the workplace and don't actually know how to write a Java program or what a design pattern is?
I'd be interested to hear other people's thoughts on the subject, especially since posting frequency is down all around.
Comments
I hadn't even thought about academic integrity when discussing the reasons that I am disillusioned with Wash U. I must say that my reasons probably seem rather odd to anyone besides me, partly because it is very hard to explain what is in one's head, and partly because I'm purposefully trying to protect people I like from getting in trouble.
The academic integrity issue is a tough one. I would be lying (as would almost anyone who has even been in school) to say that I have NEVER cheated, but in college I have tried my hardest, and suceeded, I think, in achieving that goal. I am also not so niave to think that people around me aren't getting the answers from upperclassmen or getting help from TA's where they shouldn't, and it does bother me. When I am working really hard to get B's and yes, even C's and people are getting the answers or working together and getting A's, I am disillusioned.
But I also agree with Prof. Cytron that it is not his job to attempt to catch these people. Sure, if someone is leaning over someone else during an exam, he will probably say something. But in my 101 class there were probably 100 students, and it would have taken all of his time to make sure that no method bodies were exactly the same.
Even that is a grey area. For example, there is the SCO case. (I'm not sure if anyone knows about this. SCO is suing IBM for putting pieces of UNIX, which SCO claims to own, into the Linux kernel.) With code though, is it always possible to know which one came first? And I believe that two people, working completely seperately, could come up with the same few lines of code. The end result looks the same as cheating.
I have written a lot here, and I'm not sure that I have actually said anything. In CS I think that the line is more blurred than in other disciplines, and I certainly don't have the answers. Obviously cheating is wrong, and a huge blotch on the record of the university, but I don't think the answers to the problem are as clear cut as one would hope.
Posted by: Nathan at August 26, 2003 4:15 PM
Of course its not Ron's job to catch cheaters. That's what he has TAs for.
Posted by: david at August 27, 2003 9:44 AM
not to name names, but what good does it do to catch someone cheating when even if someone is denied their degree, they are able to just pretend like they graduated and get a good job anyway?
Posted by: michael at August 27, 2003 11:26 AM
(Warning: long comment ahead)
I completely agree with you, Chris. Cheaters are probably my biggest pet peeve; I'm kind of a justice freak. However, as rotten as it is that Wash. U seems to have a rampant problem, the fact that you have now attended two schools with the same annoying problem doesn't mean you just have that magic touch, but rather that this is a problem at practically every good (and bad) school in the country. If Wash U's rep is being tarnished by these acts, then I certainly hope every other Ivy League-type school is as well.
As sophomores, Christie and I had a younger "friend" who was the only freshman to serve on our student judicial committee. It was quite an honor for someone so young. A week after I found out she was on the committee, she attempted to cheat on our geology test, and worse, by looking at my answers. (I didn't let her, obviously.)
I guess I never told her about the time I thwarted two idiots during my Spanish III final. All semester, they would kiss up to the professor (come on, what older woman can resist crude, young frat things?) and, when that plan continued to fail, suggested we grade each other's pop quizzes in class. Mysteriously, they always got 100s. It bothered me greatly that I studied every night and would get low As and they would party every night and score perfectly. Anyway, they were careful to sit behind me during the final, leaving a space in between them so they had a clear diagonal view of my test. I'm quick--I speak quickly, I think quickly, and most importantly, I take exams quickly (so much for my mom's advice about double-checking my work). I completed the exam, filling in the most absurd answers I could think of; I knew the cretins would be too stupid to pick up on what I was doing. As I finished the exam, the boys got up and turned theirs in with that smug look frat guys always seem to have on their faces. A minute later, I explained to my professor I had written illegibly on the first exam and asked for another. I finished it with the correct answers. I'm quite sure I had a look of smug bemusement as I left the auditorium.
I say we noncheaters unite and thwart the rest of the world from cutting us off on roads wherein one lane ends prematurely (I drive in the middle of the lanes so no one can speed up and cut in front of those of us who have been waiting), from taking up two parking spaces with their obnoxious SUVs, from cutting in front of us in lines at the store, and from every other infraction that is difficult to police. We'll be modern-day Robin Hoods.
Posted by: rachel at September 2, 2003 3:19 PM
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