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Indeed. I think people here are underestimating the volume of cheating in school. It isn't a minority. It is an overwhelming majority if they think they can ge

Indeed. I think people here are underestimating the volume of cheating in school. It isn't a minority. It is an overwhelming majority if they think they can get away with it. https://www.cleveland.com/metro/2017/02/cheating_in_college_has_become.html https://www.cleveland.com/metro/2017/02/cheating_in_college_... https://www.cbc.ca/news/opinion/opinion-academic-cheating-1.5576990#:~:text=Research%20conducted%20between%202002%20and,%22written%20or%20test%20cheating.%22 https://www.cbc.ca/news/opinion/opinion-academic-cheating-1....

silexia 6y ago
Maybe we should stop endlessly pushing and insisting on degrees... Maybe skills tests in an interview process is not such a bad thing. As an employer, I don't care what piece of paper you have from what school. I only care about how well you can do the job I need to be done.
- batch12 6y ago
  I agree, but got mine later in life because not everyone does and I didn't want not being in the club to block some opportunities.
- smolder 6y ago
  I don't think you want a doctor without a degree, and there are many similarly difficult professions with a lot of impact.
  - Godel_unicode 6y ago
    Yes and no. Doctors go to (effectively) trade school after undergrad, and it's actually that degree you care about. Does anyone care where they went to undergrad?
    - rjsw 6y ago
      Maybe in the US. Medical education in the UK starts at the undergraduate level, there is no pre-med.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- msla 6y ago
  > Maybe skills tests in an interview process is not such a bad thing. I'm fine with this in theory, but lots and lots of places bungle it so badly that they're no longer testing programming skills, they're testing rote regurgitation of memorized code under pressure. If your job legitimately requires that, for everyone's sake get out of the industry.
  - neura 6y ago
    Is the implication here that seeing that they have a degree is better than what "lots and lots of places" do? Personally, I think a degree doesn't say much about a person's ability to do what is required in the job. Maybe we should just get better at giving skill tests in interviews.
    - msla 6y ago
      > Is the implication here that seeing that they have a degree is better than what "lots and lots of places" do? Testing whether they can remember a specific leetcode question is worse than checking for a degree. Is that controversial?
- bastardoperator 6y ago
  Exactly this. I've given many chances to people that didn't have the paper and almost of all of them have risen to prove not only are they just as smart and capable, but that working in technology was a passion/hobby. I don't care about paper at all, it doesn't hurt and I value education, but it's never been a deciding factor when it comes to hiring.
- skeeter2020 6y ago
  >> As an employer, I don't care what piece of paper you have from what school. I only care about how well you can do the job I need to be done. To be blunt, duh. I agree degrees are very imperfect & crude indicators of what you're try to measure, but what is your alternative? I'm getting DoS levels of applications blasted at me, how do I filter to an effective level that removes the same cheating mechanics mentioned here?
  - silexia 6y ago
    I built tested recruits.com and skills test every applicant. You can use it free if you want.
PragmaticPulp 6y ago
> I think people here are underestimating the volume of cheating in school. Not defending Protorio here, but I didn't really understand how rampant cheating was, either, until I became friends with someone who works at a University. Growing up, my friends and I would never dream of cheating and would fear the consequences of getting caught, so the entire concept feels foreign. We also grew up in the era of in-person classes, before cellular phones were common. Some of the cheating stories I hear from my friends in University are mind-blowing. Everything from (college) students thinking the proctor won't notice them using their cellular phone during tests, to people trying to hire test-takers who show up with fake IDs. They had to start giving proctors photos of each student because checking IDs wasn't enough any more. The situation is much more complicated than it sounds. As soon as one person gets away with cheating, it becomes a cheating arms race as even the good students feel the need to cheat to keep up. If an entire institution becomes notorious for rampant cheating, the value of every graduate's degree goes down. Obviously the Proctorio solution is terrible, which is why I expect we'll see Universities push to return to in-person classes sooner rather than later while keeping remote as a 2nd class option.
- kbenson 6y ago
  We can't stress the importance of school and how it will affect the rest of their life, and then not expect them to do whatever it takes to make sure they do well there. For some, it might be a matter of making sure they have an excellent record, for others, it might a case of keeping them in the system at all if they didn't get there though merit, or feel like they can't keep up enough to stick around. I imagine the latter might by even more of an issue for large big name schools, of the type you often hear that one of the real reasons to go is the connections you make.
  - PragmaticPulp 6y ago
    > We can't stress the importance of school and how it will affect the rest of their life, and then not expect them to do whatever it takes to make sure they do well there. That's basically what happened here: The school expected students to cheat and looked for solutions to address it. I think it's very important that universities have very significant consequences when students are caught cheating. Cheaters don't generally start by hiring people to write their papers and take tests for them. They test the waters with little cheats here and there, pushing the boundaries over time. If Universities made examples out of students who were 100% confirmed cheating beyond reasonable doubt, the amount of cheating would decline significantly. Instead, we're stuck with this game of half-baked anti-cheating systems which some students approach as game.
rincebrain 6y ago
While I was at university for computer science, I often found many "senior" students (both graduate and undergraduate) who were truly astonishingly unversed in the most basic things (I think my "favorite" was the time I did a group project involving a student who had had an internship working in the kernel at Sun the prior summer and he turned in his portion of the project (in C) with code like "[...] char* foo = ""; foo += "bar"; [...]")... ...and yet I never thought to wonder how they managed to keep passing exams.
908B64B197 6y ago
Caltech has a strong culture of academic honesty and take-home exams. Maybe some institutions are simply selecting their students wrong?

silexia 6y ago

Maybe we should stop endlessly pushing and insisting on degrees... Maybe skills tests in an interview process is not such a bad thing. As an employer, I don't care what piece of paper you have from what school. I only care about how well you can do the job I need to be done.

batch12 6y ago
I agree, but got mine later in life because not everyone does and I didn't want not being in the club to block some opportunities.
smolder 6y ago
I don't think you want a doctor without a degree, and there are many similarly difficult professions with a lot of impact.
- Godel_unicode 6y ago
  Yes and no. Doctors go to (effectively) trade school after undergrad, and it's actually that degree you care about. Does anyone care where they went to undergrad?
  - rjsw 6y ago
    Maybe in the US. Medical education in the UK starts at the undergraduate level, there is no pre-med.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
msla 6y ago
> Maybe skills tests in an interview process is not such a bad thing. I'm fine with this in theory, but lots and lots of places bungle it so badly that they're no longer testing programming skills, they're testing rote regurgitation of memorized code under pressure. If your job legitimately requires that, for everyone's sake get out of the industry.
- neura 6y ago
  Is the implication here that seeing that they have a degree is better than what "lots and lots of places" do? Personally, I think a degree doesn't say much about a person's ability to do what is required in the job. Maybe we should just get better at giving skill tests in interviews.
  - msla 6y ago
    > Is the implication here that seeing that they have a degree is better than what "lots and lots of places" do? Testing whether they can remember a specific leetcode question is worse than checking for a degree. Is that controversial?
bastardoperator 6y ago
Exactly this. I've given many chances to people that didn't have the paper and almost of all of them have risen to prove not only are they just as smart and capable, but that working in technology was a passion/hobby. I don't care about paper at all, it doesn't hurt and I value education, but it's never been a deciding factor when it comes to hiring.
skeeter2020 6y ago
>> As an employer, I don't care what piece of paper you have from what school. I only care about how well you can do the job I need to be done. To be blunt, duh. I agree degrees are very imperfect & crude indicators of what you're try to measure, but what is your alternative? I'm getting DoS levels of applications blasted at me, how do I filter to an effective level that removes the same cheating mechanics mentioned here?
- silexia 6y ago
  I built tested recruits.com and skills test every applicant. You can use it free if you want.

PragmaticPulp 6y ago

> I think people here are underestimating the volume of cheating in school. Not defending Protorio here, but I didn't really understand how rampant cheating was, either, until I became friends with someone who works at a University. Growing up, my friends and I would never dream of cheating and would fear the consequences of getting caught, so the entire concept feels foreign. We also grew up in the era of in-person classes, before cellular phones were common. Some of the cheating stories I hear from my friends in University are mind-blowing. Everything from (college) students thinking the proctor won't notice them using their cellular phone during tests, to people trying to hire test-takers who show up with fake IDs. They had to start giving proctors photos of each student because checking IDs wasn't enough any more. The situation is much more complicated than it sounds. As soon as one person gets away with cheating, it becomes a cheating arms race as even the good students feel the need to cheat to keep up. If an entire institution becomes notorious for rampant cheating, the value of every graduate's degree goes down. Obviously the Proctorio solution is terrible, which is why I expect we'll see Universities push to return to in-person classes sooner rather than later while keeping remote as a 2nd class option.

kbenson 6y ago
We can't stress the importance of school and how it will affect the rest of their life, and then not expect them to do whatever it takes to make sure they do well there. For some, it might be a matter of making sure they have an excellent record, for others, it might a case of keeping them in the system at all if they didn't get there though merit, or feel like they can't keep up enough to stick around. I imagine the latter might by even more of an issue for large big name schools, of the type you often hear that one of the real reasons to go is the connections you make.
- PragmaticPulp 6y ago
  > We can't stress the importance of school and how it will affect the rest of their life, and then not expect them to do whatever it takes to make sure they do well there. That's basically what happened here: The school expected students to cheat and looked for solutions to address it. I think it's very important that universities have very significant consequences when students are caught cheating. Cheaters don't generally start by hiring people to write their papers and take tests for them. They test the waters with little cheats here and there, pushing the boundaries over time. If Universities made examples out of students who were 100% confirmed cheating beyond reasonable doubt, the amount of cheating would decline significantly. Instead, we're stuck with this game of half-baked anti-cheating systems which some students approach as game.

rincebrain 6y ago

While I was at university for computer science, I often found many "senior" students (both graduate and undergraduate) who were truly astonishingly unversed in the most basic things (I think my "favorite" was the time I did a group project involving a student who had had an internship working in the kernel at Sun the prior summer and he turned in his portion of the project (in C) with code like "[...] char* foo = ""; foo += "bar"; [...]")... ...and yet I never thought to wonder how they managed to keep passing exams.

908B64B197 6y ago

Caltech has a strong culture of academic honesty and take-home exams. Maybe some institutions are simply selecting their students wrong?