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Especially at universities I don't see the reason for invasive e-proctoring. When I was studying (physics, early 2000s in Germany), we didn't even have a honor

Especially at universities I don't see the reason for invasive e-proctoring. When I was studying (physics, early 2000s in Germany), we didn't even have a honor system, we had the assumption that everybody is there to learn something. If you cheat, you harm yourself. Progress was assessed by weekly excercise sheets where you were encouraged to work together with others, and to learn how to use the library to find solutions. After each semester there would be a test for each course, and you would get a certificate if passed. Attendence to lectures was usually not checked. The tests were "closed" and watched, but if you were determined you could probably have easily cheated. Anyway regular cheaters would have failed miserably at the latest in the oral exams or the lab courses. I think a major function of universities is to teach people to be independent and responsible, and if we school-ize them we loose a lot.

jordanpg 5y ago
The real story here is that cheating is rampant, everyone knows it, and that the universities (as opposed to individual professors) are not prepared to do what is necessary to stop it. I'm speaking, of course, of measures like expulsion. Too much of a hit to the bottom line, too much messy litigation, and too much bad PR. All of this is another way of making your point, which is that the core mission of universities has drifted away from idealized learning to big business and sports. I suspect the entire thing needs to be nuked from orbit before it can be rebuilt and I'm happy to see COVID accelerating the process.
- gambiting 5y ago
  Again, I think the problem is elsewhere. Where I'm from(Poland) cheating is rampant and universities have absolutely no trouble kicking people out over it. Got caught cheating? Good bye, apply again next year. It doesn't lead to litigation or messy PR. Maybe it's because all universities are free to attend so no one can argue that they paid for something they aren't getting - all they are losing is their own time.
  - basisword 5y ago
    I went to university a bit later in life. When I was in high school smartphones weren’t a thing yet and cheating in exams was difficult and not common. At university cheating seemed rampant and easy. It was easy to spot the potential cheaters but not easy to prove they were cheating so they got away with it. You just go to the bathroom (in a long exam they can’t exactly stop you from this) and you have all your notes on your phone. There were people I’m surprised got into the university in the first place getting really good grades because of this. It was frustrating but I’m not sure what universities can do in this case. It seems to me that the “exam” process needs rethought entirely. I’m not sure how it could be changed but it is far too easy to cheat now. Like a lot of things in life too, the dishonest people tend to get away with it and manage to succeed while some portion of the honest people work very hard and struggle.
    - ttonelli 5y ago
      Maybe making questions that you have to think about instead of just looking up the answer would help?
      - basisword 5y ago
        Depends on the subject. In a long form essay where you need to cite sources or technical details you could make a big difference to your score by quickly looking these up. Nobody can go into the exam blind but they can improve their answers significantly by looking up the details that others have to spend a long time trying to remember. For example in an English exam, direct quotations from literature. Or in a law exam, case names.
        Fredej 5y ago
        But why should you not be allowed to look them up? Isn't that just testing for memory rather than comprehension?
        kwhitefoot 5y ago
- Bayart 5y ago
  >Too much of a hit to the bottom line, too much messy litigation, and too much bad PR. Well, that wouldn't be a problem to the person you're answering to, considering German universities aren't businesses who take people in for capital (both financial and social). In France it's certainly very easy to get yourself thrown out for cheating or not showing up.
- asdfasgasdgasdg 5y ago
  A sibling was caught cheating in university. This would have been around ten years ago. He wasn't expelled, but he was suspended for the remainder of the semester and failed on all his classes that term. I don't remember if he finished uni late as a result or did makeup work during the summer.
  - ev1 5y ago
    being forced to do an extra semester costing like 50k+ results in some very interesting incentives, or lawsuits, when profit is involved..
- Grimm1 5y ago
  Idk cheating in the college I was in (Top #30 US Institution) was punished severely. I fondly remember my Data Structures professor, bluntly telling us she'd end our academic careers if we were caught cheating. Fondly because she was a great professor who clearly had no time or patience for that kind of bs. It was school policy for expulsion, and this is a very well known school. This of course may have changed dramatically in the last two years given the major shift in how we all live but I would suspect that this is more common than you think.
  - ticviking 5y ago
    How many people do you know of who failed a class or were expelled for that kind of thing? Where there ever any rumors of that kind of thing. In a large enough class someone will be tempted to cheat, and if the school is taking decisive action there will be rumors even if they are making great effort to protect the students privacy and make the discipline a learning experience
    - Grimm1 5y ago
      Rumors yes, there were rumors of people getting caught cheating, but I didn't know anyone personally. The people I knew on a personal basis weren't the kind to do that or really care about it enough to do so and without going into a story about the people I know and how we're all doing well in life you'll have to take my word for it.
- unishark 5y ago
  Universities will definitely expel cheaters, though they may give a couple chances first (with increasingly-worse penalties like failing grade and violation on transcript). One of the things people are complaining about with this software is people claiming to be wrongly punished. Typically there's a faculty union or senate which negotiates policies with the administration. Individual professors aren't all alone in the fight. Though they may individually choose to give lax punishments or look the other way.
swiley 5y ago
My calculus 3 professor would pass out tests 10-15 minutes early on test days. He'd dump them right on top of your study materials and expect you to push them out of the way if wanted extra time to study. Applying a panopticon to children to prevent cheating is questionable since it normalizes authorities using electronics to bully people. Applying it to adults at a university is arguably a human rights violation and a failure to write good course materials.
- stjohnswarts 5y ago
  This is the scary part. Teaching students and younger generations that's it's normal and okay to be surveilled 24/7.
- unishark 5y ago
  instead let's teach them that if they cheat, nothing adverse happens.
  - kwhitefoot 5y ago
    Replace exams with vivas and see how far the cheats can get. At least make a viva voce a large proportion of the final score.
    - titanomachy 5y ago
      Probably the best way to evaluate people, I guess it just doesn’t scale that well…
      - kwhitefoot 5y ago
        It seems that the alternatives also don't scale, that's sure why this discussion is happening. Vivas work,they are just expensive. The alternatives are cheaper but don't work. Of course it could be that different people have different goals in mind. Some just want the diploma, others want to master the subject. So it depends on what the diploma is supposed to mean. If it just means: turned up then a viva is of course unnecessary and wasteful.
erik_seaberg 5y ago
When a university grants a degree, they are attesting that the student has demonstrated mastery of the subject matter, because that’s important to both employers and postgraduate programs. Without that it’s harder to justify paying a university’s price, or spending such a large fraction of your adult life there.
nicbou 5y ago
I agree with you, but at the same time, it diminishes the value of a degree, because it no longer certifies that meet certain requirements.
- moron4hire 5y ago
  They already don't certify competence.
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    Assuming everyone is not constantly cheating and the coursework is somewhat relevant and rigorous, surely they signal a higher probability of at least awareness of the subject matter or ability to learn something.
    - fallingknife 5y ago
      You're 0-2 on those assumptions, though.
      - moron4hire 5y ago
        Seriously. Even assuming those things--I would say the program I went through was very relevant and I don't think cheating happened very often. It was a really small program and everybody got to know everyone else. So while I can't say for certain, I never saw cheating amongst my friends, nor was ever approached to assist in cheating (though I was frequently asked for help in studying). The problem is, I knew some of the guys who graduated, with extremely low GPAs, who didn't cheat, have the same degree as me, exited with the same student loan debt as me, and can't code their way out of a wet paper bag. I've ran into some of them working retail jobs back in my home town. It's a fucking travesty. They had to be saddled with a student loan debt load they would have no chance of paying back. I only paid mine back so early because of a lucky break on an insurance claim. I'd still be paying on them, 20 years later, if I hadn't lost everything I owned in a flood. Universties talk about how they don't want to be seen as vocational training facilities. Well, they need to admit the reality. Primary education is not preparing people for the work force. We give people a free education for 13 years, and if they want to have economic opportunity, they want to do something more than just manual labor, we can't give them another 2 to 4 years? It's bullshit.
fallingknife 5y ago
That was Germany in the 2000's. This is the USA in the 2020's. College is a game. They are getting rid of even having tests as a requirement for your application. And the admissions process is openly racist, even though this is directly banned by our constitution (for public universities). But don't mention this, or you will be called racist. You will be required to take "distribution requirements" (courses that have nothing to do with what you are there to study) for up to 2 years of credit hours depending on the school. The reason they do this is because department funding is set by the "asses in seats" formula where each student enrolled in the class is assigned a dollar value to the department. And, if you are an unpopular department, these 300 seat 1 level distribution requirement classes will be the vast majority of your funding. Departments typically squabble with each other about how many classes they get to have on the list. And everybody gets an A. Wouldn't want to have a reputation for being hard, or nobody will enroll in your cash cow class. These are all 1 and 2 level courses, which means they are basically high school level, or sometimes not even that. But they are not free like high school! Most people will be deep in debt when they graduate. And there is no way to distinguish yourself. The grades are so inflated that the median GPA is around 3.7 / 4.0! So I can't blame anybody for cheating the system that is cheating them.
- titanomachy 5y ago
  > There is no way to distinguish yourself If you actually learn something in a class, that distinguishes you from many other students. I agree though, university is not a good system for determining who is capable and deserves the best jobs. It’s unfortunate that our society leans on it so much as a sorting hat.
mannykannot 5y ago
The notion that higher education is all about self-enlightenment would be more plausible if these institutions did not issue degrees or other certificates and their students would be satisfied with this.

jordanpg 5y ago

The real story here is that cheating is rampant, everyone knows it, and that the universities (as opposed to individual professors) are not prepared to do what is necessary to stop it. I'm speaking, of course, of measures like expulsion. Too much of a hit to the bottom line, too much messy litigation, and too much bad PR. All of this is another way of making your point, which is that the core mission of universities has drifted away from idealized learning to big business and sports. I suspect the entire thing needs to be nuked from orbit before it can be rebuilt and I'm happy to see COVID accelerating the process.

gambiting 5y ago
Again, I think the problem is elsewhere. Where I'm from(Poland) cheating is rampant and universities have absolutely no trouble kicking people out over it. Got caught cheating? Good bye, apply again next year. It doesn't lead to litigation or messy PR. Maybe it's because all universities are free to attend so no one can argue that they paid for something they aren't getting - all they are losing is their own time.
- basisword 5y ago
  I went to university a bit later in life. When I was in high school smartphones weren’t a thing yet and cheating in exams was difficult and not common. At university cheating seemed rampant and easy. It was easy to spot the potential cheaters but not easy to prove they were cheating so they got away with it. You just go to the bathroom (in a long exam they can’t exactly stop you from this) and you have all your notes on your phone. There were people I’m surprised got into the university in the first place getting really good grades because of this. It was frustrating but I’m not sure what universities can do in this case. It seems to me that the “exam” process needs rethought entirely. I’m not sure how it could be changed but it is far too easy to cheat now. Like a lot of things in life too, the dishonest people tend to get away with it and manage to succeed while some portion of the honest people work very hard and struggle.
  - ttonelli 5y ago
    Maybe making questions that you have to think about instead of just looking up the answer would help?
    - basisword 5y ago
      Depends on the subject. In a long form essay where you need to cite sources or technical details you could make a big difference to your score by quickly looking these up. Nobody can go into the exam blind but they can improve their answers significantly by looking up the details that others have to spend a long time trying to remember. For example in an English exam, direct quotations from literature. Or in a law exam, case names.
      - Fredej 5y ago
        But why should you not be allowed to look them up? Isn't that just testing for memory rather than comprehension?
        kwhitefoot 5y ago
Bayart 5y ago
>Too much of a hit to the bottom line, too much messy litigation, and too much bad PR. Well, that wouldn't be a problem to the person you're answering to, considering German universities aren't businesses who take people in for capital (both financial and social). In France it's certainly very easy to get yourself thrown out for cheating or not showing up.
asdfasgasdgasdg 5y ago
A sibling was caught cheating in university. This would have been around ten years ago. He wasn't expelled, but he was suspended for the remainder of the semester and failed on all his classes that term. I don't remember if he finished uni late as a result or did makeup work during the summer.
- ev1 5y ago
  being forced to do an extra semester costing like 50k+ results in some very interesting incentives, or lawsuits, when profit is involved..
Grimm1 5y ago
Idk cheating in the college I was in (Top #30 US Institution) was punished severely. I fondly remember my Data Structures professor, bluntly telling us she'd end our academic careers if we were caught cheating. Fondly because she was a great professor who clearly had no time or patience for that kind of bs. It was school policy for expulsion, and this is a very well known school. This of course may have changed dramatically in the last two years given the major shift in how we all live but I would suspect that this is more common than you think.
- ticviking 5y ago
  How many people do you know of who failed a class or were expelled for that kind of thing? Where there ever any rumors of that kind of thing. In a large enough class someone will be tempted to cheat, and if the school is taking decisive action there will be rumors even if they are making great effort to protect the students privacy and make the discipline a learning experience
  - Grimm1 5y ago
    Rumors yes, there were rumors of people getting caught cheating, but I didn't know anyone personally. The people I knew on a personal basis weren't the kind to do that or really care about it enough to do so and without going into a story about the people I know and how we're all doing well in life you'll have to take my word for it.
unishark 5y ago
Universities will definitely expel cheaters, though they may give a couple chances first (with increasingly-worse penalties like failing grade and violation on transcript). One of the things people are complaining about with this software is people claiming to be wrongly punished. Typically there's a faculty union or senate which negotiates policies with the administration. Individual professors aren't all alone in the fight. Though they may individually choose to give lax punishments or look the other way.

swiley 5y ago

My calculus 3 professor would pass out tests 10-15 minutes early on test days. He'd dump them right on top of your study materials and expect you to push them out of the way if wanted extra time to study. Applying a panopticon to children to prevent cheating is questionable since it normalizes authorities using electronics to bully people. Applying it to adults at a university is arguably a human rights violation and a failure to write good course materials.

stjohnswarts 5y ago
This is the scary part. Teaching students and younger generations that's it's normal and okay to be surveilled 24/7.
unishark 5y ago
instead let's teach them that if they cheat, nothing adverse happens.
- kwhitefoot 5y ago
  Replace exams with vivas and see how far the cheats can get. At least make a viva voce a large proportion of the final score.
  - titanomachy 5y ago
    Probably the best way to evaluate people, I guess it just doesn’t scale that well…
    - kwhitefoot 5y ago
      It seems that the alternatives also don't scale, that's sure why this discussion is happening. Vivas work,they are just expensive. The alternatives are cheaper but don't work. Of course it could be that different people have different goals in mind. Some just want the diploma, others want to master the subject. So it depends on what the diploma is supposed to mean. If it just means: turned up then a viva is of course unnecessary and wasteful.

erik_seaberg 5y ago

When a university grants a degree, they are attesting that the student has demonstrated mastery of the subject matter, because that’s important to both employers and postgraduate programs. Without that it’s harder to justify paying a university’s price, or spending such a large fraction of your adult life there.

nicbou 5y ago

I agree with you, but at the same time, it diminishes the value of a degree, because it no longer certifies that meet certain requirements.

moron4hire 5y ago
They already don't certify competence.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  Assuming everyone is not constantly cheating and the coursework is somewhat relevant and rigorous, surely they signal a higher probability of at least awareness of the subject matter or ability to learn something.
  - fallingknife 5y ago
    You're 0-2 on those assumptions, though.
    - moron4hire 5y ago
      Seriously. Even assuming those things--I would say the program I went through was very relevant and I don't think cheating happened very often. It was a really small program and everybody got to know everyone else. So while I can't say for certain, I never saw cheating amongst my friends, nor was ever approached to assist in cheating (though I was frequently asked for help in studying). The problem is, I knew some of the guys who graduated, with extremely low GPAs, who didn't cheat, have the same degree as me, exited with the same student loan debt as me, and can't code their way out of a wet paper bag. I've ran into some of them working retail jobs back in my home town. It's a fucking travesty. They had to be saddled with a student loan debt load they would have no chance of paying back. I only paid mine back so early because of a lucky break on an insurance claim. I'd still be paying on them, 20 years later, if I hadn't lost everything I owned in a flood. Universties talk about how they don't want to be seen as vocational training facilities. Well, they need to admit the reality. Primary education is not preparing people for the work force. We give people a free education for 13 years, and if they want to have economic opportunity, they want to do something more than just manual labor, we can't give them another 2 to 4 years? It's bullshit.

fallingknife 5y ago

That was Germany in the 2000's. This is the USA in the 2020's. College is a game. They are getting rid of even having tests as a requirement for your application. And the admissions process is openly racist, even though this is directly banned by our constitution (for public universities). But don't mention this, or you will be called racist. You will be required to take "distribution requirements" (courses that have nothing to do with what you are there to study) for up to 2 years of credit hours depending on the school. The reason they do this is because department funding is set by the "asses in seats" formula where each student enrolled in the class is assigned a dollar value to the department. And, if you are an unpopular department, these 300 seat 1 level distribution requirement classes will be the vast majority of your funding. Departments typically squabble with each other about how many classes they get to have on the list. And everybody gets an A. Wouldn't want to have a reputation for being hard, or nobody will enroll in your cash cow class. These are all 1 and 2 level courses, which means they are basically high school level, or sometimes not even that. But they are not free like high school! Most people will be deep in debt when they graduate. And there is no way to distinguish yourself. The grades are so inflated that the median GPA is around 3.7 / 4.0! So I can't blame anybody for cheating the system that is cheating them.

titanomachy 5y ago
> There is no way to distinguish yourself If you actually learn something in a class, that distinguishes you from many other students. I agree though, university is not a good system for determining who is capable and deserves the best jobs. It’s unfortunate that our society leans on it so much as a sorting hat.

mannykannot 5y ago

The notion that higher education is all about self-enlightenment would be more plausible if these institutions did not issue degrees or other certificates and their students would be satisfied with this.