> If you elaborately cheat your way through all online classes all the way through undergrad, that seems mostly bad for you. As a teacher, I would love to be a

> If you elaborately cheat your way through all online classes all the way through undergrad, that seems mostly bad for you. As a teacher, I would love to be able to dispense with tests except as informative diagnostic tools. Unfortunately, I am required to give at least a final exam by my university, and that and other grade-based requirements come from the confounding of what the university's mission should be, which is education of the interested, with what most (at least US) universities' missions have become, which is credentialling (of the often unwilling—and who can blame them, when the requirement is artificially foisted upon them?). Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be any way to get away from that drift towards credentialling that doesn't involve a shrinking student body, and administrators are addicted to the idea that we so badly need an ever-increasing student body to prop up … well, salaries for administrators, for example, whom we clearly need because without them we might not do so well on this endless treadmill of pointless dedication to growth.