8 ms·

I think a lot of people here are missing the root cause of why students cheat. College for the longest time has not had anything to do with learning for the VA

• User23 4y ago
  And this is why tech companies stopped giving a shit about undergraduate degrees back in the 90s at the latest. There’s literally no signal to be had. None of the above is meant to deny the benefits of getting into the ivy league self-dealing club.
  • threatofrain 4y ago
    Stopped giving <a shit> about undergrad degrees? No signal to be had?! Somehow I'm not getting that read from the tech industry... what I am getting is a willingness to hire non-traditional candidates. That does not translate to not giving a shit. If you have more information on the source of your confidence, please do share.
    • mattcwilson 4y ago
      I dunno about the 90s, but it definitely feels to me like the industry largely stopped giving a shit about undergrad degrees at some point
    • pkdpic 4y ago
      Yeah, some bootcamps will hesitate to even admit you without a college degree. And I got offered to skip a technical interview just because I had a fancy degree on my resume that has nothing to do with cs. Also when I was teaching pre-covid I always assumed my undergraduates would cheat if I gave them anything cheatable. Even if they're cheating though some small percentage gets through and sticks with some small percentage of students. My mentors always said thats who you should teach to, and to assume good intentions with the rest. It takes a long time to settle into an adult brain.
    • User23 4y ago
      Happy to. I’ve done well into the hundreds of interviews at FAANG or whatever the acronym du jour is. We didn’t even look at resumes except to see if they were obviously self-disqualifying. Google SteveY’s rants on the subject if you want more corroboration. Also it’s obvious to anyone that isn’t stupid that “daddy bought me into Stanford” doesn’t indicate an ability to do top tier engineering work.
      • alexb_ 4y ago
        Google isn't turning up anything - mind linking SteveY?
        • User23 4y ago
          Stevey is his handle. He’s notable enough to have a Wikipedia page[1]. I don’t know if that page will directly get you to his posts on interviewing, but with some cleverness that should be enough to go on. [1]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Yegge https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Yegge
        • ThrowawayR2 4y ago
          Probably Steve Yegge?
        • omoikane 4y ago
          Probably one of these blog posts: http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/03/get-that-job-at-google.html http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/03/get-that-job-at-goog... http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2007/09/ten-tips-for-slightly-less-awful-resume.html http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2007/09/ten-tips-for-slightl...
      • hhmc 4y ago
        Is it possible there was a resume filtering stage before you saw them?
        • native_samples 4y ago
          When I was interviewing at Google virtually all the candidates were sourced or referrals, not selected from submitted CVs. I never even looked at the education section. There are was too many universities or there to know if they're meant to be good or bad and education never told you anything useful anyway.
  • throwaway675309 4y ago
    Since we're converting purely anecdotal data into blanket generalizations, I am happy to provide a counter point. Graduated in 2004, and most of the companies that I looked into listed a bachelors degree in computer science for entry level software engineering positions. In several interviews we even went over some of the actual subject matter from some of the more interesting courses, and I was able to leverage algorithms from my genetic engineering undergrad work during some whiteboarding.
  • amusedcyclist 4y ago
    This is false, 99% of engineers at top software companies have a degree and a lot have masters or Phds (especially those doing more specialized work)
• mywaifuismeta 4y ago
  We're going to college at the worst time in our lives. When I was in college I did exactly what you described. I didn't really cheat much (I remember just one time), but all I cared about was grades and getting a job. I couldn't have cared less about learning or retaining anything. And I didn't learn much. This strategy worked out well for me, but it was a huge waste of time. I'm in my 30s now and I would absolutely love to go back to school to learn. Now I feel like I'm in a position where I can appreciate academic material and concepts because I understand how they relate to the real world. Please give me those advanced graph algorithm, database, and real analysis classes that I couldn't appreciate 15 years ago due to a lack of real-world experience.
  • the__alchemist 4y ago
    https://openlearning.mit.edu/courses-programs/mitx-courses https://openlearning.mit.edu/courses-programs/mitx-courses There's good stuff there!
    • mywaifuismeta 4y ago
      Thanks. I know that all the raw material is available to me, but it's just not the same. It's different when you can completely focus on studying, be part of a community with a bit of peer pressure, and have a social circle that goes through the same experience. You don't get the this from online courses, reading books, or MOOCs. I think a big part of this is split attention, but I also don't feel comfortable taking 1-2 years off my job in the middle of my career just to study.
      • emodendroket 4y ago
        On the other hand, if you study now, you can be surprised by how much the material is immediately applicable to your day-to-day work.
    • teeray 4y ago
      Yeah, I had a blast attending “lockdown university” during the deepest part of covid in 2020. Grades only for fun points and just taking classes and doing assignments that I thought would be beneficial.
• kwakja 4y ago
  I haven't read through all the other comments here, but attending class and learning the content aren't mutually exclusive. I sympathize with the reason why students cheat, but I can't see that those reasons are the same as what you say. You don't need to attend classes to learn the content nor display mastery - I appreciate a good syllabus for that reason where you know what is expected and can learn on your own time. I liked the approach the author of the article took for that reason. But none of this requires cheating. I can see why this would lead students to cheat, but this looks to me like a strawman in addition to victim blaming (on part of the prof).
• KennyBlanken 4y ago
  The exams were open book, open note and they had a week to complete them. When people were offered a nearly complete fresh slate, they still cheated. And then plagiarized. He at length describes how much of his class were blowing off almost every aspect of the class; not attending lectures, skipping assignments, almost never attending his office hours. Many of them openly say in the whatsapp chat that they didn't do reading, classwork, or study. This is not even remotely close to behavior of people participating in a high-stakes all-or-nothing, if-I-don't-graduate-I-am-fucked-for-life situations.
• bufferoverflow 4y ago
  > Given all of this, why wouldn't you cheat? In my state college they had zero tolerance policy. You caught cheating, you're out.
  • MattGaiser 4y ago
    Do they still? I had numerous friends caught cheating in the most blatant of ways (i.e. they forget to change the name of the assignment of the student they copied). Less than half even got a zero on the assignment. Plenty got a perfect grade and then were told to not do it again.
• proc0 4y ago
  Seems a bit cynical of a take. Cheating prevents you from learning, otherwise you wouldn't need to. Also, college is very limited in how much it can prepare you for a real job. It only offers a subset of knowledge that is needed to be good at any given job. Cheating is basically showing up to class and avoiding the whole point of being there. Why would you show up to a training, to then ignore the training part. I think it's a combination of culture and every person's upbringing which sets priorities on students to waste time cheating. They have to be there because of expectations either from parents or society, but they don't really want to be there. Students who aren't trying are just going through the motions and will take the path of least resistance which is cheating.
  • MattGaiser 4y ago
    > Why would you show up to a training, to then ignore the training part. You said it yourself. > college is very limited in how much it can prepare you for a real job. The goal isn't to be well prepared for a job. The goal is to get the job. For most students, including myself while I was there, university is a massive signalling exercise. I just cared about the magic combo that would lead to a good paying job.
    • BuyMyBitcoins 4y ago
      I’d also like to add that most generic white collar jobs require a bachelor’s degree. Adding the requirement cuts down on the number of applicants, so hiring managers have few qualms with doing this.
• omoikane 4y ago
  If someone went to college with the belief that only the degree at the end mattered and that they weren't going to learn anything along the way, I can see how they might convince themselves that cheating is a low-risk shortcut toward that end goal. I do not subscribe to that belief and have learned quite a bit by trying to absorb the lessons earnestly, as opposed to taking shortcuts. I have also had the experience where a professor interviewed me and one other student because our homework appear too similar. That experience reinforced my impression that cheating is a risky venture and I want none of it. (Also, leaving printouts of your code around is extremely high risk if helping someone to cheat is roughly as bad as cheating at your university).
  • klodolph 4y ago
    Students will also have an opinion on what classes they think are important, and what classes they are only taking because they are required.
• StillBored 4y ago
  have to have a good GPA on that degree to get a job. Maybe at some big name co, but you will probably learn more at some little self funded place that pays a little less and can't attract the top tier graduates. After a couple years, get a job at a small startup where you and 5 other people write the entire product. From there you will be a far stronger candidate just about anywhere with a real engineering culture. My GPA was fairly reasonable, but I worked through college, so I got a position at a large name brand company. Drove me nuts after having worked at places where I had written more code in a single year than most of the lifer's had written in their entire career. That is when I went the startup route, and basically did small companies for ~20 years until wife/kids/stability drove me into the arms of a mid sized company where I only work ~40h/week. Now I write code on the weekends to keep my mind active.
  • aidenn0 4y ago
    I graduated with a poor GPA. The only place that gave me an offer did so because they forgot to ask me for my GPA. I got dozens of rejections purely for my GPA. Not all of them were from large employers. [Edit] To state something more on topic, I never once even considered cheating in school. I don't think it ever entered my mind, even when I was in danger of flunking out.
• thawaya3113 4y ago
  People were cheating because they were expecting everyone else to cheat. In general, cheating isn’t common in college. This was simple game theory during the pandemic.
• emodendroket 4y ago
  Going to the grocer has for a long time been about the food, not the pleasure of the shopping experience. Given this, why wouldn't you steal?
  • handoflixue 4y ago
    A better example would be: If your goal is to get food, are you really going to complain when one person offers to do everyone's shopping for them? Keep in mind, you'll lose out on the valuable lessons that grocery shopping has to teach!
    • Aeolun 4y ago
      Which will absolutely suck later in life, when you’ll have to go grocery shopping by yourself for the first time.
    • Ekaros 4y ago
      If your goal is food. Why aren't you on farm every day to learn how it works? Maybe a few decades there making it all by your hands manually would teach?
  • Gtex555 4y ago
    risk of getting caught and arrested.
• staticassertion 4y ago
  Looking back, I wish I'd cheated. College was fun for partying and living alone and having time to study, but coursework was a joke. I remember skipping my CS 101 class, coming in for the midterm, and finding it insane that they were still trying to get through pointers. Glad that I at least dropped out when it stopped being fun. Highly recommend dropping out after ~2-3 years if you can get away with it. You pay for school, do whatever you want with it.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• shp0ngle 4y ago
  Given your cynical take, it’s in the school interest to prevent cheating; if everyone cheats and the word gets around, nobody will take that school seriously anymore.
  • DeWilde 4y ago
    I'm not sure how it is for other industries, but for computer sciences nobody takes schools seriously anymore. Your knowledge and skill level is the most important thing they will evaluate you for, for the three SW jobs that I've gotten nobody asked me for my college degree let alone my grades, including a FAANG-type company.
    • mrep 4y ago
      Google asked for my full transcript even after I had been working at another FAANG for 2 years.
• jandrese 4y ago
  You wouldn't cheat because once you are out in the real world supposedly applying the knowledge that you learned in college it is going to be really obvious to your boss and coworkers that you don't know what you are doing. Everybody expects the fresh college grads to be fairly green, but you can really tell when someone has no clue about even the basic principals of their job, the one they supposedly have a degree in. So the danger is having a good GPA but then washing out in job interviews with real companies. "Wow, a 4.0 in CS from CMU! So why do you seem to be completely mystified by Fizzbuzz?"
  • colejohnson66 4y ago
    You’d think cheaters would consider the issues they’ll experience down the line, but the fact that FizzBuzz even exists and works at all proves they don’t.
    • Gtex555 4y ago
      Most cheaters don't, work doesn't allow you to procrastinate plus it motivates you with money. Also there is no arbitrary rules like solve this without help from your friends or the internet in the real world.
  • Gtex555 4y ago
    I feel most cheaters get by in the industry pretty well, cause school is way harder than he average job. The reason they make it at work is that the deadline for work is everyday while you can procrastinate at school for 3 months straight plus you aren't getting paid at school.