5 ms·

Oh, come on. It's not like the course held a gun to their head and made them cheat. They didn't cheat to feed their family. It's (nearly) impossible for a co

Oh, come on. It's not like the course held a gun to their head and made them cheat. They didn't cheat to feed their family. It's (nearly) impossible for a college course to actually "drive half the students to cheat". They're big boys and girls, and they need to be responsible for their decisions. The point of taking a course isn't to get an A. It's to learn something. If the students are too thick to grasp that fact, then Harvard made a mistake in admitting them and would do well to kick them out and give their places to students who get it.

colanderman 14y ago
Your reasoning is poor. The point of taking a course isn't to get an A. No, but sometimes an A makes the difference between graduating or not. It's not like the course held a gun to their head and made them cheat. No, but if cheating in the class is common, then it's likely that the difficulty of the class material is artificially inflated to account for students' artificially high performance. If you know this, the professor doesn't know this, and you need an A, then it may be that the only way to get an A is to cheat.
- stephencanon 14y ago
  At no school with which I am familiar would an A make the difference between graduating or not. A C or D might, but if one needs to cheat to get a C, there is something more serious at work (especially at the institution that invented the gentleman's C).
chc 14y ago
> The point of taking a course isn't to get an A. It's to learn something. If the students are too thick to grasp that fact, then Harvard made a mistake in admitting them and would do well to kick them out and give their places to students who get it. Schools generally do a bad job of communicating this if it's actually true. If you get all As but retain nothing, you are rewarded handsomely. If you learn a lot but fail all your courses in the process, you'll be punished severely. If the school is too thick to align its incentives correctly, whose fault is that?
- stephencanon 14y ago
  > If you get all As but retain nothing, you are rewarded handsomely. I certainly haven't found this to be the case. Looking at my peers 11 years after graduation, the successful ones are by and large the ones who focused on learning, not the ones who focused on their GPAs.
  - chc 14y ago
    > after graduation That is out of the school's control. It isn't really relevant to the incentives set by the school.
    - stephencanon 14y ago
      What handsome rewards do you imagine are heaped upon A students while still in school? If the students in question are incapable of looking ahead 1-3 years, that doesn't exactly speak well of them either. I won't pretend that there isn't pressure on students to get As. But that doesn't mean we should condone students doing whatever it takes to get an A; it may mean that we should reduce the pressure on the students to get them.
      - bcbrown 14y ago
        Better job prospects?
        stephencanon 14y ago
        Of the jobs at which you've worked, do you think that you got the job because you were smart/well spoken/skilled in a particular area/had some sort of connection, or because of your GPA? If you have interviewed candidates, did you look at their GPA? If so, how my weight did you give it? Personally, I interviewed about 30 college students last year for internship and full-time positions; I didn't even look at a single GPA.
      - chc 14y ago
        > What handsome rewards do you imagine are heaped upon A students while still in school? Scholarships, honors, Dean's List, general praise, etc. And students who get bad grades are given the stink-eye no matter how clever they are. In general, students who get good grades are just treated better than students who fail. Is that not your experience? This case is actually a good example of the phenomenon. The students don't appear to have been punished for not learning. According to the story, they didn't copy any answers — it just looks like they discussed the subject matter. It may well be that these students learned better from collaborating than they would have from working separately. I know I usually did in school. But because it gave them an advantage in the grading system that the school didn't want them to have, they were punished for it. Learning doesn't appear to be the primary concern here. (I don't mean to say that I think they should cheat. I'm just pointing out that they may well have learned better than they otherwise would have, but that doesn't matter because learning is not the overriding concern here.)

colanderman 14y ago

Your reasoning is poor. The point of taking a course isn't to get an A. No, but sometimes an A makes the difference between graduating or not. It's not like the course held a gun to their head and made them cheat. No, but if cheating in the class is common, then it's likely that the difficulty of the class material is artificially inflated to account for students' artificially high performance. If you know this, the professor doesn't know this, and you need an A, then it may be that the only way to get an A is to cheat.

stephencanon 14y ago
At no school with which I am familiar would an A make the difference between graduating or not. A C or D might, but if one needs to cheat to get a C, there is something more serious at work (especially at the institution that invented the gentleman's C).

chc 14y ago

> The point of taking a course isn't to get an A. It's to learn something. If the students are too thick to grasp that fact, then Harvard made a mistake in admitting them and would do well to kick them out and give their places to students who get it. Schools generally do a bad job of communicating this if it's actually true. If you get all As but retain nothing, you are rewarded handsomely. If you learn a lot but fail all your courses in the process, you'll be punished severely. If the school is too thick to align its incentives correctly, whose fault is that?

stephencanon 14y ago
> If you get all As but retain nothing, you are rewarded handsomely. I certainly haven't found this to be the case. Looking at my peers 11 years after graduation, the successful ones are by and large the ones who focused on learning, not the ones who focused on their GPAs.
- chc 14y ago
  > after graduation That is out of the school's control. It isn't really relevant to the incentives set by the school.
  - stephencanon 14y ago
    What handsome rewards do you imagine are heaped upon A students while still in school? If the students in question are incapable of looking ahead 1-3 years, that doesn't exactly speak well of them either. I won't pretend that there isn't pressure on students to get As. But that doesn't mean we should condone students doing whatever it takes to get an A; it may mean that we should reduce the pressure on the students to get them.
    - bcbrown 14y ago
      Better job prospects?
      - stephencanon 14y ago
        Of the jobs at which you've worked, do you think that you got the job because you were smart/well spoken/skilled in a particular area/had some sort of connection, or because of your GPA? If you have interviewed candidates, did you look at their GPA? If so, how my weight did you give it? Personally, I interviewed about 30 college students last year for internship and full-time positions; I didn't even look at a single GPA.
    - chc 14y ago
      > What handsome rewards do you imagine are heaped upon A students while still in school? Scholarships, honors, Dean's List, general praise, etc. And students who get bad grades are given the stink-eye no matter how clever they are. In general, students who get good grades are just treated better than students who fail. Is that not your experience? This case is actually a good example of the phenomenon. The students don't appear to have been punished for not learning. According to the story, they didn't copy any answers — it just looks like they discussed the subject matter. It may well be that these students learned better from collaborating than they would have from working separately. I know I usually did in school. But because it gave them an advantage in the grading system that the school didn't want them to have, they were punished for it. Learning doesn't appear to be the primary concern here. (I don't mean to say that I think they should cheat. I'm just pointing out that they may well have learned better than they otherwise would have, but that doesn't matter because learning is not the overriding concern here.)