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> What on earth could be the objection to proctoring? There is a unique pride in being part of a community built around honor. You see this on the Swiss metro
by JumpCrisscross 6mo ago
> What on earth could be the objection to proctoring?
There is a unique pride in being part of a community built around honor. You see this on the Swiss metro and in small-town vegetable stalls. Unproctored exams force every student to weigh the value of their honor against a better grade. That's a personal moral reckoning that might be worth the entire degree.
- alephnerd 6mo agoYou'd hope, but humans are humans - even if they attend an Ivy. Some individuals have heady thoughts and morals like you mentioned. Others are using it as a checkbox.
- JumpCrisscross 6mo ago> humans are humans - even if they attend an Ivy I specifically called out two non-Ivy examples. Humans are humans. And one of those capacities is for behaving with honor. The enemy of honor, it turns out, isn't dishonor, but cynicism. (It isn't surprising that the dominant emotion on a Silicon Valley board towards an honor system is scorn.)
- alephnerd 6mo agoNo argument there. Tbf given my professional and personal background, I automatically assume the worst in all people so even though I never abused honor codes (and honestly never had the need to anyhow because I liked the classes I took with one as they tend to be the kinds of classes where professors and teacher staff are the most engaged) I think it is almost impossible to enforce one in classes beyond 30 students, because anonymity does beget some amount of bad behavior.
- traderj0e 6mo agoI agree about the cynicism thing, I like the idea of an honor code if/when it actually works, but the bad reaction here is because 1/3 of students admitted to cheating.
- TitaRusell 6mo agoAs I understand it Americans pay tens of thousands of dollars for university. In my country if you can't hack it you just transfer to something else. Much less pressure. And let's face it if you can't even pass the exams maybe it is not your career? Don't live in a lie and go do something you'll enjoy.
- alephnerd 6mo ago> And let's face it if you can't even pass the exams maybe it is not your career Most target career paths in the US (eg. Investment Banking, VC, Tech, Consulting, Entrepreneurship) now require a STEM or Engineering background, so a large subset of students do have an incentive to study a major they have no interest in. As you are Dutch, think about it the same way certain numerus fixus programs at TU Delft, UvA, or UL open career paths unavailable to most other Dutch graduates (eg. Optiver, MBB, DeepMind, EU think tanks). This is basically Princeton's equivalent of setting up a numerus fixus because of the deluge of students enrolling in target degree programs without the interest or background. In all honesty cheating is common in all universities - the incentive structures for students are the same as a large portion of students do want to end up in a high prestige career. The American higher ed system is similar to the French, British, and Italian system with regards to prestige and target programs. > As I understand it Americans pay tens of thousands of dollars for university Not at Ivies and Ivy-tier programs. Plenty of us got really competitive scholarships and I attended back when Obama was still in office.
- bdangubic 6mo ago> There is a unique pride in being part of a community built around honor. It has been 100(s) of years since community like this existed, now this is utopia
- twoWhlsGud 6mo agoPrinceton was that way in my lifetime (and I'm not that old : ) - corruption is not inevitable nor should honor be considered some sort of utopian dream.
- alephnerd 6mo ago> I'm not that old I'm not sure. Most HNers appear to be in their late 30s to early 40s, which is a massive generation gap. Classes and incentive structures have changed for people who graduated in the early 2010s compared to the late 1990s or early 2000s and neither would understand students who graduate in the mid-late 2020s.
- galleywest200 6mo agoI definitely still see honor system pay boxes in the USA. Maybe not in big cities, but outside of them. Disc golf courses, fire wood piles, that day’s chicken eggs in a wooden box on the side of the road.
- bdangubic 6mo agoI came to this country as an immigrant and one of the first memories I have was walking to the gas station to get the Sunday paper for my host father. I remember opening up the door and seeing tens of Sunday papers and was taken aback thinking how can this be, wouldn't someone just put in a quarter and take ALL of the Sunday papers home with her/him. In today's society (and especially if we are talking Princeton-like places) I do not believe honor-anything "works" anymore and am wondering just how small a place needs to be where this exists today... just as a small recent-ish example, I live in a white-collar affluent area and this Halloween we took our daughter to her friend's neighborhood but left a dish full of candy outside with a sign to take a couple. we have a camera outside and the very first "group" of 3 kids (with two adults) that came took all of the candy that was there...
- jimbokun 6mo agoAll of that is sophistry in defense of fucking over those who choose not to cheat.
- traderj0e 6mo agoIn this case yes. In general, the point of an honor system is supposed to be honor. It's great when it works, but unfortunately it's not working at Princeton.
- rixed 6mo agoIf one is honorable only for the reward, is one really honorable though? Either it is a principle or it is a strategy, can't be both.
- palata 6mo agoWhat is "Swiss metro"? Curious now.
- yeahwhatever10 6mo agoI assume they are referring to systems like TPG in Geneva. Basically you buy a pass and when you get on an off a bus or street car there is no checking of payment it is just assumed everyone is "honoring" the agreement to pay. Every once and a while transit cops will board and check that everyone has a pass/has paid somehow and if you get caught not paying it can affect your ability to rent housing etc.
- paganel 6mo ago> it can affect your ability to rent housing This is insane, but I guess it fits the Swiss (and Geneva more specifically) quite well. And before anyone starts babbling here about the Swiss's rectitude, Geneva itself is host to this giant international money-laundering abomination: > Geneva Freeport (French: Ports Francs et Entrepôts de Genève SA) is a warehouse complex in Geneva, Switzerland, for the storage of art and other valuables and collectibles. It is the world's oldest and largest freeport facility, and the one with the most artworks, with 40% of its collection being art with an estimated value of US$100 billion But yeah, not pay the tram ticket once or twice and suddenly you're not worthy of renting in that shithole called Geneva, meanwhile the city itself launders hundreds of billions of dollars. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geneva_Freeport https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geneva_Freeport
- rcbdev 6mo agoJust wait until you learn of other countries' "Freeports" (Zollfreilager) like i.e. Vienna's vie:artport. It's common practice. Adding to that, the airports and the freeports are sometimes privately run. It's not like the municipal government could do something even if they wanted to in some cases. But sure, be angry at things you don't fully understand. That's surely healthy.
- traderj0e 6mo ago
- throwup238 6mo agoThat’s just the propaganda they sell during college visits. When I was at Caltech the honor code didn’t inspire any pride, because the only way anyone got through that course load was by “cheating”*. No one had any time for pride (GO BEAVERS!) An honor code is an admission that your curriculum is so sadistic, not even cheating will help. Princeton just isn’t prestigious enough to keep up that charade. * At Caltech the line between collaboration and cheating was whether you listed your collaborators or not. Unless the professor explicitly indicated that it was a solo exam, group work was implied. Proctoring explicitly forbidden so every exam was take home except a few where we needed lab access (professors and TAs were forbidden from attending).
- osculum 6mo agoIm surprised to hear that. I went to Caltech for my postgrad and never collaborated on an test, and it would have never ocurre me to do so (and no, the professor didn’t have to explicitly say they collaboration was not allowed. It was just the standard honor code). We all suspected of people that didn’t adhere to the honor code and it was frowned upon, and they could have faced repercussions if anyone had reported them.
- throwup238 6mo agoI did ChemE for undergrad and aerospace focused on systems engineering for postgrad so that colored my experience a bit. The former was brutal and the latter naturally collaborative with a bunch of projects, so we all worked together. The postgrad continuum mechanics class (I think taught by the geophysics department?) was the biggest exception so I’m betting there’s quite a bit of variance among fields. I don’t doubt there’s academic fraud (living in the dorm my first year wiped away any illusion) but within my major it didn’t end well.
- lazyasciiart 6mo ago> they could have faced repercussions if anyone had reported them. Did people report them?
- 6mo ago
- ndiddy 6mo agoThe article says that according to a survey of Princeton seniors from 2025, 29.9% admitted to cheating on an assignment and 44.6% admitted to knowing of cheating that they chose not to report. I guess they could continue acting as if they were a community built around honor, but when they have been empirically proven to not be honorable I think acknowledging this reality is the more practical solution.
- gregw2 6mo agoIt would also be interesting to understand how much "imposter syndrome" seen at Ivy institutions stems from just the inevitable "little fish big pond" dynamic and how much stems from cheating. (And how much that "imposter syndrome", from either source, then drives later hard-work/success and how much doesn't.)
- Krasnol 6mo agoSeriously, if you are a lazy or too slow son of a wealthy family, do you care about "honour" or what your daddy will give you if you pass? It smells like a backdoor.
- gnerd00 6mo agodon't know about the phone era, but previously schools were widely separated by reputation and practice. "lazy or too slow son of a wealthy family" went to certain schools that had that element. The really competitive and state-of-the-art schools really did not do that "directly". There were approaches for example sports, and niche majors that were easier for sure. Another observation is that some advanced students were into specific and dedicated cheating in order to win. Others had a "party" orientation and just did not do as much schoolwork. A criticism based on "rich kid" also does not ring true as a general statement about University in the USA to me.
- red75prime 6mo agoIn a truly honorable community anyone who thinks that it's a backdoor will find out that it's not.
- bluefirebrand 6mo agoDoes this actually matter in a culture that doesn't reward or value individual honor in any way?
- throwaway2037 6mo ago> Swiss metro I guess you mean they don't have fare gates? I quickly Googled about it and found this article: https://lenews.ch/2025/03/21/the-rapid-rise-of-fare-dodging-in-switzerland/ https://lenews.ch/2025/03/21/the-rapid-rise-of-fare-dodging-... To quote: "In 2024, more than 1 million cases of fare evasion were recorded in Switzerland, reported RTS. The number has more than doubled since 2019." High trust, eh? Here is a better explanation: Someone smart did the math and discovered that for many Swiss mass transit systems (there are many), they could get better overall revenue by (1) removing the expense of buying and maintaining fare gates, and (2) adding fare dodging penalties and enforcement staff. FYI: Berlin is similar.
- bcye 6mo agoThis is the standard across Europe outside of a few metropoles (really is there anywhere else in Europe outside Paris & London that does this?)
- etherealG 6mo agoAnd a meta-point on top of the objectively better revenue argument swinging back to the other point about honor: if some or even most of the people involved in the honor system believe it works for the purpose of maintaining honor between each other, then it will encourage honorable behavior, even when there's significant dishonorable behavior. The fact that most people don't know that the honor system is about money not honor is part of what makes the money part of the honor system work.