A take home exam can be as taxing as any other test you can take and often is more difficult than your generic test. In some ways more so, at least on campus yo

A take home exam can be as taxing as any other test you can take and often is more difficult than your generic test. In some ways more so, at least on campus you have access to resources and other students. If students, act according to an honor code, then professors can get on with the work of teaching. If people have to spend all their time fighting cheating, which is a non trivial task, it creates a very different environment. I would go so far as saying that it ends up obviating the entire point and purpose of college. ---- This is what colleges were originally built around: Students came because they wanted to learn X subject, and the best place to do that was with the professors who were essentially THE experts in their field. You want libraries and data sources bar none? Universities had them. Want to deal with and learn from like minded students and teachers? Few other places you could be to get that. People assumed that you wouldn't cheat on your test because that would be like cheating on a MIT open courseware test. Now things are different - for a lot of people, colleges have become "The next step" to get a job. People assume that the correlation now goes the other way - college MAKES you better at getting jobs. As a result your population is also now filled with a lot more students who just don't care. The degree is your only way to get a foot into the door of a stupid system. To steal a phrase from finance, college must be decoupled from "financial success." Note: A better insight is avaialble from Panos Ipeirotis' experience dealing with cheating in his class a year or so ago. IT was discussed extensively on HN and the blog post, now pulled, was called "why I will never pursue Cheating again". If you dig around a bit though you should be able to find a copy.