Plus ça change. Communal work on weekly/monthly assignments was basically ubiquitous when I went to university mumblemumble years ago. (OK, fine; electrical eng

Plus ça change. Communal work on weekly/monthly assignments was basically ubiquitous when I went to university mumblemumble years ago. (OK, fine; electrical engineering at the University of Waterloo, graduated 1996.) It didn't really _feel_ like cheating to anyone, including me, who rarely-if-ever participated, fwiw. (Not due to any moral high ground, but because a) I was not particularly social at the time b) "100% of your grade is based on your final exam score" was usually an option, and (relative to other students) my exams were far better than my assignments.) Was it? Mmm. Probably yes, in the end, but it seems to me that you could make a reasonable prescriptive/descriptive case that it wasn't. Was it evidence of a serious moral flaw pervasive throughout that generation, or excessive pressure to excel (Waterloo is basically Canada's MIT), or anything like? Hell no. It was just a grotesque but essentially harmless cultural artifact. With twenty years of hindsight, I'd advise against reading too much into it.