4 ms·

As stated in the article, cheating has mostly to do with the fact that what is being taught is a bunch of crap - and the final product (a college degree) is see

As stated in the article, cheating has mostly to do with the fact that what is being taught is a bunch of crap - and the final product (a college degree) is seen as a piece of paper that grants them access to the next level. Cheating in academia is exactly the same as piracy: It is a service problem. If classes taught useful information/skills in a non-boring way, cheating would be significantly reduced. It takes a special kind of myopic/arrogant person to find out that students are cheating on their exams and think that the problem has nothing to do with them.

neverminder 13y ago
I can't agree more, I've studied IT engineering, but spending countless hours on fundamental sciences while at the same time knowing that it will have little to no benefit to my actual profession was too big of a torture to endure.
- eru 13y ago
  If done right, fundamental sciences make for great learning.
  - neverminder 13y ago
    Didn't do that for me on any level whatsoever. I think the biggest miss of academia is inability to catch student's interest. When I started doing actual practical work and see the fruits of my labor - that's when my interest morphed into a feedback loop - that was never ever the case in the university.
    - claudius 13y ago
      It is not the job of a university to motivate its students, they are supposed and assumed to be grown-ups who can motivate themselves to learn things they want to learn.
      - eru 13y ago
        That'd be a destructive attitude for universities to take.
    - eru 13y ago
      I guess you got unlucky with your studies and your professors. Glad to hear, that you learned to like learning.
  - icelancer 13y ago
    I do agree with this. While in charge of hiring for a data science team, I found that candidates with degrees in hard sciences were more often than not better candidates than the ones with CS backgrounds. Fundamental understanding of mathematics and true problem solving skills go a long way in data science (and computer science of course), and these seem to be tenets of good graduates of Physics programs especially.
pgeorgi 13y ago
If the college degree would only serve to get to the next academic level, things would probably be alright. IMHO the real issue is that degrees are considered signals for employers - that blows up their value to much, much more than "just" the value of the courses added together.
- jsudhams 13y ago
  agree, I was a school drop out and then went on to do a degree in open university, then did my masters in IT and the IT degree would not be awarded to me because I did not have my school completed. (Note I passed in distinction > 70% in every subject of that degree)
NextUserName 13y ago
>Cheating in academia is exactly the same as piracy: It is a service problem. If classes taught useful information/skills in a non-boring way, cheating would be significantly reduced. This is true, but only for certain subjects. I largely agree with you when it comes to many Comp-Sci courses. Differential Equations, not so much.
- icelancer 13y ago
  You can't stop 100% of the cheaters, but if your differential equations professor speaks little English and lectures from the book without caring one iota about presentation, then that professor will have higher rates of cheaters. It's about controlling the variable that can be controlled.
cafard 13y ago
The instructors mentioned were not teaching the course this student planned to cheat on, though. And without a revolution in American education, there will never be the students to sustain schools without the notion that there is a credential at the end of the level. Nor will there be any significant proportion of classes that have no unengaged students.
- icelancer 13y ago
  Right, which is why I said it has "mostly" to do with the fact that what is being taught is useless. It's asymptotic, of course - there exists a certain number of people who will cheat on their exams, and that's OK. It doesn't mean we give up and lecture in the most boring style possible, it means we try to improve education and reach the maximum amount of "engageable" students possible.
Steuard 13y ago
What you're describing may be part of the issue, I can't argue with that, but come on. There are lots of reasons that people might cheat in classes that they enjoy or that they recognize is useful. I've been lucky enough to have very little cheating in my classes, but it's easy enough to imagine. Let's say Johnny wants to be a doctor more than anything in the world. He knows that he needs two semesters of Organic Chemistry on his transcript to get in to med school, and that if his grades aren't top notch he won't be able to compete. Johnny likes his Chem prof (and the grading is fair), but he's only managing B-'s on his exams. He sees his dream fading away. Sure, he could say, "Huh. I guess I'm not cut out to be a doctor." But don't you think some students out there would consider cheating under those circumstances? Or maybe Johnny consciously chose to go to a college that has a strong culture of giving students a "well-rounded" education (by whatever internal definition) and insists that students take a wide variety of classes from different disciplines. That's not Johnny's cup of tea: he just wants a computing degree. He could easily have chosen a different school, but he didn't. Now he just wants to focus on his CS classes, so when he's stuck with a course in English or History he decides to cheat so he doesn't have to think about it. Do you really want to say that's the teacher's fault?
- Fuxy 13y ago
  You have a valid point in the first one but in the second case cheating is harmless. He has no intention of applying the knowledge he would have attained in the classes he cheated on. Every student should be allowed to choose his own classes with as little requirements imposed by the school as possible. That's not to say there couldn't be a list of recommendations preferably with an explanation why for students that have no idea what to take but forcing them is a bad idea. Stop wasting students time with useless classes just so you can have a standard set of classes for each field.
  - bigd 13y ago
    In both cases cheating is a sympthom of a larger issue: in case 1, requiring your doctor has an A grade to in organic chemistry is BS.
crusso 13y ago
As though learning to be trusted to do what you commit to do (whether you love doing it or not) has nothing to do with your career. Attitudes that completely disregard integrity will completely destroy the value of online degrees. It's a shame. Then later when you have a boss who is looking over your shoulder at every step to make sure that you're not trying to get away with something... guess who is going to be complaining about trust?
- Fuxy 13y ago
  Assuming offline degrees still have any value. Experience seems to outweigh that from what i have seen. For instance my degree is completely useless just because i have it from a different country. Luckily that never prevented me from doing what i like regardless. I might actually bother to take the time get the same degree in the country i currently live in but that's not because that piece of paper has any value it's just because I always enjoyed learning new things.
amscanne 13y ago
I completely disagree with this. While it may be true that if classes were more interesting then cheating would be reduced slightly, that doesn't make it the problem. Similarly, if content creators didn't want any money for their content then piracy would be reduced. But it's pretty obvious that's not a realistic solution. Calling it a service problem just enables the entitled attitude of pirates and cheaters (you aren't giving me exactly what I want for the price I want, so I'm just going to take it.) There are classes that are important or required, but may be boring. You think that in life, you will love every single hour of whatever job you end up with? No, of course not. That doesn't entitle you to cheat your way through those classes anymore than you could skip shitty days at work. Have you taught? I'm pretty miffed at the idea that you think professors should take students that cheat as their own failing. I can assure you that most professors invest considerable time in trying to make the material interesting, relevant, accessible, etc. And even if they fail, or the course is an "irrelevant" required course, that does not justify cheating.
- zacinbusiness 13y ago
  You must have experience teaching! I do not, but my wife does. She is a professor of English and she relates stories to me of her classes daily. One thing that helps her classes is that she always explains why they need to learn something, and she never introduces a lesson that doesn't further her own learning outcomes that she has set up (for intro classes she structures such that students are ready for her upper level courses, and for those courses she structures such that students will be able to succeed not only in English but also in other areas as well). One thing that's very common (check out the CCCC literature on the subject, and as a matter of fact my wife is presenting there this week) is trying to find ways to ignite student engagement. You have thousands of extremely bright people who expend countless hours simply trying to figure out how to make students care. That to me does not point to a failure of teachers. And on that let me recount my own college experience: I was a shitty student for undergrad. I didn't go to class, I didn't do the reading, I didn't do the work, and I failed all the tests. And this isn't just for classes I dislikes, it was for all of them. There was no specific reason for it though my wife and I were broke the whole time, but really that's just an excuse I told myself. And so eventually I brought my GPA up from a .5 to a 2.6 so that I could graduate (it was very fucking hard to do that, the system is stacked against you mathematically). Then I decided to go to graduate school and I kicked ass and took names. I don't know what changed but I became "the surprise star of the class" (professor's words) multiple times and when I graduated I had a 3.9 (only because by the end I had 3 full time jobs as well as taking a full course load, so I phoned in a final assignment that was worth a huge chunk of my GPA in one class). In all of those cases it had nothing to do with my professors. They were kind, entertaining, generous with their time, and worked very hard to try to keep me engaged. The turn around came when I decided to take ownership of my education and of my career afterwards.
noonespecial 13y ago
When credentials become more about permission than proficiency, you'll get corruption instead of competence.
billmalarky 13y ago
Sometimes learning isn't fun though. Just like anything else any learning of real value does often involve a grind. Being able to stick with something boring/difficult is probably the most important skill realized from getting many degrees.

neverminder 13y ago

I can't agree more, I've studied IT engineering, but spending countless hours on fundamental sciences while at the same time knowing that it will have little to no benefit to my actual profession was too big of a torture to endure.

eru 13y ago
If done right, fundamental sciences make for great learning.
- neverminder 13y ago
  Didn't do that for me on any level whatsoever. I think the biggest miss of academia is inability to catch student's interest. When I started doing actual practical work and see the fruits of my labor - that's when my interest morphed into a feedback loop - that was never ever the case in the university.
  - claudius 13y ago
    It is not the job of a university to motivate its students, they are supposed and assumed to be grown-ups who can motivate themselves to learn things they want to learn.
    - eru 13y ago
      That'd be a destructive attitude for universities to take.
  - eru 13y ago
    I guess you got unlucky with your studies and your professors. Glad to hear, that you learned to like learning.
- icelancer 13y ago
  I do agree with this. While in charge of hiring for a data science team, I found that candidates with degrees in hard sciences were more often than not better candidates than the ones with CS backgrounds. Fundamental understanding of mathematics and true problem solving skills go a long way in data science (and computer science of course), and these seem to be tenets of good graduates of Physics programs especially.

pgeorgi 13y ago

If the college degree would only serve to get to the next academic level, things would probably be alright. IMHO the real issue is that degrees are considered signals for employers - that blows up their value to much, much more than "just" the value of the courses added together.

jsudhams 13y ago
agree, I was a school drop out and then went on to do a degree in open university, then did my masters in IT and the IT degree would not be awarded to me because I did not have my school completed. (Note I passed in distinction > 70% in every subject of that degree)

NextUserName 13y ago

>Cheating in academia is exactly the same as piracy: It is a service problem. If classes taught useful information/skills in a non-boring way, cheating would be significantly reduced. This is true, but only for certain subjects. I largely agree with you when it comes to many Comp-Sci courses. Differential Equations, not so much.

icelancer 13y ago
You can't stop 100% of the cheaters, but if your differential equations professor speaks little English and lectures from the book without caring one iota about presentation, then that professor will have higher rates of cheaters. It's about controlling the variable that can be controlled.

cafard 13y ago

The instructors mentioned were not teaching the course this student planned to cheat on, though. And without a revolution in American education, there will never be the students to sustain schools without the notion that there is a credential at the end of the level. Nor will there be any significant proportion of classes that have no unengaged students.

icelancer 13y ago
Right, which is why I said it has "mostly" to do with the fact that what is being taught is useless. It's asymptotic, of course - there exists a certain number of people who will cheat on their exams, and that's OK. It doesn't mean we give up and lecture in the most boring style possible, it means we try to improve education and reach the maximum amount of "engageable" students possible.

Steuard 13y ago

What you're describing may be part of the issue, I can't argue with that, but come on. There are lots of reasons that people might cheat in classes that they enjoy or that they recognize is useful. I've been lucky enough to have very little cheating in my classes, but it's easy enough to imagine. Let's say Johnny wants to be a doctor more than anything in the world. He knows that he needs two semesters of Organic Chemistry on his transcript to get in to med school, and that if his grades aren't top notch he won't be able to compete. Johnny likes his Chem prof (and the grading is fair), but he's only managing B-'s on his exams. He sees his dream fading away. Sure, he could say, "Huh. I guess I'm not cut out to be a doctor." But don't you think some students out there would consider cheating under those circumstances? Or maybe Johnny consciously chose to go to a college that has a strong culture of giving students a "well-rounded" education (by whatever internal definition) and insists that students take a wide variety of classes from different disciplines. That's not Johnny's cup of tea: he just wants a computing degree. He could easily have chosen a different school, but he didn't. Now he just wants to focus on his CS classes, so when he's stuck with a course in English or History he decides to cheat so he doesn't have to think about it. Do you really want to say that's the teacher's fault?

Fuxy 13y ago
You have a valid point in the first one but in the second case cheating is harmless. He has no intention of applying the knowledge he would have attained in the classes he cheated on. Every student should be allowed to choose his own classes with as little requirements imposed by the school as possible. That's not to say there couldn't be a list of recommendations preferably with an explanation why for students that have no idea what to take but forcing them is a bad idea. Stop wasting students time with useless classes just so you can have a standard set of classes for each field.
- bigd 13y ago
  In both cases cheating is a sympthom of a larger issue: in case 1, requiring your doctor has an A grade to in organic chemistry is BS.

crusso 13y ago

As though learning to be trusted to do what you commit to do (whether you love doing it or not) has nothing to do with your career. Attitudes that completely disregard integrity will completely destroy the value of online degrees. It's a shame. Then later when you have a boss who is looking over your shoulder at every step to make sure that you're not trying to get away with something... guess who is going to be complaining about trust?

Fuxy 13y ago
Assuming offline degrees still have any value. Experience seems to outweigh that from what i have seen. For instance my degree is completely useless just because i have it from a different country. Luckily that never prevented me from doing what i like regardless. I might actually bother to take the time get the same degree in the country i currently live in but that's not because that piece of paper has any value it's just because I always enjoyed learning new things.

amscanne 13y ago

I completely disagree with this. While it may be true that if classes were more interesting then cheating would be reduced slightly, that doesn't make it the problem. Similarly, if content creators didn't want any money for their content then piracy would be reduced. But it's pretty obvious that's not a realistic solution. Calling it a service problem just enables the entitled attitude of pirates and cheaters (you aren't giving me exactly what I want for the price I want, so I'm just going to take it.) There are classes that are important or required, but may be boring. You think that in life, you will love every single hour of whatever job you end up with? No, of course not. That doesn't entitle you to cheat your way through those classes anymore than you could skip shitty days at work. Have you taught? I'm pretty miffed at the idea that you think professors should take students that cheat as their own failing. I can assure you that most professors invest considerable time in trying to make the material interesting, relevant, accessible, etc. And even if they fail, or the course is an "irrelevant" required course, that does not justify cheating.

zacinbusiness 13y ago
You must have experience teaching! I do not, but my wife does. She is a professor of English and she relates stories to me of her classes daily. One thing that helps her classes is that she always explains why they need to learn something, and she never introduces a lesson that doesn't further her own learning outcomes that she has set up (for intro classes she structures such that students are ready for her upper level courses, and for those courses she structures such that students will be able to succeed not only in English but also in other areas as well). One thing that's very common (check out the CCCC literature on the subject, and as a matter of fact my wife is presenting there this week) is trying to find ways to ignite student engagement. You have thousands of extremely bright people who expend countless hours simply trying to figure out how to make students care. That to me does not point to a failure of teachers. And on that let me recount my own college experience: I was a shitty student for undergrad. I didn't go to class, I didn't do the reading, I didn't do the work, and I failed all the tests. And this isn't just for classes I dislikes, it was for all of them. There was no specific reason for it though my wife and I were broke the whole time, but really that's just an excuse I told myself. And so eventually I brought my GPA up from a .5 to a 2.6 so that I could graduate (it was very fucking hard to do that, the system is stacked against you mathematically). Then I decided to go to graduate school and I kicked ass and took names. I don't know what changed but I became "the surprise star of the class" (professor's words) multiple times and when I graduated I had a 3.9 (only because by the end I had 3 full time jobs as well as taking a full course load, so I phoned in a final assignment that was worth a huge chunk of my GPA in one class). In all of those cases it had nothing to do with my professors. They were kind, entertaining, generous with their time, and worked very hard to try to keep me engaged. The turn around came when I decided to take ownership of my education and of my career afterwards.

noonespecial 13y ago

When credentials become more about permission than proficiency, you'll get corruption instead of competence.

billmalarky 13y ago

Sometimes learning isn't fun though. Just like anything else any learning of real value does often involve a grind. Being able to stick with something boring/difficult is probably the most important skill realized from getting many degrees.