Flay those fuckers alive! :mad:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/31/education/harvard-says-125-students-may-have-cheated-on-exam.html?_r=1
QuoteHarvard Says 125 Students May Have Cheated on a Final Exam
Elise Amendola/Associated Press
An entrance to Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass.
By RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA and JESS BIDGOOD
Published: August 30, 2012
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Harvard University revealed Thursday what could be its largest cheating scandal in memory, saying that about 125 students might have worked in groups on a take-home final exam despite being explicitly required to work alone.
The accusations, related to a single undergraduate class in the spring semester, deal with "academic dishonesty, ranging from inappropriate collaboration to outright plagiarism," the administration said in a note sent to students.
Officials said that nearly half of the more than 250 students in the class were under investigation by the Harvard College Administrative Board and that if they were found to have cheated, they could be suspended for a year. The students have been notified that they are suspected and will be called to give their accounts in investigative hearings.
"This is unprecedented in its scope and magnitude," said Jay Harris, the dean of undergraduate education.
Administrators would not reveal the name of the class or even the department, saying that they wanted to protect the identities of the accused students. The Harvard Crimson, the university's student newspaper, reported that it was a government class, Introduction to Congress, which had 279 students, and that it was taught by Matthew B. Platt, an assistant professor.
Professor Platt did not respond to messages seeking comment.
When final exams were graded in May, similarities were noticed in the answers given by some students, officials said, and a professor brought the matter to the administration immediately. Over the summer, Harvard's administrative board conducted an initial review, going over the exams of all of the students in the class for evidence of cheating. It concluded that almost half of them showed signs of possible collaboration.
"The enabling role of technology is a big part of this picture," Mr. Harris said. "It's the ease of sharing. With that has come, I believe, a certain cavalier attitude."
The university said it planned to increase efforts to teach students about academic integrity.
"The scope of the allegations suggests that there is work to be done to ensure that every student at Harvard understands and embraces the values that are fundamental to its community of scholars," Harvard's president, Drew Gilpin Faust, told The Harvard Gazette, the university's official newspaper.
Harvard's student handbook says that students must "comply with the policy on collaboration established for each course," and notes that such policies vary from department to department, from class to class, and even from assignment to assignment within a class.
The news comes as Harvard students are returning to campus for the fall term, which begins on Tuesday.
"flay"?
Lighten up Francis.
Ricans are very hot blooded.
Wow, rich kids with a sense of entitlement get caught cheating at a school that promotes a sense of entitlement.
I am so fucking shocked I just ejaculated.
Quote125 students might have worked in groups on a take-home final exam
if they were found to have cheated, they could be suspended for a year.
reported that it was a government class, Introduction to Congress,
A take home exam. For a Poli-Sci Intro course. Possible suspension for OMG A WHOLE YEAR.
Good to see Harvard still maintains such high academic standards and curriculum strength.
More proof that school is a fucking joke, and its degree isn't worth the gilted, embossed and raised paper it's printed on.
a take home exam just screams "cheat on me"
No shit, that was always implied afaik.
Does seem a little strange to get in such a huff over a take home. Why wouldn't people collaborate?
Though I do remember when I was a freshmen I had a class where we had like 48 hours to right three mini-papers where we were all given the same essay prompts. We were told not to chat about the prompts once we got them. I'm sure some people did but I didn't as I needed all that time to formulate my own thoughts - not list to someone else's. :D
Quote from: CountDeMoney on August 31, 2012, 08:35:23 PM
Good to see Harvard still maintains such high academic standards and curriculum strength.
More proof that school is a fucking joke, and its degree isn't worth the gilted, embossed and raised paper it's printed on.
Does anyone think 101 classes would be rigorous? :unsure:
Quote from: garbon on August 31, 2012, 09:39:13 PM
Does anyone think 101 classes would be rigorous? :unsure:
Does anyone think 101 classes warrant a take home final in the first fucking place?
For all the busywork bullshit students have to do on a regular basis, I'm all in favor of cheating. It's like Kirk and the Kobayashi Maru. If it saves you time, it's justified.
Quote from: CountDeMoney on August 31, 2012, 09:41:58 PM
Quote from: garbon on August 31, 2012, 09:39:13 PM
Does anyone think 101 classes would be rigorous? :unsure:
Does anyone think 101 classes warrant a take home final in the first fucking place?
I don't necessarily see a problem with it. 101 classes are often a joke so why not own that? :)
Quote from: MadImmortalMan on August 31, 2012, 09:50:35 PM
For all the busywork bullshit students have to do on a regular basis, I'm all in favor of cheating. It's like Kirk and the Kobayashi Maru. If it saves you time, it's justified.
:yes:
It's not as if people in the corporate world--where a huge percentage of these students will end up--don't lie and cheat as much as they can possibly get away with.
Quote from: HVC on August 31, 2012, 08:44:38 PM
a take home exam just screams "cheat on me"
Yeah, they're usually designed so that for most of them that would be impossible though. Asking lots of questions where the taker has to think originally and apply what was learned in class to problems rather than just simply reciting what was learned in class.
I like take home exams. Never cheated on them but always do much better than in conventional exams.
Quote from: garbon on August 31, 2012, 10:28:28 PM
I don't necessarily see a problem with it. 101 classes are often a joke so why not own that? :)
That's because you have such low standards. 101 class? Multiple choice. Sheesh.
Take home exams for a 101 class is just laziness on behalf of both the students and the faculty.
Quote from: Caliga on September 01, 2012, 07:24:39 AM
Quote from: MadImmortalMan on August 31, 2012, 09:50:35 PM
For all the busywork bullshit students have to do on a regular basis, I'm all in favor of cheating. It's like Kirk and the Kobayashi Maru. If it saves you time, it's justified.
:yes:
It's not as if people in the corporate world--where a huge percentage of these students will end up--don't lie and cheat as much as they can possibly get away with.
I am sure a lot of them also end up in government and academia where they also get paid for worthless busy work that they then cheat on. :lol:
Quote from: CountDeMoney on September 01, 2012, 08:02:27 AM
Quote from: garbon on August 31, 2012, 10:28:28 PM
I don't necessarily see a problem with it. 101 classes are often a joke so why not own that? :)
That's because you have such low standards. 101 class? Multiple choice. Sheesh.
HEY NOW
Quote from: CountDeMoney on September 01, 2012, 08:02:27 AM
Quote from: garbon on August 31, 2012, 10:28:28 PM
I don't necessarily see a problem with it. 101 classes are often a joke so why not own that? :)
That's because you have such low standards. 101 class? Multiple choice. Sheesh.
Take home exams for a 101 class is just laziness on behalf of both the students and the faculty.
I don't see an issue. 101 classes are generally just bullshit pre-reqs.
Why would the school care? They paid their tuition, and that's what Harvard is all about, right?
Cheating on a take home exam is meh. Getting caught however is not.
Harvard, nice. Maybe they can use their $30billion endowment to clean up the mess. All that money, and still they get govt money for projects, research, etc.
Quote from: KRonn on September 02, 2012, 03:47:14 PM
Harvard, nice. Maybe they can use their $30billion endowment to clean up the mess. All that money, and still they get govt money for projects, research, etc.
Of course they do. The whole point of the government is to provide incentive for pure research, which has progressed to the point where it is very costly. And to provide public services and defend to polity.
Quote from: KRonn on September 02, 2012, 03:47:14 PM
Harvard, nice. Maybe they can use their $30billion endowment to clean up the mess. All that money, and still they get govt money for projects, research, etc.
Nearly everything in Harvard's endowment is earmarked for very specific uses... they can't just allocate those funds to whatever they want. It actually takes a court order to release an endowment fund for another purpose if the university no longer wishes to use it for the donor's original intended use.
We must protect this house! And its rep!
QuoteHarvard Searched E-Mails for Source of Media Leaks
By RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA
Harvard secretly searched the e-mail accounts of several of its staff members last fall, looking for the source of news media leaks about its recent cheating scandal, but did not tell them about the searches for several months, people briefed on the matter said on Saturday.
The searches, first reported by The Boston Globe, involved the e-mail accounts of 16 resident deans, but most of them were not told of the searches until the last few days, after The Globe inquired about them. Resident deans straddle the roles of administrators and faculty members, teaching classes as lecturers while living in Harvard's undergraduate residential houses as student advocates and advisers.
In August, an administration memo to the resident deans, on how to advise students being brought up on cheating charges before the Administrative Board, a committee of faculty members responsible for enforcing regulations, made its way to news organizations. The e-mail searches were intended to find the source of leak, but no one was disciplined in the matter.
Last August, Harvard publicly revealed that "nearly half" the students in a large class were suspected of having cheated on a take-home final exam in the spring of 2012 — either working together in violation of instructions, or outright plagiarizing material. Students identified the class as a government course with 279 people enrolled.
Harvard declined to comment on Saturday about the e-mail searches, but offered what appeared to be an oblique defense.
"If circumstances were to arise that gave reason to believe that the Administrative Board process might have been compromised, then Harvard College would take all necessary and appropriate actions under our procedures to safeguard the integrity of that process, which is designed to protect the rights of our students to privacy and due process," Michael D. Smith, dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, said in a prepared statement.
The handling of the search — if not the search, itself — may have contradicted the Faculty of Arts and Sciences policy on electronic privacy, and faculty members interviewed said they expected a backlash. The privacy policy states that the administration can search faculty members' electronic records "in extraordinary circumstances such as legal proceedings and internal Harvard investigations."
But it also says that a faculty member must be notified in advance of such a search, "unless circumstances make prior notification impossible, in which case the faculty member will be notified at the earliest possible opportunity."
Over months of investigations and hearings by the Administrative Board, some of the accused students insisted that their degree of collaboration was no more than the accepted norm, and that the professor and teaching fellows were partly to blame. The episode drew particular attention because the class was popular with varsity athletes, some of whom left school rather than face the loss of a year of athletic eligibility.
On Jan. 31, Dr. Smith said that "somewhat more than half" of those cases resulted in students being required to withdraw, putting the number forced out at roughly 70.
I didn't know Underarmour came in tweed.
Quote from: Caliga on September 01, 2012, 07:24:39 AM
Quote from: MadImmortalMan on August 31, 2012, 09:50:35 PM
For all the busywork bullshit students have to do on a regular basis, I'm all in favor of cheating. It's like Kirk and the Kobayashi Maru. If it saves you time, it's justified.
:yes:
It's not as if people in the corporate world--where a huge percentage of these students will end up--don't lie and cheat as much as they can possibly get away with.
It was "introduction to Congress". Noone lies on the Capitol Hill.
This was such a stupid cheating scandal.
Quote from: garbon on March 12, 2013, 09:34:42 AM
This was such a stupid cheating scandal.
Why? Is it because cheating should be tolerated?
Quote from: MadImmortalMan on August 31, 2012, 09:50:35 PM
For all the busywork bullshit students have to do on a regular basis, I'm all in favor of cheating. It's like Kirk and the Kobayashi Maru. If it saves you time, it's justified.
Don't work hard; work smart!
Quote from: fahdiz on March 12, 2013, 11:00:16 AM
Quote from: MadImmortalMan on August 31, 2012, 09:50:35 PM
For all the busywork bullshit students have to do on a regular basis, I'm all in favor of cheating. It's like Kirk and the Kobayashi Maru. If it saves you time, it's justified.
Don't work hard; work smart!
And if you are stupid enough to get caught, then you are too stupid to be in school. Whoever the prof was that devised a test that drove 120+ morons out of Harvard at a stroke deserves a medal.
:thumbsup:
There was a big cheating scandal at my former law school, after my time there. Way it worked was this: the school had a policy of having midterms in first year that were more or less for "practice" - they didn't actually "count" towards your marks. Normally, this did not matter, but for a brief time law firms were so desperate for the "best" students they were hiring summer students right after first year. In order to determine who the "best" students were, all they had to go by were these mid-term marks, as they liked to hire the students before the year ended.
So they were asking for these marks ... from the students. With no official transcript to verify them.
Strangely enough, some students were getting straight A's ... at least, according to them. A rather selective memory proved to be at work. :lol:
Quote from: Malthus on March 12, 2013, 12:46:48 PM
There was a big cheating scandal at my former law school, after my time there. Way it worked was this: the school had a policy of having midterms in first year that were more or less for "practice" - they didn't actually "count" towards your marks. Normally, this did not matter, but for a brief time law firms were so desperate for the "best" students they were hiring summer students right after first year. In order to determine who the "best" students were, all they had to go by were these mid-term marks, as they liked to hire the students before the year ended.
So they were asking for these marks ... from the students. With no official transcript to verify them.
Strangely enough, some students were getting straight A's ... at least, according to them. A rather selective memory proved to be at work. :lol:
From what I remember about that incident, apparently one professor encouraged students to report that they had received As.
I want to agree with the "if you're so dumb you get caught" argument.
I cheated precisely once on a law school test. It was a ridiculous assignment for a "computers and law" course which was itself ridiculous. You were supposed to find the answers to a bunch of questions on the web (as an aside - oh how Google has changed things forever. Web search actually used to be hard). It was finicky and time consuming and didn't teach you anything.
Your assignment had to be handed in on a floppy disk. There was, of course, enormous copying going on. What I did was get copies of a few people's answers. I mixed and matched between them, and re-wrote the answers in my own words. I think I may have even answered one of the questions by myself. I passed.
Of course what a handfull of people did was to hand in an identical assignments. This got caught.