Should professors really be spending their time locking down all the ways students may try to cheat? At Caltech, proctoring exams (for example) is not allowed by institute policy. A student's honor that he didn't cheat is considered good enough.
That's not the whole story. The student's honor is considered good enough that we shouldn't spend time locking things down, but at least when I interacted more with undergraduates here, Caltech had an investigation process for undergraduate academic dishonesty that was student-run and utterly dysfunctional, apparently involving scenes that would bring to mind the Spanish Inquisition, complete with 2am interrogations and insistence on confessions.
I was told of severe disciplinary actions for accusations that were ridiculous when students would not confess, and an administration that stood behind the decisions of students who judged other students more on their opinions than anything else. One student, for example, was apparently expelled for an instance of claimed cheating that would have involved him running back and forth on campus at the speed of a competitive athlete. He quietly returned a short time later, and was also admitted here as a graduate student; there were rumors of legal threats and a settlement.
At least when I was hearing more about such things, essentially, Caltech placed tremendous trust in students who were well-liked by particular people, and treated those who were disliked very poorly.
Why wouldn't you proctor exams? The time spent is small, less than 10 hours a semester, and the proctors can answer student questions or make corrections and clarifications to test questions. That it's a small disincentive to cheat is nice too, though in my experience only the most blatant of cheating would be caught. I say all this as someone who proctors exams.
> Why wouldn't you proctor exams? The time spent is small, less than 10 hours a semester, and the proctors can answer student questions or make corrections and clarifications to test questions.
Because Caltech faculty (and, for undergraduate student exams, grad students) have better things to do with their time than proctor exams (and, perhaps more to the point, because Caltech wants to attract faculty and grad students that feel that they have better uses for their time that baby-sitting exams.)
And, frankly, like many aspects of the trust extended to Caltech students, its a recruitment policy -- Caltech is an extremely selective, extremely small school that is competing with other elite institutions to attract the best students.
There's more to it than that. For example, I didn't feel any need to lock my dorm room door when going down the hall to the bathroom, and often never bothered to even close it. I never had anything stolen, nor did anyone else. (Not totally true, there were a couple instances where an outsider came in the unlocked dormitory doors and tried to boost something, but the other students gave chase and caught them.)
It's just nicer to live that way.
A friend of mine at UT had his room sacked the first week.
Honor codes and not proctoring exams (rather, the students doing it themselves) are a fairly common feature of engineering colleges, it isn't really something that contributes to Caltech standing out.
> Honor codes and not proctoring exams (rather, the students doing it themselves) are a fairly common feature of engineering colleges, it isn't really something that contributes to Caltech standing out.
> Honor codes and not proctoring exams (rather, the students doing it themselves) are a fairly common feature of engineering colleges, it isn't really something that contributes to Caltech standing out.
I'm not saying Caltech is unique in doing that, I'm saying that in the universe Caltech operates in it would conflict with their recruiting interests -- both for faculty and students -- to operate in a different way.
Having proctored my fair share of exams...you're there primarily to answer questions, not to enforce anything. The student who wants to cheat will find a way to cheat.
The reason was to emphasize that the students were trusted. Sometimes a professor would sit outside in the hall to answer questions, but he would not go in the room.
Most of the exams were take-home anyway, and included instructions giving a time limit and what reference material was allowed to be used.
That's the first I've heard that it had anything to do with saving money, and I spent 4 years there. It does, however, make life easier for professors and students when you can trust each other.
I don't know what Caltech is like today. I attended in 70's, and the honor system was considered sacred by the students. If there were cheaters, they never bragged about it, and I don't know of any. I know one who fell asleep during his takehome exam, woke up and finished it, and so exceeded the time limit. He noted this on the exam. The professor replied back that he was very sorry and was forced to give him an F. The student repeated the (required) class next year.
The number of students who did poorly on exams argues that cheating was not widespread.
If the culture has changed in the intervening years, that makes me very sad.
In my day (ca. 2000) there was no "forced to give an F" and in fact it was very common for exam-takers to draw a line, write "everything below this line I did after the time limit", and get partial credit for it.
Not that I recall. I don't think it's quite fair to do that, as it then becomes an infinite time exam.
But also consider that the midterm and the final were the entire grade. No credit was given for homework, showing up for class, etc. The rules about the exams were pretty clear.
However, if you had a borderline exam grade, but had done the homework diligently, the prof would use that as a tie breaker.
His fellow students thought the F was a bit harsh, but he conceded that it was fair and took his lumps with equanimity. I quite admired him for it. In the end, it didn't hurt him because he graduated and went on to a very successful career.
You could at least ask the student how much time they took actively working on the exam, less the part where they fell asleep, and compare that to the time limit.
> I don't know what Caltech is like today. I attended in 70's, and the honor system was considered sacred by the students. If there were cheaters, they never bragged about it, and I don't know of any.
I (briefly) attended in the early 1990s, and it was the same.
> A student's honor that he didn't cheat is considered good enough.
Individual students certainly can have this integrity, but the demographic as a whole is demonstrably susceptible to cheating.
It also offends basic scientific process, in that it suggests that you don't need to bother with trying to make sure your results are robust; instead it relies on someone's word. Why bother having exams, then? Just ask "Do you think you understand the course material properly"?
Many times I honestly believed I understood the material, only to fall way short on the exam :-) Scientists can honestly believe their (wrong) results are correct, because it's easy to have unintended sources of error. This is why others try to replicate results, it's not necessarily about catching cheaters.
Think of it like running a marathon. Is there any satisfaction from thinking "I honestly believe I can complete a marathon!" ? I don't think so, but there's a heluva lot from actually completing one. Same for a tough degree program.
I agree with you, but the analogue is not scientists having their work replicated, it's doing the work in the first place. We don't accept 'trust me on this' in a scientific paper.
Regarding marathons, some people do cheat them - they're more interested in the social rewards than the personal growth. Some people flat-out lie about doing them at all. Different folks have different motivations.
> Individual students certainly can have this integrity, but the demographic as a whole is demonstrably susceptible to cheating.
Certainly demonstrably true of a significant portion of the demographic of "college students".
Caltech would probably argue that Caltech students are not a representative sample of college students, and that generalization from the more general class to the more specific here is a textbook example of the fallacy of division.
That's a 'begging the question' fallacy, where the conclusion ('Caltech students are more honourable than that') is used as the premise (ditto).
Even if we all agree that Caltech students are not representative of college students in general, it doesn't automatically follow that there is no significant degree of cheating.
But that's exactly how you presented their supposed argument: "Caltech students don't cheat because they're not representative of the general student population", with the vague assumption that Caltech students are more honour-bound.
Not being representative of a population doesn't give any information about the makeup of the subsample, unless you have more information to add.
> But that's exactly how you presented their supposed argument: "Caltech students don't cheat because they're not representative of the general student population"
No, its not, which is why you had to present a "quote" that isn't to advance that story.
I presented how they would reject an argument from the general population, not positive argument for the absence of cheating at Caltech.
What are you talking about? You presented the argument as a potential rebuttal to the claim that students cheat. It's inherently implied that it's an argument for the absence of cheating at Caltech... otherwise it wouldn't be a rebuttal at all, and instead is a non-sequitur fallacy.
Yes, if you strip away the context of the literal words you said, you're correct. But in context, you're not.
An interesting question is does Caltech's admissions process select (unwittingly or otherwise) people who are likely to follow the honor system, or do people tend to rise to an expectation of integrity? I suspect the latter is more likely.
I also suspect that a university with strong anti-cheating measures is expecting students to cheat, and students will naturally fulfill that expectation.
> An interesting question is does Caltech's admissions process select (unwittingly or otherwise) people who are likely to follow the honor system, or do people tend to rise to an expectation of integrity?
I think the latter is definitely true, the former is probably true, and perhaps more importantly, Caltech's admissions process selects for people who are likely to view a system where rules are enforced primarily by monitoring as a challenge, making the alternative to trust being an arms race that consumes resources on both sides that could be more productively employed.
Even if it selects for that trait, it doesn't mean that there isn't a significant level of cheating. You can reduce the incidence of X and still have problematic levels of X.
Edit: An example: the US homicide rate has fallen in recent years. That's good news. But the US still has a serious problem with homicide, as its homicide rate is an outlier at 4-5 times that of all other first-world nations. Americans are getting less murderous, but murder is still a serious problem there.
At my school many, many students cheat. This devalues the education that I'm getting and is frustrating to students who actually put in the time to study.
It devalues your degree, but not your education. Having the confidence that you actually mastered the material is worth a great deal. Stay strong, dude.
True. You're right, it only devalues the degree but that's a huge part of the reason that I go to school at all.
Much of my education is self taught, and hour-for-hour knowledge-wise I believe my time could be better spent in self-directed learning, but that degree does have value and people who cheat make it worth less to employers and myself. I think it makes sense to try and catch people who abuse that.
I understand your feelings on this, but after you've been working for 3 years or so, nobody is going to give a damn about your degree or where you got it. They'll value what you can do, and that's where your education will pay off.
I definitely agree with what you're saying, especially in startups it really isn't that relevant (part of why I like the startup community so much). But I do spend a lot of time outside startups as well, and that glass ceiling is definitely present in large companies and academia (especially academia).
I wasn't clear. Having a degree is important and not having one is often a blocker. For example, you can't get a mechanical engineering job without a degree. (There are legal reasons for that as well.) Where it is from does not matter, nor does your GPA.
