I love this. Had a project in college that was supposed to be time limited... based on repository times. Oops. Big mistake prof. We rolled back the times on our repo and laughed maniacally about our free 6 hour extension.
Most of the exams were take-home anyway, and included instructions giving a time limit and what reference material was allowed to be used.
http://blog.sethroberts.net/2014/02/17/cheating-at-caltech/
https://www.quora.com/Are-all-exams-at-Caltech-take-home-exa...
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.
I (briefly) attended in the early 1990s, and it was the same.
Wow, way to prize process over people. Why not let the student drop the class and just re-take the test next time around?
Is Caltech designed to teach science, or train paper-pushers?
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.
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.
> 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.
It's just nicer to live that way.
A friend of mine at UT had his room sacked the first week.
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"?
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.
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.
No, its not. Rejecting the validity of an argument for p is not the same as making an argument for not-p.
Not being representative of a population doesn't give any information about the makeup of the subsample, unless you have more information to add.
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.
Yes, if you strip away the context of the literal words you said, you're correct. But in context, you're not.
I also suspect that a university with strong anti-cheating measures is expecting students to cheat, and students will naturally fulfill that expectation.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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 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.