Harvard Students in Cheating Scandal Say Collaboration Was Accepted
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Jaywalking is illegal in most (all?) US cities, but in many it's completely acceptable behavior. Jaywalking in Seattle (edit: was Manhattan), on the other hand is not done and you better not do it within eyesight of a police officer. Jaywalking in the Netherlands is completely fine (even right in front of the police), but in Germany it's not. The laws are the same, but the culture is different.
There are thousands of examples of socially acceptable behavior that doesn't correspond with the law. Drinking in public. Sometimes fine, sometimes not. Forging a signature. Occasionally fine, usually not.
Startups break laws all the time too. You have to get a product out first, and only when you start making money you get lawyers involved to make sure everything is going by the books. But if you aren't making real money yet the government really doesn't care whether you follow every law to the letter. And as a founder you have to decide which laws can be broken safely and which laws must be obeyed. Get it wrong and you may lose your company: either through legal trouble or because it doesn't get off the ground. The founders talk freely about the laws they broke. They brag about it! It's considered clever. Relentlessly resourceful. It's a fine line.
So if the culture in Harvard was such that cooperating for take-home exams was sometimes acceptable and sometimes not, then I consider that a legitimate excuse. It's easy to test too. Just look at the exams of that course of the previous years and check if people worked together on those too. Compare with other courses. If the results show that students consistently break the "individual work only" clause for some courses and not for other courses then the students probably didn't think they were doing anything wrong. They were just acting in the socially accepted manner.
Seriously? I have stayed in Manhattan for couple years and done my share of jaywalking occasionally in clear sight of NYPD. May be I am just lucky but this just doesn't resonate with me.
I completely agree. Especially for entrepreneurs, it's a super important skill that is not easily learned but often creates incredible advantages and opportunities.
Yes, I'm guessing that this sort of thing is very common at Harvard (and, to be fair, in all colleges). They reasoned that the risk of getting caught was low enough to justify the cheating.
And they got caught. They lost their bet. So now they should pay the price.
Yes, there are things which are culturally acceptable, but technically against the rules. Just because you get away with murder, and don't get caught, that doesn't mean murder is OK.
It's quite clear that plagiarism was badly enforced, but anyone who admitted to it would have been severely punished. Most of your examples are completely different - they are things that nobody cares about, even if you get caught.
Arguably, it's a terrible system if severe crimes are routinely left unpunished. Either the penalty should be lowered, or they should enforce it better.
So while I don't just blame the students, I think it's a sign that the system is fucked. The students are part of it, as are the lectures, and universities (do they fire lecturers who don't try to catch cheats, the same way they fire unpopular lecturers?), employers (perhaps they should test graduates to see if they are actually competent?), and society in general.
That is to say, to have a situation when cheating becomes the norm implies a much larger institutional and cultural collapse in which the larger framework (and not simply the cheating individuals) demands investigation.
What are the larger trends here?
Well, the first might simply be the idea that greed is okay. In this case, we can witness the following transformation in American values fairly clearly.
Phase 1 (religious): Greed is bad, we do things for the sake of a heavenly kingdom only. We are only temporary stewards of the wealth we have.
Phase 2 (agnostic): Greed may be a necessary part of evolution and competition for limited resources, but we need to limit it and make it a long term sort of greed.
Phase 3 (hedonist): My identity is defined by how much money I have, and I don't care how I get it.
In other words, there is long-term value erosion. This is not to say that one's values necessarily have to be religious-Christian in derivation, but in the American context this was overwhelmingly the case and this erosion has basically given way to live in the moment materialism.
The practical consequences is that many people involved in business, and this is most clear in the financial sector which has no ostensible tie to any product whatsoever and attracts people who care only about money, not only seek money, but seek to destroy any barriers that keep them from getting as much money as possible. In the US this has meant saturation of elite universities (pulling an increasing proportion of the best and brightest into the financial sector), buying out of the major political parties, shutting out the minor political parties, and removing regulatory functions (i.e. the SEC). Additionally, there is the desire to weaken the electorate by importing cheap labor from other countries that will be liable to manipulation via mass media, decreasing the likelihood that any independent party will achieve critical mass.
Because this is a long-term institutional problem there is no obvious solution, except to continue with the values that have not entirely been eroded (i.e. honesty) and to encourage others who do their function (i.e. continue working in the public sector and enforcing existing regulation). Creating new services and teams of people that are doing a good job simply for the sake of doing a good job is never a bad idea either -- although it is always easy to get sucked into the mentality of "greed is good."
No.
Here, for "culpability" I mean simply that I believe that the power to actualize the values of each individual differs, and that those who are able to actualize their values even in very difficult situations is worth more and to be praised more than those who are unable to and go with the flow.
This is to say that simply saying you have certain values means nothing. You have to act on those values and, because acting on those values can be difficult, I have sympathy for those who fail to -- even as I praise those who do.
If you were a CEO of UCI and the Board asked you: 'How would you "fix" the pervasive problem' would your really come back debating "doping" and "problem"? Or would your come back with something more like: Here is my Answer X,Y,Z. While itsn't perfect, we've identified things that are clearly wrong that we can fix. First, we need to draw lines between doping and legitimate theraphy. Second, we need to have the science to fairly test between the Two. Third, while maintaining privacy and fairness, the athletes and the teams will need to co-operate with the [XYZ] league to make sure it doesn't damage the credibility of the competition and abuse our position of trust amongs the fans....etc.
I'd actually be interested to hear your views on that. Your analysis pointed out the analogy to the Armstrong case (was not something I thought of before hand, but it fits perfectly). But when I see a huge, intelligent analysis thrown up then ends the way yours does, it seems like a waste of all the energy that you put into writing it. (Unless you are a lawyer -- with a point to defend =D)
You want to "fix" the problem? It probably depends on the gravity of the specific offense and the pervasiveness of the offense. Pushing a few people harshly and publicly can send a statement that certain things are not acceptable, and curb abuses by others who are watching them. This is not a particularly bad tactic, but again it is context specific.
My own approach is always to fit the solution to the problem in such a way that the optimal outcome (i.e. reduction of abuses in the short and long-term) is achieved.
You want to "fix" the problem?...
My own approach is always...
This is pretty common failure avoidance technique.
But it lacks ambition.
Imagine a father or a mother with a newborn infant, "Unfortunately, I'm not familiar enough with...changing nappies" so I just won't bother. The kid cries "You want to "fix" the problem?..." The kid cries. "My own approach is always to fit the solution to the problem in such a way that the optimal outcome (i.e. reduction of abuses in the short and long-term) is achieved." The kid cries.
Is that being a responsible Adult? The kid might ask. I dunno. Not my kid. Anyway, who gives a shit about the kid? The kid is kind of fucking annoying.
Maybe that's just the world we live in.
But the difference between an Adult and a Child, is that the Adult doesn't have the luxury of being the Child.
Somebody has to clean up the Shit.
Maybe the kid has a point?
Good writing should be convincing, certainly, but it should be convincing because you got the right answers, not because you did a good job of arguing.
http://paulgraham.com/essay.html
In other words, the point of thinking is to solve, not to display thought.
Same as for the Harvard students.
1 - Wall of words
2 - Lance Armstrong
Question is: how do you clean it up?
A similar change happened when calculators became common in classrooms. Teachers had to get much more specific about when they were allowed and when they weren't. It looks like teachers (and grad student tutors) haven't come to any consensus on when collaboration is OK. It's no wonder the students are confused.
So there is a chicken and egg problem with intellectual honesty. You don't appreciate it until you've acquired experience. And you don't acquire sustainable experience until you start to appreciate it.
The flip side though is that most young people just need to be told and slightly inspired about how important it is. Then they need to develop that over several years. In college can work. Learning to be confident with your own intellectual pursuits based on honesty though -- that's what college is supposed to teach. But yeah, a lot of time in all the competitiveness, it gets lost.
No.
The implied intent of the rule is that READ-ONLY NON-INTERACTIVE Internet use was permitted. To today's students, the Internet is a READ-WRITE INTERACTIVE tool, unless explicitly stated otherwise.
Can you quote the rule because in the article it appears that the intent of the rule was that above all you couldn't interact with other students [on the course] to complete the work but as long as you kept to that rule then general internet resources were fine to use?
If the test is open book, open Internet, that doesn't mean you can ask your friends on Facebook for help, just because Facebook is on the Internet.
I think that the class was likely poorly designed, but that doesn't mean that the students are all in the clear.
That process is completely cut short if you just copy someone else's answer.
Personally, I think some of the most valuable learning happens when discussing course content with my peers. Sometimes, I take the role of the learner, other times I'm forced to test my own understanding when explaining things to others. It's a win-win. Because I engage with others, it's likely that many of the same ideas I put down on paper would be similar to other people's work. But I don't consider that cheating. However, I would never take an answer that somebody else had written, change the words around, and submit it. Not being directly involved in this case at Harvard, it's hard to tell exactly what the students did.
I'm also suspicious of people who claim that sharing notes is in violation of some cheating rule. I posted the source code to most of my school projects on GitHub. If people want to crib off my code that's not my problem -- I did the work, whether or not they want to is their problem.
For example, my undergrad school was very clear that everyone's home directories were set to being publicly readable, and that it was expected that there would be times that you would want to see someone else's source. This was essentially asynchronous lab work: we could always talk though problems together, but we were never able to cut and paste code (the detection system looked for things like whitespace to detect cut-and-paste vs hand-typed).
When there were two matching submissions, both students would be pulled up and then the administration had to figure out who copied who. What I heard on the grapevine was that usually it was really obvious: students that had been struggling were the ones most likely to cheat, and even when they matched in ability, the guilty party would crack pretty quickly and own up.
Personally, I think there are better ways of doing computer science assignments anyway: I tend to TA classes where students work on self-defined projects rather than doing the same rote exercise, so cut-and-paste is no help anyway.
And the problem of the mediocre students who don't cheat, but get graded below the cheaters; and employers, who will tend to hire less honest and less capable graduates.
This is not true at all post-secondary institutions. For example, the University of Waterloo's Policy 71 - Student Discipline[0] explicitly puts the burden on you to prevent others from cribbing your work:
"Students are responsible for demonstrating behaviour that is honest and ethical in their academic work. Such behaviour includes:
<snip>
* Preventing their work from being used by others, e.g. not lending assignments to others, protecting access to computer files."
[0] https://uwaterloo.ca/secretariat/policies-procedures-guideli...
It appears ludicrous on its face. If I leave my house unlocked and someone steals all my things, what ethical boundary have I violated? No criminal is an agent of my will. Not locking my doors does not make me complicit in my own robbery.
Going to a "best-of-best" school is rarely not in someone's best interest. I did go to Harvard undergrad and I did not attend YC, but the draw is similar: sure the prestige matters and I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing, bu the real value is in the people that you live and work with, both peers and mentors.
Does giving money help you get into Harvard? I'm sure it does and if that money benefits the undergraduate population more than having someone who is subjectively less deserving in that class is a detriment, then it is in all students' best interest to have the paying member accepted.
Regarding the cheating: It happens and I'm sure it happens at every campus. I don't think that's what happened to half of this class. It's a large class, it's probably required for Gov concentrators, and it seems clear that the expectations were not understood by the students or the teaching fellows. What I DID do a lot of was pool notes in preparation for an exam, and I wouldn't be surprised if that is responsible for a lot of the consistencies in test answers. Why redefine a term that you have a ("the") definition for in your notes? And honestly, I think it's healthy to have varying levels of respect for different material. If I want to be a physicist, I'm going to really make sure I understand linear algebra. For the Core class on Chinese history, I'm going to pool notes, cram, and try to scrape an A, because the A means more to me than the knowledge.
Sorry to address several topics; I've been reading HN for a while and this is my first comment, so I'm still learning the ropes.
"He said, 'I gave out 120 A’s last year, and I’ll give out 120 more,' "
"Having my degree revoked now would mean I lose my job."
"some said that they will sue the university if any serious punishment is meted out"
"Some students asked whether there was a fundamental contradiction between telling students to use online resources, but not to discuss the test with each other"
These aren't responses of mature adults. This is immature students whining and complaining because they got caught cheating. The test explicitly said "students may not discuss the exam with others." It doesn't matter how it was done last year, or how hard the class is, or how much money they spent on the class. If the exam says not to discuss it with other students and you do, you have cheated.
I went to a small science/engineering school with a very serious honor code, and can assure you there is nothing contradictory about saying "you may use online resources, but do not discuss this test with anyone." It's sad that some Harvard students think their privilege entitles them to ignore the rules.
As someone who attended an "elite" college, I can assure you that you only need 3 things to get into them:
1. A plan to follow (you can easily find great ones online these days) telling you what to do in high school (with respect to classes, extracurricular activities, volunteering, leadership, standardized tests, recommendation letters, etc.)
2. Money (i.e., live in an relatively affluent area with a good public school or attend a good private school)
3. Determination (lots of it)
Your personality doesn't matter at all for anything other than the interview, which you can also pass with flying colors as long as you have basic acting skills (which can be easily learned as well). Basically just smile a lot and don't act like a psychopath at the interview, and you're good to go.
As for getting into a specific college, that's a crapshoot. The admissions process is a black box, and there's no way to guarantee admission to a certain university unless your parents are big donors. But if you apply to, say, all the Ivies + Stanford + MIT, you're guaranteed to get into at least 2 or 3 if you have the 3 things I described above.
http://www.quora.com/College-and-University-Admissions/What-...
Most of schooling is complete crap that you'll never use, or in the case of computer sciences especially it is outdated and/or barely practical by the time you graduate and get a job.
What schooling is important for is teaching how to collaborate and how to learn. Most of the learning you'll actually use on the job is stuff you'll learn on your own or after you are hired by working with other people.
In my opinion from what I read in this article these students working together to figure out a tough test and collaborating are using their brains and learning how to accomplish things. That is vastly more important than an arbitrary, contrived, academia model of learning.
In that system there's a series of successively narrower hoops you have to jump through - if there's only one junior high that teaches math beyond a certain point and not everyone can go there, those kids are going to be better prepared for the high school that teaches more advanced things, so they'll make up a disproportionate amount. Since it's really hard to on the track once you're not on it, at every level of evaluation and selection you keep selecting out of smaller and smaller sections of the initial pool.
The people who come out of that system tend to be supremely competent, but in a limited way. If you take a stand in high school approaching a topic from a different angle and a teacher doesn't like it and gives you a C (the horror), when it comes time to apply for Harvard there are an essentially limitless number of competitors who didn't and who got the A. So people who naturally play it safe and cynical tend to move on, and people who don't tend to adapt or get cut.
Fair disclaimer, the article is over a decade old.
Personally, I think that some of these people are so used to being that #1 student that when they're surrounded by other #1'ers, they do whatever it takes to remain on top, or so their logic goes.
They're not the people who ever build cool things anyway though, so who cares.
This is a _cultural_ difference of MIT; people tend to work with one another, or they tend to fail. They learn it freshman year, and it's ingrained in their psyche from then on.
Interestingly, the line between cooperative work and cheating is difficult to discern and mostly set up by the professor. When the professor does not say one way or another if the work is collaborative, students will generally consider it collaborative.
As for the "[n]ever build cool things" troll, I'll let you google the number of neat inventions by famous MIT / Harvard alums; I won't waste my time.
Also, open book open Internet take home test might as well be code for group test. I always found that to be an absurd way to give a test. If you want to not have cheating give the test in class over the material covered in the course.
http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2012/8/30/academic-dishone...
plainly highlighted the relevant portion of the examination rules. If the Harvard students didn't understand what those rules meant, then the Harvard admission office must be admitting some students with some severe reading comprehension problems.
I realise that I only have this snippet of text, but: Didn't they have a dictionary? Didn't they have search engines?
Some of the attitudes displayed in that article are surprising. And disappointing.
The course instructor set the rules but the implementation was "loose" (casual). The students went one step too far in their liberties. I think it's a collective failure on part of the professor, TFs and students.
It seems that the environment of the exam as well as the difficulty of the questions sugguest that the exam was designed to test collaborative abilities, rather than knowledge recital.