The Disappointing Harvard Cheating Scandal

Were ambiguous test instructions or students with low moral standards to blame for the recent cheating scandal at Harvard?  The 125 students who received letters stating that they were suspected of cheating on the final exam for their "Intro to Congress" class insist that they were doing nothing wrong.  Clearly the administration at Harvard believes that the students committed a serious offense.  According to the Boston Globe, Harvard's Administrative Board wrote these students to tell them that there were suspicious answers on their final and, if cheating is confirmed, it could possibly lead to suspensions or, if they have already graduated, have an impact on their degrees.  How could the Harvard administration and the students have such differing viewpoints regarding this cheating scandal?

Ambiguous Exam Instructions Led to Cheating Scandal

The final in question was a take-home exam.  The professor had instructions on the test that stated that the students should consider it "completely open book, open note, open Internet, etc." according to a Boston Globe article entitled "Harvard Students Bridle over Test Cheating Investigation."

However, the instructions also admonished the students not to discuss their final with anyone else, including tutors, instructors at the writing center, etc. 

Although this seems quite clear, nearly half the students in the class believed that they could still discuss the test with their fellow students, as well as share both their ideas and source material.  The students who were interviewed in the Globe article indicated that they did not see a difference between doing research on the Internet and sharing ideas with their fellow students, as long as they did not actually copy answers that had been written by someone else.  This is despite the fact that the exam instructions clearly told them not to discuss the final with others.

Lack of a Harvard Honor Code

While many other prestigious private universities, such as Virginia's Washington & Lee, have proudly maintained an Honor Code for a hundred years or longer, Harvard has never instituted one.  In fact, the suggestion that one be established at Harvard was rejected in 1985.

Without an Honor Code, many students appear to be confused about exactly what constitutes cheating.  Several students admit that collaboration on other exams in the Intro to Congress class was common.  They also felt that the "open note" rule allowed them to share their notes with others.

Preventing Future Harvard Cheating Scandals

In addition to the current plan to bring the students before the Administrative Board to assess disciplinary actions, there are certainly other steps that Harvard could take to avoid having this situation repeat itself in coming years.

The professors need to give their students very clear instructions regarding what is, and is not, allowed when completing work outside the classroom.

Major exams, such as the final, should probably be proctored and taken in a classroom.  This is the only way to truly assess what a student has actually learned and retained during the semester.

Students should be required to take a freshman class in ethics.  This would be important not only in the classroom but in the "real" business world that these students are likely to enter after graduation.  Does Harvard really want to graduate students who believe that they can use any source they want, legal or not, as long as they do not get caught?

Finally, perhaps it is time for Harvard to establish a clear Honor Code, with specific consequences when it is broken, and promote that Honor Code throughout their campus.  Such an Honor Code would encourage Harvard to graduate young men and women who are not only bright, but who are also people of integrity.

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Photo of Harvard Yard in winter courtesy of www.en.wikipedia.com/Commons

Cheating in High School

Cheating in high school has become so common that hardly a week goes by without a new report on the cheating crisis.

According to a University of Nebraska at Lincoln study, the vast majority of high school students cheat on both tests and homework assignments.  The results of their study indicate that 87 percent of high school kids admitted they had looked at someone else's answers during a test, and 74 percent admitted to sharing their answers with someone else.  An additional 70 percent admitted that they had provided test questions to other students who had not yet taken the test, 91 percent had done their homework with a partner, and 53 percent had based a report on a movie instead of reading the book.

New Types of School Cheating

However, the examples of school cheating mentioned above may be just the tip of the iceberg.  This author sometimes answers questions on a site called WebAnswers.com.  This site allows people to ask all the questions they want, any time of day, and other people will do the research and provide the questioners with answers.  Often these questions deal with subjects such as relationship advice, product recommendations or travel information.  However, frequently the questions sound like test questions or homework questions.  While this author prefers not to answer those questions, other researchers on the site do answer them.  Smart phones make it possible for students to log onto sites like WebAnswers while they are in a classroom taking a test.  Home computers make it easy for them to enter questions into the website when they are home doing their homework.  Either way, they avoid doing any research themselves.  They sit back and let someone else do the work.

Computer technology has also made it easier for students to get other types of unauthorized help with their grades.  They can find pre-written reports online, which they quickly are able to modify and reuse.  Some students are even more direct in their attempts to improve their grades.  A few years ago a student in Newport Beach, California stole the password belonging to one of his teachers.  He logged into the computer system for the school district and changed his own semester grades, as well as the semester grades for several of his friends.  The local newpaper reported that he might have gotten away with changing his own grades, but got caught because so many grades were changed at one time.

Even when grades are not involved, high school students are cheating in order to pass state standardized tests. Last spring, while some students were still taking the California state exams, photos of many pages of the test booklet were spreading around Facebook like wildfire.  Undoubtedly, a few students had taken the photos with their cell phones.  The same pattern of cheating was discovered in June, 2012 at pretigious Stuyvesant High School in New York City when seventy students were implicated in a scandal that involved using their cell phones to photograph the New York State Regents exams while they were taking them.

High School students were also involved in an SAT cheating scandal on Long Island.  Some students were hiring other students to take the SAT exams for them.  The test takers used fake ID's to sit for the exam, and earned a significant amount of money by taking the exam repeatedly.

How to Prevent School Cheating

Many teachers still use the traditional methods to stop students from cheating.  They spread children apart in the classroom and often use more than one version of the test.  These methods do stop some common ways of cheating, such as looking at someone else's answers on a test. 

However, high school students are becoming more creative, and these methods are not adequate.  Schools need to have students check their cell phones at the classroom door if they really want to prevent cheating.  Any cell phone in a classroom is an opportunity to cheat.

In addition, when students are taking exams that are proctored by people who may not know them, the students need to present photo I.D.'s, and may even need to be fingerprinted in order to take major exams such as the SAT.  This may seem excessive, but it could be the only way to prevent some types of academic dishonesty.

Teachers may also want to put more weight on work that is completed entirely in the classroom.  For example, essays, journals, quizes, papers, lab reports and math calculations performed in front of the teacher may need to carry more weight than assignments and projects that are completed outside the classroom.

Teachers also need to discuss with students exactly what it means to cheat.  Students need to understand that it is cheating if they give answers to another student; it is cheating if they share their homework with others; it is cheating if they photograph a test; it is cheating if they use a website to get an answer during a test or while they are doing homework.

Many educators refer to high school cheating as an epidemic.  Allowing students to cheat without penalty is not fair to those students who work hard and choose not to cheat.  Schools need to take a much more proactive approach to preventing cheaters from succeeding in the classroom.

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You are reading from the blog:  http://lies-and-liars.blogspot.com

Photo of teenager courtesy of www.morguefile.com