Harvard Students in Cheating Scandal Say Collaboration Was Accepted

[alp227]

Source: NYT

Harvard students suspected in a major cheating scandal said on Friday that many of the accusations are based on innocent — or at least tolerated — collaboration among students, and with help from graduate-student teachers who sometimes gave them answers to test questions.

Students said they were tripped up by a course whose tests were confusing, whose grading was inconsistent, and for which the professor and teaching assistants gave contradictory signals about what was expected. They face the possibility of a one-year suspension from Harvard or revocation of their diplomas if they have already graduated, and some said that they will sue the university if any serious punishment is meted out.

In years past, the course, Introduction to Congress, had a reputation as one of the easiest at Harvard College. Some of the 279 students who took it in the spring semester said that the teacher, Matthew B. Platt, an assistant professor of government, told them at the outset that he gave high grades and that neither attending his lectures nor the discussion sessions with graduate teaching fellows was mandatory.

“He said, ‘I gave out 120 A’s last year, and I’ll give out 120 more,’ ” one accused student said.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/01/education/students-of-harvard-cheating-scandal-say-group-work-was-accepted.html

[Indydem]

1. Expell them all.

"Instructions on the final exam said, “students may not discuss the exam with others.” "

If you can't follow simple instructions on a freakin take-home test, you probably aren't "Harvard Material."

[dsc]

2. the stuff writes itself

a bunch of cheats in a class called Introduction to Congress.

[The_Casual_Observer]

3. !!!!

[alp227]

5. Or future interns for ALEC?

[postulater]

4. Crappy school.

Wouldn't send Mitts dog there.

[global1]

6. Come On - This Is Harvard - I Thought The Students Were The Best Of The Best - The Cream....

of the crop - and they have to resort to cheating? I didn't think cheating went on at a school the caliber of Harvard. I bet some of the kids from the richest families in the U.S. go there. They are smart - aren't they? They shouldn't have to cheat.

And what's this - if any serious punishment is meted out because they cheated - they-they - are going to sue the university?

Sue the university - because they cheated and got caught - and they were punished.

What is this world coming to?

I wonder how many banksters on Wall Street went to Harvard and cheated? Maybe that's where they learned how to cheat us people out of our retirement money and homes. Maybe that's why Congress is so deficient. How many of those in Congress took that class at Harvard - and cheated?

Maybe we should get a class action suit together - THE AMERICAN PEOPLE - and sue Harvard for graduating students that learned how to cheat at that university. But I'm sure the university would use the defense that they learned to cheat well there - and that Harvard taught them well. Maybe we should sue Congress?

The proof is in the pudding - look how they cheated America - both the banksters and Congress.

Awhh - that's about all I can take - lies from the Repug party that everyone knows are lies - that go unchallenged. And now cheating at Harvard - where those that cheated get to sue the university if they are punished.

What the hell is this world coming to? Demoralized!!!!!

I'm going to bed - I've had it. This is truly the fall of the American Empire.

[Confusious]

7. You answered your own question

I bet some of the kids from the richest families in the U.S. go there.and they have to resort to cheating?

Yea, they do. How do you think mommy and daddy did it?

They are smart - aren't they?

Was George bush? legacy all of of them. You don't need the grades, just the connections.

[erpowers]

8. You Forgot the Sarcasm Smilie

I am not trying to be mean to you, but you were joking about being shocked that kids at Harvard cheat, right. I am not shocked that they cheated. I am shocked that they did it in such a poor way. Seriously, they copied the same words to the point that someone reading the papers was able to see a pattern. I would have thought that kids who went to Harvard would have been smart enough to write papers that would not have a pattern.

[Igel]

13. It's cultural.

In high schools they're taught to collaborate and help each other. It's a way for higher-achieving kids to be given something to do to help the teacher deal with the lower-achieving kids. Every benefits, the thinking is.

Teachers are pushed to have the kids do team-learning. It's easy on the poor little dears. There's a group of 4? One person's designated "brain" and the others are designated other parts--usually butts, from what I can see.

The problem is the kids can't discriminate between when it's okay to do this and when it's not okay. Since they try to push the limits anyway, any activity that starts off with collaboration and the becomes individual work is de facto collaborative straight through. To keep it from being otherwise is tough.

But it works the other way, too. "Do your work and then compare answers" becomes "low achieving kids dawdling, knowing they can copy down their peers' answers."

You don't want to have to help 30 kids with 2 questions each in 40 minutes, so the easy thing to do is say, "If you have a problem, discuss your question with your neighbor." That's taken to mean, "Share answers." And if they do and you call them out on it, "Well, we talked about the answer so of course we have the same answers."

They've been mistrained. Then they go out and get jobs. Suddenly, those who came up with the answers resent having their answers "stolen," and those who copied the answers are confused when their company gets hit with a large copyright infringement suit.

[Exultant Democracy]

9. Open book, open note, open internet test. It seems almost impossible to cheat.

If everyone shared the same notes on a google document then they would all have the same answers more or less. I think the course, the teacher and the grades are a joke, but it doesn't seem like you can accuse the kids of cheating.

[Nikia]

12. I don't know about this class or the content of the exam

But when I was given a take home exam allowing open book, notes, and other reference material, the answers that were expected to the questions were more like papers than a few sentences.
If Harvard is allowing open book, open note, and open internet on the test for a test that consists mostly of fill in the blank or even a few paragraphs, that is just wrong. It would also be weird that anyone who would have gotten into Harvard would feel the need to resort to cheating unless the questions really did not have anything to do with the lectures or texts.

[bemildred]

10. The whole plagiarism thing needs to be re-thought.

I realize the importance of proper attribution, and of originality; but in students classwork which is not for publication, a great deal of time is wasted for nothing in the vain search for verbal formulas that nobody else has thought of yet. The very fact that one uses software now to do searches in the attempt to ensure that no plagiarism has been committed tells you what you need to know about it. And as the volume of world literature grows exponentiallly, the problem grows likewise. It is one thing to copy a long passage verbatim, from an author or another student, and another thing to attempt to say the same thing in your own still very unoriginal way.

And there needs to be some correspondence between the sins committed and the punishments inflicted, which is not present in the "no tolerance" attitude that is demonstrated when someone is made an example of.

And in such a fatuous class, the whole idea is ricidulous. their real sin is failing to take the class seriously even though it's not a serious class at all.

[brentspeak]

11. “the exams are absolutely absurd and don’t match the material covered in the lecture at all,”

Welcome to the world of practically every college student who doesn't attend student-coddling, hand-holding top-20 "elite" schools such as Harvard -- a world inhabited by just enough hostile and all-powerful professors who believe their mission as college professors is to act as a very narrow gateway to grad school/professional school rather than as actual academic instructors.

Only difference is, in the world of the non-elite schools, the administration usually doesn't do squat if a professor is screwing over the students. The Harvard admin will likely roll over in this case.