It was announced yesterday that a professor at the University of Florida had discovered that over 200 students in his business course had cheated on their midterm exams. Professor Richard Quinn had suspected cheating when he had looked at the statistics and found that many had achieved scores one and a half grades higher than ever before. This suspicion was confirmed when an anonymous tip from a student explained that advanced copies of the test had been leaked.
What makes this case even more astonishing is that the course is comprised of seniors only, unfortunately revealing that the almost four years of schooling in a university had basically been a waste morally. Even worse, the University of Florida is known for its anti-cheating technology, involving extensive camera usage, with others serving as monitors to carefully scrutinize all students during exams.
The professor rightly gave a long lecture in front of all his students presenting his findings, and generously allowed those who cheated to confess and take a four hour ethics class without being expelled. Quinn gave these individuals a day to do so, and said that he would expel those who did not. He is, however, going to make all 600 students retake the test, even if they did not cheat, which seems like a fair deal and a practical manner in which to obtain genuine grades.
While the article did have some opinions from students that scorned the cheating, it was alarming that another student told his name to the interviewer and proclaimed that "everyone cheats", as if this incident was totally innocuous.
Keep in mind that all of these cheaters were students looking to become businessmen and businesswomen. It certainly does not bode well for the future to have so many unethical individuals in our world. Think of all the citizens who fall because of Ponzi schemes, such as that of Bernie Madoff. It is extremely alarming that more and more students are trying to work for the grade rather than really learning and working to become the best in whatever job they want to pursue. Maybe schools should step in more to palliate this situation by having mandatory ethics courses. These classes might be even more helpful if taught to children at a young age.
Thursday, November 11, 2010
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8 comments:
Cheating is a widespread problem that plagues schools nationwide, not only at the University of Florida. Furthermore, it begins far earlier than college. This isn't a problem that could easily be fixed. Mandatory classes won't single-handedly end cheating. In our highly competitive world, there is more pressure on students to succeed. Consequentially, students who are unable to keep up are forced to comprise their morals in order to meet the high standards of society. I'm not saying that we should lower our standards but we need to recognize the depth of this issue.
The amount of cheating today is disgusting. I agree with Shorhon- a mandatory ethics class will probably not solve anything. I think the real problem is the kind of culture of entitlement and materialism in America. There is no easy answer to this problem, but maybe some things that will help are harsher punishments for cheating, rewards for not cheating, parents teaching their children that money is not the only important thing in life, and having everybody read The Cheating Culture. And also know, not everybody cheats, so that is not an excuse.
How will a mandatory ethics class help anything at all? Frankly, it'll be a waste of time. And to say that everyone does NOT cheat is ridiculous. And you can compare cheating on a test to instituting a Ponzi scheme? I mean... I get your point, but they are two very different things. Ponzi schemes that carry out to the extent of Bernie Madoff's are far and few. I agree that cheating is a problem, but I think it's kind of uh. not right to say that college is a "waste morally" because seniors can't resist the temptation to cheat.
But whatever.
What if the problem is the pervasive mentality of today's "good" students?
You have to succeed. You have to perform well on tests. You have to get into the best college/medical school/what have you. You have to be perfect, or at least better than everyone else.
Maybe it's this pressure that leads people to cheat.
Perhaps it is not even our unique culture of "just get the job done" that prompts people to cheat. It seems that people all over the world have a desire to succeed (in the way that takes the least effort) to have an edge over others. There will always be people who do not cheat, but to level the playing field for those that are tempted, stricter regulations and punishments are needed. The decision to cheat basically weighs on a subconscious cost-benefit analysis. The higher the probability of being caught and the greater the disciplinary action of being caught, the less likely someone will cheat. Likewise, the higher the payoff, the more likely someone will cheat. Of course, this model does not work every time; but in general, it is quite effective. Why are people less likely to cheat on major research papers than on small assignments? Because they think there's a greater chance of them getting caught, and the consequences are much greater.
The pressures of our modern society, as introduced by Anthony Lu, definitely have a huge contributing factor to the decision of cheating, but I feel like stress is a huge causative determinant as well. With the new standard of having kids going to stable 4-year colleges, there is just an overwhelming amount of stress going on. Some kids simply don't have enough time to do their work because of all of the stress going on in their lives.
Yes, it is true that people are more likely to cheat if the risk of getting caught is low, but isn't it also true that if people have plenty of time to do their work, they'll actually do it themselves and avoid cheating? This is assuming that all students are honorable ones, and I'm assuming that all the students at the University of Florida don't cheat regularly.
No matter what the cause, cheating is still an unacceptable part of our society.
Once again, we see a situation where cheating is the solution that people resort to so that they can "get ahead" and "excel". However, cheating will catch up to them in the future and in this case, it did for the students. I found it extremely generous for the professor to not expell the students who did cheat and let everyone retake the test. Anyway, it's not like people want to be unethical, it's just their actions say that they want to become unethical.
I would just like to disagree with Eric's comment about how cheating is an "unaccepted part of out society." I feel like it is accepted by society because I often hear people saying that everyone cheats. I do not think that it is right for people to accept cheating as a norm in society but it is everywhere. That is why teachers have to resort to things like turnitin.com to check for plagerism and always try to prevent cheating during tests. Even though I don't want to admit it, it is a norm to expect people to cheat.
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