# Cheating on exams in college



## Carlito (May 28, 2008)

Hi,

I was wondering what your views would be on the subject of cheating during exams or presenting work of others as your own (plagiarism) during your college years. This came about when talking to fellow foreign engineers, who have told me, that in some of their home countries, cheating, or paying the instructor for passing grade is the norm for some rather the exception. The reason cited most often is that it is impossible to learn the material, as the general level of education is way higher than at US institutions. (This view seems to be universal - is our system really so weak?)

To add to that, some countries do not have an equivalent to the US PE, and upon graduation, one already becomes a fully privileged PE in their county (US equivalent). This issue in particular is obviously troubling, for obvious reasons. You may think it does not concern you - but if you like to travel abroad, you begin to wonder...

Myself, having been educated in the US, did not recall witnessing a case of cheating during the exams – but was I the exception from the rule? What has been your experience – both US and foreign educated individuals? It will be interesting to hear your voices.

Regards.


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## C-Dog (May 28, 2008)

Those who cheat only cheat themselves. When I was an undergrad (frosh and Soph years) I witnessed people cheating on exams. These were the part of the 60% that transfered to business majors. I also witnessed people (two in 5 years) getting caught. I know they failed the course, don't know what else happened. As an upperclassman and in grad school, I did not witness any cheating.

In the classes I teach now, if I find someone cheating, they fail the class and I report them to the department head for further action. Luckily I have not had to do that.


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## maryannette (May 28, 2008)

My opinion is that cheating should be punished severely. I think cheating has always been around, but I think it is more widespread in the U.S. now than we want to acknowledge. I heard a report recently that some universities (Wake Forest is the most well-known) have stopped requiring any standardized test (SAT or ACT) for admission. I'm in favor of standardized tests because they are more controlled and less prone to cheating. I also agree that exams should be required for PE license and other professional licenses. I know of many students who made straight A's in high school, yet could not score 1000 on SAT (old 1600 system) even after specialized tutoring. That tells me that the straight A's were not legitimate. I also know of people who falsified information on resumes (had a PE license when they didn't). That's just more cheating.

Okay, now that I've got that out, let me say that I despise cheating.


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## ODB_PE (May 28, 2008)

In graduate school my program was about 2/3rds foreign. At least on homeworks, those guys (and gals) stuck together. I would bust my ass and only get partial credit. Meanwhile, most of the class was getting perfect scores. It was quite apparent something was going on, and then I heard that the perfect scores were a result of knowing the grader, and/or having all of the solutions banked.

Curiously my homework scores were WAY below average, while my exam scores were well above average. I'm guessing because the professors wrote new exams and graded them themselves. I'm also guessing the professors knew about the homework sharing, but knew that the exams would take care of things.

There is no place for cheaters in any academic program, or anywhere else. One way or another the honest people end up paying the price.


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## Casey (May 28, 2008)

Pretty much everyone at my school did the "homework sharing"... It wasn't just the foreign students... But when assignments only counted for no more than 10% of your final grade, it was the exams that sorted out the people that actually learned their stuff and those that were riding somone else's coat tails.

As for cheating on the exam, I had never seen that personally... But I believe there were a few cases at my school where other engineering students in different classes were caught and disciplined (I don't remember the punishment)...

I don't agree with cheating and I hope that they will get their due sooner than later....

As for places that say it is the norm to cheat and to pay for your marks... Well that may be the norm, but that does not make it ethical.


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## Vinsanity (May 28, 2008)

For me personally, I dont mind cheating, if they are not caught, if I caught them, no questions asked I have failed all of them. I use to teach in the university in my homeland for eight years in BS Civil Engineering. It is the students who will later pay the price, knowledge not learnt well is what they get. After they graduate they are required to write down 16 hrs for Engineering board licensure exams to get valid engineering license, and for most cheaters they will surely flank on this exam and the pass mark is pretty high at 70%.


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## ODB_PE (May 28, 2008)

Casey said:


> Pretty much everyone at my school did the "homework sharing"... It wasn't just the foreign students... But when assignments only counted for no more than 10% of your final grade, it was the exams that sorted out the people that actually learned their stuff and those that were riding somone else's coat tails.


I didn't necessarily mean to single out foreign students, but at least in the first year they seemed to have a much more active "network" - we jokingly referred to them as the mafia. None of my few friends had access to the solutions, but then I was the old guy so everybody probably thought I was a narc.

Homework only 10% I could handle, but in most of my classes homework was in the 25% range.


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## Vinsanity (May 28, 2008)

ODB_PE said:


> I didn't necessarily mean to single out foreign students, but at least in the first year they seemed to have a much more active "network" - we jokingly referred to them as the mafia. None of my few friends had access to the solutions, but then I was the old guy so everybody probably thought I was a narc.
> Homework only 10% I could handle, but in most of my classes homework was in the 25% range.



When i was teaching in the university, I dont give homeworks, my grading system was only based on exams, that's it , I dont care if students wont attend my class, my strategy was if, you can pass my exams you will pass, if not you will fail.

Giving homeworks will encourage copying and not understanding the content at all.


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## IlPadrino (May 28, 2008)

Casey said:


> Pretty much everyone at my school did the "homework sharing"...


I've got no problem with sharing homework... Like already mentioned, it's easy to see what's going on when some do great on homework and poor on exams while others do poor on homework and great on exams.

Exam cheating is different. There should be no tolerance and the penalty swift (like automatic failure).


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## Dexman1349 (May 28, 2008)

The fraternity I belong to has a large, extensive library dedicated to the classes at school. It had notebooks dedicated to each individual class/teacher combo that someone had attended and contained copies of the exams offered (if they were allowed to keep a copy) and the homework/notes. With this information it was easy to determine which professors re-used homework assignments, test questions, etc. However most professors were savvy to this and would adjust their class each semester so that the old information could still be used, but only as a study guide. Most of the lab books were used simply to help with formatting / administrative type "sharing" that was re-used every class.

As far as full blown cheating ("Hey, what you get for #2?"), I never saw it occur through the 5 years I was at school. That's not to say it never happened, I just never saw it.

I agree with all of the above posts in that cheating only hurts yourself. When the exams really matter (the FE, PE, SE), if you don't know the info you're screwed.


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## squishles10 (May 28, 2008)

Vandy has an honor code- you have to sign the front of your exams saying you won't cheat and you'll report someone else if they do. There was a huge scandel my freshman year with people copying temp files in the computer lab, but then they'd kick out the people who's work was copied not the ones who copied it. It was very political and frankly disheartening. I think it happens everywhere though. I never "copied" homework, but I got coached through a few, otherwise I wouldn't have been able to do it. I don't consider that cheating though, since homework is supposed to be practice.


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## Dleg (May 28, 2008)

I knew a few guys in college who were "cheating" on homework, but I never saw any cheating on exams. Perhaps I was just oblivious.

The best teacher I had in college was the guy who taught the freshman design class and senior level "instrumentation". You could get your grades the standard way (homework and exams), or by doing well on the class design projects. In freshman year it was a pole-climbing machine race, and in the senior class, it was programming a robotic arm (sort of) to transfer a certain number of ball bearings in as short a time as possible. If you could win those contests, or otherwise get an 'A' on the project, your previous grades didn't matter, and you didn't have to take the final exam - you got an 'A' in the class.

It was on the ball-bearing robot contest that I first ever suspected some "collaboration" among certain teams, who had what appeared to be absolutely brilliant solutions, but I learned later that they had accessed info (similar to the fraternity library mentioned above) from previous classes, and already knew the best solutions to try. No original thought. Nowadays, with the internet, I would almost expect that as a requirement - look up what everyone else before you has done - but his was in the days before the internet, and we were supposed to work it out on our own. (I'm proud to say I got one of the "other" A's on both projects, apparently by succeeding with our own original designs, though not winning the contest. We were also very clever in our write up, extolling the virtues of our design "can carry heavy loads, 100% reliable compared to the other teams, etc.)

But anyway, it doesn't surprise me to hear that paying for grades is common in some countries, just as paying bribes for everything else is common in those countries. But certainly not all countries.


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## Vinsanity (May 29, 2008)

Dleg said:


> I knew a few guys in college who were "cheating" on homework, but I never saw any cheating on exams. Perhaps I was just oblivious.
> The best teacher I had in college was the guy who taught the freshman design class and senior level "instrumentation". You could get your grades the standard way (homework and exams), or by doing well on the class design projects. In freshman year it was a pole-climbing machine race, and in the senior class, it was programming a robotic arm (sort of) to transfer a certain number of ball bearings in as short a time as possible. If you could win those contests, or otherwise get an 'A' on the project, your previous grades didn't matter, and you didn't have to take the final exam - you got an 'A' in the class.
> 
> It was on the ball-bearing robot contest that I first ever suspected some "collaboration" among certain teams, who had what appeared to be absolutely brilliant solutions, but I learned later that they had accessed info (similar to the fraternity library mentioned above) from previous classes, and already knew the best solutions to try. No original thought. Nowadays, with the internet, I would almost expect that as a requirement - look up what everyone else before you has done - but his was in the days before the internet, and we were supposed to work it out on our own. (I'm proud to say I got one of the "other" A's on both projects, apparently by succeeding with our own original designs, though not winning the contest. We were also very clever in our write up, extolling the virtues of our design "can carry heavy loads, 100% reliable compared to the other teams, etc.)
> ...



On the issue about projects and group project performances, I wouldnt give high grades and the issue here is, most "top students" will work on it and other team members will basically just go with the flow not doing anything or not participating at all, as far as I am concerened i wont allow this, it is better to be have it done individually, and you will see better results. students that doenst know anything will surely won't come up good on this, and this system is fair.


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## EM_PS (May 29, 2008)

For my recent collegiate escapade, there was rampant homework sharing; unfortunately it went to the point of "can I get a copy of that mathcad / matlab / excel file"? Lot of people seemed content to only earn 1/3 of their degree.

Would programming a TI86 w/ equations / derivatives / integrals be considered cheating? :dunno: Some profs were ok about an index card w/ pertinent formulas for exams (akin to the FS / FE exam ref manuals), but many would have none of that - so yeah, i did plug some of the pertinent formulas in to 'assist' in exams, but never thought it to be cheating -

Oh yeah, Valparaiso &amp; Hope College both had the honor code thing as Squishles had mentioned - my last school did not


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## engineergurl (May 29, 2008)

The school I got my BS at had a store in the common area run by the student government, you could donate copies of your old tests and homework and notebooks, and then anyone could go into the store and pay to photocopy them. If the professors didn't want to allow their stuff in there, then they went and took it out, but a lot of them had the attitude, I change the tests and it's practice work if they work through the problems. My calc professor always left the problems the same, BUT changed the numbers, so you could work the problems and know what you were doing, but you still had to figure out the actual problem.

I guess what I'm saying is that using your resources isn't cheating in my opinion as long as you are using them to learn. But what's the point if you don't bother to actually try to understand the stuff? You could get a piece of paper saying you learned but the first time you had to use the knowledge in the real world, you wouldn't have a clue and your boss would eventually figure it out. That makes you, your school and your teachers look bad and sets it up for everyone to fail in the end.

With internet classes these days, a lot is going to be changing. You are giving up contact with other students, the professor, past students, etc etc etc. Yeah, you might be able to manage a few papers, but most exams are proctored so you have to take them for real.

There will always be dishonest people, but most people are ethical (or so I like to think) and if they aren't it will bite them eventually.


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## benbo (May 29, 2008)

error_matrix said:


> For my recent collegiate escapade, there was rampant homework sharing; unfortunately it went to the point of "can I get a copy of that mathcad / matlab / excel file"? Lot of people seemed content to only earn 1/3 of their degree.Would programming a TI86 w/ equations / derivatives / integrals be considered cheating? :dunno: Some profs were ok about an index card w/ pertinent formulas for exams (akin to the FS / FE exam ref manuals), but many would have none of that - so yeah, i did plug some of the pertinent formulas in to 'assist' in exams, but never thought it to be cheating -
> 
> Oh yeah, Valparaiso &amp; Hope College both had the honor code thing as Squishles had mentioned - my last school did not


I don't know if this would be considered cheating, but that's pretty radical that they wouldn't allow a sheet of notes. I don't think I took a class in my EE program that didn't allow you a sheet of notes. Unfortuneately, it didn't help much. I could have had a full library and still not been able to solve half the problems they gave us.


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## Dleg (May 29, 2008)

^That reminds me of freshman physics. I think by Physics II we were allowed two sheets of notes, but it was still brutally tough. We had a Chinese professor who was a brilliant researcher, apparently, but a terrible teacher. Everyone I knew who passed ended up going to tutoring sessions put on by sympathetic grad students.


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## Casey (May 30, 2008)

error_matrix said:


> For my recent collegiate escapade, there was rampant homework sharing; unfortunately it went to the point of "can I get a copy of that mathcad / matlab / excel file"? Lot of people seemed content to only earn 1/3 of their degree.Would programming a TI86 w/ equations / derivatives / integrals be considered cheating? :dunno: Some profs were ok about an index card w/ pertinent formulas for exams (akin to the FS / FE exam ref manuals), but many would have none of that - so yeah, i did plug some of the pertinent formulas in to 'assist' in exams, but never thought it to be cheating -


For all my calculus courses no calculators were allowed on the exam (you don't need a calculator to do most calculus anyways)....

But for all exams that did require a calculator, the faculty of engineering (similar to the NCEES) had their set of approved calculators to be used on exams. And none of them allowed you to store any functions...

Most courses permitted you to bring on a "cheat sheet", which you could put anything you wanted on it as long as it was in your own handwriting. Luckily I can write test at 1/16th so I never filled up my sheets completely. I always had some room left over.

Other classes provided the cheat sheet for you or were open book.


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## Capt Worley PE (May 30, 2008)

One physics class I had, the professor stationed TAs outside the entrances and cleared all the calculators memory before they'd let you in.

Most class I had allowed one 'cheat sheet' to use on the test. The idea was that in the real world you'd have access to the formulas anyway.


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## maryannette (May 30, 2008)

So ... if you use SparkNotes, are you cheating? I thought it was a good thing for engineering students who really don't need to "waste" time reading literature. But, if you are a Lit major, should SparkNotes be considered cheating?

Just wanted to throw some fuel on the fire.


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## SSmith (May 30, 2008)

I was accused of cheating on a project my last semester of undergrad in a class that I had a 99.6 in.

The project was to use some simulation software to optimize the production of a multi-stage distillation column based on certain parameters. The only access to the software was the department's computer lab. I had just worked ~4 hours in the morning to finish up the project before a weekend and another group came in from the same class to work the same assignment.

About a week later I get a call from the Dean wanting to talk to me about some urgent matters. It ends up that another group had the same exact work as I did on that project and wanted an explanation.

I suppose that my surprise at the whole situation wasn't enough, nor my explanation of how cheating occured that I didn't know about. So I was docked a letter grade for the class bringing me down to a 89.6 without the option to round it up to a 90. 

I found out a few years later that the group didnt copy the work at all. The software did not automatically reseed the random number generator until either instructed to reseed it OR shut down the program. Of course training was extremely limited with the software (and didnt include the role of random number generators at all). So when I got up from the computer, I did the curteous thing and left the program up for the next group.

It still bothers me to this day. AND to rub salt in the wound, the professor that made the allegations is one I have to use as a PE reference due to the limited number of PEs in the Army working combat developments... I am still waiting for his comity reference letter. :angry:


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## ODB_PE (May 30, 2008)

SSmith said:


> It still bothers me to this day. AND to rub salt in the wound, the professor that made the allegations is one I have to use as a PE reference due to the limited number of PEs in the Army working combat developments... I am still waiting for his comity reference letter. :angry:


How does that work? Isn't the reference supposed to be making a specific statement as to your character? Did he ever acknowledge that he erred in his accusations?


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## SSmith (May 30, 2008)

ODB_PE said:


> How does that work? Isn't the reference supposed to be making a specific statement as to your character? Did he ever acknowledge that he erred in his accusations?


In the sum of my working experience with the Army, I have worked with exactly 1 PE. So to get up to the requisite 3, I have had to use previous coop PE supervisor and the one PE in the department. So that is why I have to use him. The topic has not been brought up since then short of an offhanded remark that he was glad lawyers didn't get involved with the whole situation. That can be interpreted either way I suppose. I just make sure to send a copy of my resume to show my professional development. It hasnt been a problem so far; but if it ever got raised, I would be glad to have a frank conversation about it. 
The bottom line is that I didnt cheat. Regardless of what their "punish everyone" policy assigned blame. If it was a character issue, I would probably be more inclined to not talk about it.


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## Dleg (May 30, 2008)

^Have you sent him your explanation? Maybe you should - maybe he still remembers that.


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## ALBin517 (Jun 3, 2008)

I think the root of the problem is that, for years, tech schools got complaints from employers that their graduates did not work well with other people. So when I went back to school (2000-2002) we were constantly given group assignments. Then the time for testing or individual assignments came around and it was tough for some to go from constant sharing to not sharing at all, with anybody.

The worst cheating I saw might not have been really cheating. It was in a soils final exam. Somebody had uploaded the entire exam from the previous semester (same instructor) onto their TI calculator. Then the sharing started. Probably 80% of the class used TI and I'd guess 95% of them had the previous exam for the exam. I felt I did as well as other exams but I went from 10% above the class average to 10% below the class average. The prof told me he was surprised that I did not improve as much as everybody else. I wanted to tell him what was up but who was I going to be asked to group-up with the following semesters? After graduation, I told the prof via email but he never replied.


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## EM_PS (Jun 3, 2008)

ALBin517 said:


> I think the root of the problem is that, for years, tech schools got complaints from employers that their graduates did not work well with other people. So when I went back to school (2000-2002) we were constantly given group assignments. Then the time for testing or individual assignments came around and it was tough for some to go from constant sharing to not sharing at all, with anybody.
> The worst cheating I saw might not have been really cheating. It was in a soils final exam. Somebody had uploaded the entire exam from the previous semester (same instructor) onto their TI calculator. Then the sharing started. Probably 80% of the class used TI and I'd guess 95% of them had the previous exam for the exam. I felt I did as well as other exams but I went from 10% above the class average to 10% below the class average. The prof told me he was surprised that I did not improve as much as everybody else. I wanted to tell him what was up but who was I going to be asked to group-up with the following semesters? After graduation, I told the prof via email but he never replied.


Yeah, TI's are great for that - they really outta be outlawed in undergrad, at least for tests anyway. I found that the warm, fuzzy group dynamic you speak of usually resulted in 1 guy who knew what the hell was going on, and the others in the group riding along on his shirttails. I think i would rather have cranky loaners working for me, than know-nothing, lazy do-nothings - this coming from one of the guys who usually knew what the hell was going on, resulting ironically in someone preferring to not have to work with other idiots (i mean people of course).


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## klk (Jun 5, 2008)

error_matrix said:


> I found that the warm, fuzzy group dynamic you speak of usually resulted in 1 guy who knew what the hell was going on, and the others in the group riding along on his shirttails.


Yeah, this happened to me a bit in college - I would help one of my close friends with the homework and really try to explain it to her so she would hopefully grasp the concepts when it came to test time. She would then let one person copy her assignment, who would let another person copy it, and so on. By the time I went to compare my answers with others to make sure I hadn't made mistakes, nearly everyone in the class had the same answers as me because they had essentially copied "my" assignment. I didn't really care too much as these people usually didn't do so well on the exams . . .

I didn't see any cheating going on during tests, although I'll never forget the first engineering class I took with my then-boyfriend (who is now my husband). We took dynamics together, and he wasn't aware of my test taking techniques (I fill in the scantron at the end b/c I think its more efficient). Well he didn't know that and when he glanced over at my scantron half way through the final exam (it was empty) he thought I was failing the exam and started panicking and trying to show me his answers. After going into the exam with a better grade than me, his final exam score brought down his entire grade for the class and I beat him by half a letter grade. We weren't competitive or anything . . .

:17:


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## RIP - VTEnviro (Jun 6, 2008)

My wife did her PhD work at Dartmouth. They have a pretty strict honor code there from the sounds of it.

There were two students in one of her math classes that turned in identical homework assignments regularly. Homework was supposed to be individual for this class. One day they just suddenly weren't there anymore. Turns out they were expelled by the school's judicial committee. Since they weren't students anymore, their student visas were revoked and they were both sent back to China.


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## EM_PS (Jun 6, 2008)

^^ good thing China's got WAY better schools!

 wrong thread. . . .


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## engineergurl (Jun 6, 2008)

error_matrix said:


> ^^ good thing China's got WAY better schools!
> wrong thread. . . .


:Locolaugh:


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## Samzmom08 (Jun 9, 2008)

I know a PhD student in my class used cheat note during the exam, got suspended permanetly. Prof. said that this person, especially at doctorate level, should have known better not to cheat.


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## Carlito (Jun 10, 2008)

Samzmom08 said:


> I know a PhD student in my class used cheat note during the exam, got suspended permanetly. Prof. said that this person, especially at doctorate level, should have known better not to cheat.


This is unbelievable!

What a hopeless sod!


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## hountzmj (Jun 12, 2008)

Cheating was rampant at my school for the first 2 years I was there. The professors just tended to write the exams in such a manner as that it didn't matter if you cheated or not because cheating generally didn't help.

By the time junior year rolled around the vast majority of the cheaters had moved on to other programs. At that point the professors started allowing us to have a "cheat sheet" of formulas, notes and such for exams. That really leveled things out. Pretty soon there wasn't anyone left who had been a cheater in the first place.

--hountzmj


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## sehad (Jun 18, 2008)

If you were caught cheating at my university it was automatic dismissal from the university. NO QUESTIONS ASKED! To me cheating can be overlooked in highschool to an extent but it only hurts you in college. You don't learn the matieral and you have a test 4 years after you "cheated" your way through college that is virtually impossible to cheat on!

Out Engineering department had block classes, meaning that engineering students took a progression of classes together. I took most of my engineering classes with the people I started with my freshman year. Most of our homework was group oriented that fostered a leadership and meeting deadlines atmosphere as well as dealing with multiple personalaties. I think this served me well, so cheating on homework was not an issue. This was undergrad of course, not sure how the masters program worked.

But, can you really be prideful in something that you had to steal from others to get? My gpa was not impressive but I finished the program in 4 years without cheating. This means more to me than finishing with a 3.6 or better but not doing the work myself.


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## Katiebug (Jun 18, 2008)

Did I see it? Honestly, I was usually too busy concentrating on my own test or exam to be looking around the room at what everyone else was up to!

Most classes allowed you to do homework with others as long as you handed in your own problem set. For my junior and senior years I actually did most of my studying with two friends, and it was genuinely collaborative. Some of the other little study groups weren't so collaborative and one person would wind up doing 3/4 of the work and the others would ride their coattails. I got lucky in that regard.

I _know_ people cheated on homework. I know this because I worked as an undergrad TA and grader for Intro to Machine Design during my senior year. The prof's policy was that you had to show all of your work; you couldn't just write down an answer and have that be acceptable. I saw so many situations where little cliques of students would all have the same answers, the same exact equations and formulas written in the same order, and eventually towards the end of the problem set inevitably a few of them would just copy the answers only from their friends. They were not given credit for those answers anyways, so after a month or so most of them gave up and just handed in the problems they finished.

Nearly all of the engineering professors had homework as no more than 10-15% of the overall grade, so even if you "cheated" on homework, you were only cheating yourself out of being able to handle the projects/labs/exams.

For class projects when not otherwise specified, I wasn't above searching on the Internet for examples or similar questions that might lead me to a solution method. My course grade in Finite Element Methods was based solely on three projects, the first of which was demonstrated almost verbatim by an ANSYS tutorial at another university. We let the professor know, and he added an optional extra credit portion for those who were interested in taking it further than the other school's tutorial. I did it (let's just say it involved wine, wine bottles, and uncorking them - a no brainer!).

In grad school (for business, not engineering) there was no need for anyone to cheat. I found my management degree to be absurdly easy in comparison to my undergrad engineering coursework. If someone had needed to cheat in that program, they were probably too stupid or too lazy to have been admitted in the first place. However, I did find that some classmates would take advantage of team projects to sit on their laurels and do nothing, then take credit for the work.


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## sehad (Jun 19, 2008)

I had a class with my roommate. I saw him cheating on an exam in out classes. Here's the question.........Obviously I didn't turn him in or point and say oooohhhhhhhhh.

Is it ethically wrong not to turn someone in if you catch them cheating?


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## EM_PS (Jun 19, 2008)

that's a tuffie! With the honor code system @ certain colleges / universities, its pretty much spelled out that it would be your duty of righteousness to turn in the offender! but getting caught at cheating is often hard enuff. . .how are they going to 'catch' a perp who did not 'do' his civic duty?


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## sehad (Jun 19, 2008)

If a tree falls and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?


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## IlPadrino (Jun 19, 2008)

sehad said:


> I had a class with my roommate. I saw him cheating on an exam in out classes. Here's the question.........Obviously I didn't turn him in or point and say oooohhhhhhhhh.
> Is it ethically wrong not to turn someone in if you catch them cheating?


"A cadet will not lie, cheat, steal, or tolerate those who do"


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## sehad (Jun 19, 2008)

IlPadrino said:


> "A cadet will not lie, cheat, steal, or tolerate those who do"


Flashbacks from my father when I was 13!!


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## EM_PS (Jun 19, 2008)

sehad said:


> If a tree falls and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?


yes.


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## Greg C (Jun 23, 2008)

mary said:


> I know of many students who made straight A's in high school, yet could not score 1000 on SAT (old 1600 system) even after specialized tutoring. That tells me that the straight A's were not legitimate. .....Okay, now that I've got that out, let me say that I despise cheating.


I did a bit project while in college about academic honesty and cheating. The main cause of cheating is that students felt they were being treated unfairly by the professor and they were trying to make things even. I do not condone nor accept cheating on any type of exam or test.

I will have to disagree with Mary above. I got great grades in High School and bombed the SAT. I got great grades in College. I was the one who was doing all the homework and teaching everyone else and then getting 100's on the exams. I went to grad school at Cornell and had a solid B+ average. (Pretty good considering that it one of the top grad schools in the country and did 2 1/2 years of classes in 9 months) I went out into the 'real' world, took the Structures I exam, passed the first try. I took the Structures II exam, passed the first try, and took the Civil exam and passed the first try. Standardized tests (the SAT) do not test the ability of a person to learn or the ability for a person to perform in the real world. My College has recently done away with SAT scores realizing that they do not give any information about a person. I knew people in my high school who were dumb as doornails and scored 1400 - 1500 on the old SAT just because they did standardized tests well.


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## Carlito (Jun 26, 2008)

Good points, Greg C.

While valid for a population overall, standardized tests do not always tell the truth about every single individual.

It is also comforting to hear that some decision makers at higher institutions are seeing that and taking appropriate corrective action.


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## sehad (Jun 26, 2008)

^^^If it does not tell the truth about an individual, how can it represent the popoulation?


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## snickerd3 (Jun 26, 2008)

sehad said:


> If a tree falls and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?


That's one of my FIL favorite jokes. He is one of those who will tell his joke of the day to everyone he encounters...kind of annoying.


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## Carlito (Jun 26, 2008)

sehad said:


> ^^^If it does not tell the truth about an individual, how can it represent the popoulation?


Well, doesn't the average family have something like 2.4 children?


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## sehad (Jun 26, 2008)

^^Of course, I see the point BUT I have always said that the ACT (never took the SATs) was not a true intelligence test. People making 30+ in my college were flunking out of my enginnering classes while others making 24 25 were passing flying colors.

Meaning, that the test actually tests your ability to take a test...not your intelligence.


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## benbo (Jun 26, 2008)

Greg C said:


> I knew people in my high school who were dumb as doornails and scored 1400 - 1500 on the old SAT just because they did standardized tests well.


I've got a feeling this is pretty rare. Just as I suspect that your situation is fairly rare. But in your case they were able to take everything into account and you got the opportunities. The studies are all over the place, but most tend to support what you say, that grades are better predictors than SAT, but the combination is the best still -

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jL_ea6b...vAKOmAD91C1DC81

Colleges, especially really selective colleges, use all the means they can. Standardized tests are just one tool that a college can use (or choose not to use). Some colleges use them because grade inflation is rampant in many high schools.

In my opinion, success in college depends on things far less tangible - interest, work ethic, are you ready.

In my case I had high grades and high SATs. I got accepted to some good schools, and fortunately chose a fairly inexpensive one to attend. Maybe I had a premonition. But after three years I dropped out of school (with less than a year to go for a degree). My grades had steadily gone downhill. I was just plain burnt out on school and the pressure my folks put on me. I would have been better going to a JC, joining the service, or working right after high school - getting some discipline back. It wasn't until several years later that I went back and finished up.


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## wilheldp_PE (Jun 26, 2008)

snickerd3 said:


> That's one of my FIL favorite jokes. He is one of those who will tell his joke of the day to everyone he encounters...kind of annoying.


What joke? It's a paradox, I believe.

The jokey one is "If a man is talking in the forest with no women around, is he still wrong?"


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## Guest (Jun 26, 2008)

wilheldp_PE said:


> The jokey one is "If a man is talking in the forest with no women around, is he still wrong?"


Nice one !! :appl: :bowdown: :respect:

:Locolaugh: :Locolaugh:

JR


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## EM_PS (Jun 27, 2008)

benbo said:


> In my opinion, success in college depends on things far less tangible - interest, work ethic, are you ready.In my case I had high grades and high SATs. I got accepted to some good schools, and fortunately chose a fairly inexpensive one to attend. Maybe I had a premonition. But after three years I dropped out of school (with less than a year to go for a degree). My grades had steadily gone downhill. I was just plain burnt out on school and the pressure my folks put on me. I would have been better going to a JC, joining the service, or working right after high school - getting some discipline back. It wasn't until several years later that I went back and finished up.


Great comments here. My 1st time thru school, i partied for 2 yrs, then worked my ass off to grad on time, struggling to just top a 3 gpa. I was beyond burnt out upon graduating (geology), and consequently never achieved overly much once i entered prof. work arena. Fast forward 20 yrs to reentering a University to get the ABET/EAC degree, and I plow thru in 3 yrs, graduating magna cum laude, while commuting 70 minutes (one-way) and with 2 children born during that time frame - the will &amp; determination was there, even as my school situation had become exponentially more difficult than the first time thru. I would never fault teenagers coming out of high school for making decisions that may not entirely parallel with my thoughts. The armed services, yes even in this age are a great experience &amp; opportunity, JC's are as good as the bigger schools IMO, and working straight out of highschool can lead to opportunities down the road that may be otherwise unaccessible were college to have been the course.


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## SSmith (Sep 25, 2008)

Dleg said:


> ^Have you sent him your explanation? Maybe you should - maybe he still remembers that.


I just spoke with him on the phone. He still remembers. Not sure how its going to turn out. 
I have recently moved back to Alabama with work. So I am working the comity process for the past few months.

I am at the point now that I need 1 more PE for reference for my comity application. Working Federal Government means very few PEs available (outside of USACE). The engineering board tells me that I can use a professor from school. And guess who is the only PE in the department? Yep. The one that accused my group and another of cheating. I have made the 2 hour drive back to Tuscaloosa to explain my position with him, but he has not made any of my appointments with him.

Today, I call explaining my situation to him. He repeats my name and asks "if there were ethics questions about me when I was in school." I reply with "yes, you levied cheating accusations on 2 groups for one of your projects but no accusations were brought against me specifically." He goes starts to talk about the ethical situation he is in. I acknowledged his position and told him that if it is a problem let me know and Ill move on. He says it won't be a problem and that ends the conversation.

*sighs*

What are the odds of me making it through this with a Alabama PE license? What happens if he sends in the bomb and says I have questionable character?


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## IlPadrino (Sep 26, 2008)

SSmith said:


> What are the odds of me making it through this with a Alabama PE license? What happens if he sends in the bomb and says I have questionable character?


As you already know... it's the sole discretion of the board. Still, I've never heard of anyone "blackballed" for licensure because of a bad reference. Anyone else?

How specific is the reference requirement? There are plenty of PEs in the DoD... USACE, NAVFAC, and AFCESA (I think). Are you sure no loosely-coupled coworkers (i.e. second- and third-order) can give you a reference?


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## jeb6294 (Sep 26, 2008)

I got accused of "cheating" in one of my courses in college.

Our professor gave us a take home mid-term. In the course of reviewing my notes to try and figure out how to solve one of the problems, I started going back over one of the handouts the prof had given us. It was a xeroxed copy of a page from an older textbook so, since I was in the library anyway, I figured I'd check it out and see if I could find anything else that was helpful.

What I discovered is that the professor had made his mid-term up by copying example problems out of this older textbook word-for-word...didn't even bother changing any of the numbers. I still went through the exam on my own, but it was certainly helpful being able to go back and see where I had made any errors.

There were a group of 3 or 4 of us who ended up being the only ones in the class who aced the test so obviously we must have cheated. We all got 0% on the exam and a lecture about how we were lucky we weren't being reported. Immediately after class there was a line of us outside the head of the department's office. After we told him what had happened, the professor was the one getting the lecture for being lazy and we were being complimented for "taking the initiative to review outside sources" (or something like that).

BTW, the professor was here from France and was not invited back to teach the next semester.


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## C-Dog (Sep 26, 2008)

jeb6294 said:


> ... the professor was the one getting the lecture for being lazy and we were being complimented for "taking the initiative to review outside sources" (or something like that).
> BTW, the professor was here from France and was not invited back to teach the next semester.



Good for you. The prof was damn lazy. Always change the questions some if you take from another source. When I write exams, I will typically use other texts as references, and only use the theme of the question. I have taken questions, firectly out of the book we used in class verbatum that they were assigned for homework, and students still get them wrong. I try to make the test with gimmes, average difficulty, and challenging questions. I am amazed how many students get the gimmies wrong. The challenging ones are an attempt to separate the A students from the rest of the class.


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## SSmith (Sep 26, 2008)

IlPadrino said:


> As you already know... it's the sole discretion of the board. Still, I've never heard of anyone "blackballed" for licensure because of a bad reference. Anyone else?
> How specific is the reference requirement? There are plenty of PEs in the DoD... USACE, NAVFAC, and AFCESA (I think). Are you sure no loosely-coupled coworkers (i.e. second- and third-order) can give you a reference?


The references don't have to come from the federal government. The PE references just have to have "personal knowledge of my engineering experience." I have had 2 PEs in my new office sign the reference form, but they left they both checked that they "did not have personal knowledge of my engineering experience." The sad part is that one is my new division chief.  Instead of getting into questionable ethical grounds with my senior rater, I just submitted them both hoping that they would suffice. They didn't. So I am back at step 1.
If anyone has any "ideas" about how to further tackle this problem, please feel free to drop me a PM to talk about them. Thanks!


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## benbo (Sep 26, 2008)

SSmith-

I understand why you want comity in the state where you reside, but I was wondering if you actually need this PE to perform your current job? I'm really just curious where a PE fits in with federal government work.


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## SSmith (Sep 26, 2008)

benbo said:


> SSmith-I understand why you want comity in the state where you reside, but I was wondering if you actually need this PE to perform your current job? I'm really just curious where a PE fits in with federal government work.


It is not a requirement for the job explicitly. But having the tag greatly reduces the amount of friction between the program office engineer staff and the PE engineers on the contractor side of the house. Some of them have a perception that government engineers can't cut the mustard in private industry. The PE label goes along way to reducing those kinds of barriers.


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## Dleg (Sep 29, 2008)

^ Agreed, from the regulator's side as well. That's been the main benefit, in fact, in me getting my PE. I no longer hear "But you're not even a PE, so how can you tell me my plans don't meet code?" anymore....


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