CAMBRIDGE — More than half of the roughly 125 Harvard University students investigated by the college’s disciplinary board for cheating on a take-home exam last spring were forced to temporarily withdraw, school officials announced Friday.
The disclosure, communicated in an e-mail to the Harvard community from Michael D. Smith, dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, was the most extensive accounting of what is being called the Ivy League’s largest cheating scandal in recent times.
Comments
"If you dance to the music, you have to pay the Piper.." Take your punishment with a little grace and courage, and you might be a better person for it.
How about a policy discouraging professors from giving take-home tests? At least if the kids are sitting in front of you, you can tell whether the answers are similar because they studied the same notes or if they are actually copying each other's tests. And how simple must the questions be if 125 kids wrote similar answers? Longer essay questions requiring critical thinking should be the norm by 9th grade, never mind Harvard!
Geeze. This is just the next group of liberals learning the tricks of their trade.
Harvard probably wanted to give them honors for displaying the highest standards of the democratic work ethic...
but they got outed...
Incredible. Parent blames the teacher and won't give the name because he fears his son won't be readmitted. It is that kind of Race to Nowhere logic that tacitly encourages students to take shortcuts at best, cheat at worst. His son could very easily get into another quality institution - albeit not as "prestigioius" as Harvard - and experience great success. As a society, we need to stop placing so much empahsis on things like the name of the college or university and recommit that energy to empahsing choosing right over wrong. I am in education and see this harmful mentality on display on a daily basis. Good for Harvard. I hope the leaders there stay strong in their convictions and do not let any negative push back impact this or future decisions.
Harvard use to be prestigious, but they have long since stopped leading...and unfortunately, started listening to themselves.
Perhaps there are still some hard-science/mathamatics that are worthwhile, but the great majority of their "liberal arts" program (students and faculty) are just producing mouth-breathing socialists....
I find it most disturbing that so many students and parents, like Ms. Parfitt, contend that a suspension is a "horrible" punishment that "changes someone's life." In many other schools, the penalty for being caught cheating on a final exam is expulsion. Permanent expulsion.
Historically, Harvard almost never washes its hands of an errant student permanently, but in my view (and that of more than a few fellow alumni), it might be wise to rethink this: considering that the College admits approximately one of every 25 applicants, surely there are more deserving transfer students who could fill the cheaters' seats. I would like to see Harvard pay more attention to protecting the integrity of the Harvard degree, less to avoiding upsetting the cheaters' parents.
Well, it was a government class - are our elected officials supposed to learn to lie & cheat by themselves, or at an institution such as Harvard?
I agree, why not permanent expulsion. Give some other students a chance. Otherwise it is a tiny slap on the wrist, perhaps even a badge of honor to wear throughout life.
If there really were serious consequences against lying and cheating, perhaps American Society and government would be in a better place. I only need to look at all the recent election ads to see how politicians treat the truth. Why should a political party even exist if the only way they can get elected is by misleading lies abou the other party?
I have tried to follow the "Boston Globe" in every article as it has reported on this case. So far, it is still very confusing to me as to how much actual cheating occured and how much of this is attributed to mixed signals, or else confused messages by professors to students, as they completed this take home exam.
I am not even sure if the students planned, in a pre-meditated act, to find a way to cheat.
I agree with the student who views this as being too severe form of punishment. It is true that the University needed to do something that would not be forgotten, but this punishment seems too harsh, given the grey areas. If it were a black and white situation - and it cannot be, because, here's the thing, the reporters have not made it sound that way in the articles - then it would be appropriate to suspend for at least one semester. Is this a black and white, out and out, form of cheating?
Black and white.... to wit:
"According to the Harvard Crimson, a teaching fellow first noticed identical phrases in just a handful of exams, including multiple appearances of the number “22, 500” — with an errant space in the middle of the figure."
They didn't even re-type anything. Cut and past... Yes, Martha1, black and white case of cheating
There is some irony that the course was about Congress - but that aside - while the students who cheated deserve to be punished - and a 1 year suspension is appropriate, the instructor is at fault as well. As a former college professor I know that "take home" exams are prime targets for cheating. I disliked giving them because it was difficult to control for honesty - is the student doing the work - or perhaps the spouse, or a friend, or some online source? In class work was easier to monitor - the student was actually in the room doing the work - and yes I was there too supervising. Take home assignments were also difficult to monitor, who is actually doing the work.
I expected better of Harvard than to take more than 6 months to come up with decisions about the alleged cheating and then to not make any comments upon the professor's part in this. Had he suddenly discovered that his course had a reputation as a "gut course" so he decided to lay down the hammer? How clear were the instructions for the take home final? Has he been reprimanded for his contribution to this fiasco? He is partly responsible as well for not making it very clear to students just how much they could work with others and how the end product was to be produced. Unclear instructions always result in uneven results. There are always those who look for the easy way out.
The students who cheated have only themselves to blame. A year or two away from the college should give them plenty of time to reflect upon their behavior. The university administration and faculty should also reflect upon their part in this sad episode of mass cheating. Doing away with take-home exams might be a good first step.
well that's my point. we have no idea how clear or not clear the instructions were about sharing information. it is for that reason alone that I reserve judgement as to whether suspension was appropriate.