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Also, they were likely under extreme pressure to get good grades.
I think students cheat due to a combination of too much pressure to get good grades, and exams or grading practices that they (rightly or wrongly) perceive as unfair. I am not defending the students who cheat, since 2 wrongs don't make a right.
I agree that drives a lot of cheating. Consider that in many cases C was defined as average. At the same time the expectation was that pretty much everyone was expected to score above average. That puts a lot of pressure on kids to cheat to meet an unrealistic expectation, given the rules teachers were grading under. At the same time, when a significant percentage of students are cheating, that puts additional pressure on the rest to cheat just to level the playing field. Especially when you have a teacher or professor grading on a curve, an honest C puts you at a severe disadvantage GPA wise to those cheating.
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Originally Posted by prospectheightsresident
It was also well-known that fraternities kept banks of old exams for their members to study off of, which provided many with unfair advantages as many professors kept their exams the same year after year.
An interesting thing is when I was in college many of the professors actually put files of their old exams in the library for study purposes. In fact senior year my job was to proctor the study room where the exams were kept and log them in and out to students. The only real rule was students couldn't take them from the room so they would be available for other students to use. A lot of the professors not only put the exams in the file, but added notes pages and explanations why the answer was what it was and typical pitfalls to avoid.
That's studying. You were just doing it proactively instead of trying to cram/refresh it before the test.
I had a Calculus teacher in high school whose suggestion was that every night, you review all of the content you had learned up to that point in the class. His idea was you would review it so much that eventually you wouldn't need to review the older stuff at all because it would already be ingrained in your head. being know it all high school students we ignored the recommendation, but looking back it has a great deal of merit.
I suppose so, if you call spending less than a minute per class studying. Never outside class. That was my time.
I agree that drives a lot of cheating. Consider that in many cases C was defined as average. At the same time the expectation was that pretty much everyone was expected to score above average. That puts a lot of pressure on kids to cheat to meet an unrealistic expectation, given the rules teachers were grading under. At the same time, when a significant percentage of students are cheating, that puts additional pressure on the rest to cheat just to level the playing field. Especially when you have a teacher or professor grading on a curve, an honest C puts you at a severe disadvantage GPA wise to those cheating.
Good point, and it puts you in a position where you are forced to cheat and hopefully not get caught just to compete against everybody else. I know people will say "just worry about yourself", but, unfortunately, we are judged based on how we perform against our peers, not how well we do in isolation. This is sort of an extension of how, on the Work and Employment forum, people keep claiming "average is over", but the reality is that, no matter what, half the population is below average. If everybody in the world had a PhD in a STEM field from an elite college, had perfect social skills, was willing and able to work long hours, had no commitments outside of work, was either male and over 6' tall or female and under 100 lbs, etc, that would just become the minimum requirements to work at McDonalds.
It seems the more recent alterative is grade inflation. But that causes its own problems, mostly causing high stakes decisions to be based on the "noise" rather than the "signal". I keep giving the example of, from my high school, whether or not you were in the top 5% was basically determined by which AP Bio teacher you had back in 10th grade. When nearly everybody gets an A, your rank in class will be determined by that one class where not everybody gets an A.
Another alternative is draconian penalties for cheating, in order to discourage cheating at all costs, like in college. The problem is, such penalties tend to disproportionately impact the "good" student who has a one time lapse in judgement and gets caught cheating, or who is falsely accused of cheating, or who feels that he/she needs to cheat in order to keep up with the cheaters. They are not experienced cheaters and are likely to get caught. Whereas the habitual cheaters never get caught.
Good point, and it puts you in a position where you are forced to cheat and hopefully not get caught just to compete against everybody else. I know people will say "just worry about yourself", but, unfortunately, we are judged based on how we perform against our peers, not how well we do in isolation. This is sort of an extension of how, on the Work and Employment forum, people keep claiming "average is over", but the reality is that, no matter what, half the population is below average. If everybody in the world had a PhD in a STEM field from an elite college, had perfect social skills, was willing and able to work long hours, had no commitments outside of work, was either male and over 6' tall or female and under 100 lbs, etc, that would just become the minimum requirements to work at McDonalds.
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One outcome of that is people gaming the system for GPA points, esp when the top 10% of graduates get automatic acceptance. Even though our school gave a GPA boost for AP and Honors classes, the increase wasn't enough to compensate for the difference between a B in AP vs an A in regular. Such as an A in General Math earned more points than a B (or more likely a C) in AP Calc. We saw a lot of people move their kids out of AP or Honors into regular classes to ensure they got an A. Who then got accepted into well known, name colleges and didn't last a year before transferring because they weren't actually prepared.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mitsguy2001
Good point, and it puts you in a position where you are forced to cheat and hopefully not get caught just to compete against everybody else. I know people will say "just worry about yourself", but, unfortunately, we are judged based on how we perform against our peers, not how well we do in isolation. This is sort of an extension of how, on the Work and Employment forum, people keep claiming "average is over", but the reality is that, no matter what, half the population is below average. If everybody in the world had a PhD in a STEM field from an elite college, had perfect social skills, was willing and able to work long hours, had no commitments outside of work, was either male and over 6' tall or female and under 100 lbs, etc, that would just become the minimum requirements to work at McDonalds.
Which is a point I've tried to make before -- if everyone has a college degree, then a college degree will be required to flip burgers. They see the income scale for college degrees and don't understand the reason those degrees pay so much compared to those who don't have them is simple supply and demand. Not everyone has one so they pay more.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mitsguy2001
It seems the more recent alterative is grade inflation. But that causes its own problems, mostly causing high stakes decisions to be based on the "noise" rather than the "signal". I keep giving the example of, from my high school, whether or not you were in the top 5% was basically determined by which AP Bio teacher you had back in 10th grade. When nearly everybody gets an A, your rank in class will be determined by that one class where not everybody gets an A.
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Agree. Somehow it seems that grades are treated with absolute accuracy and zero precision.
Agree. Somehow it seems that grades are treated with absolute accuracy and zero precision.
Remember, the assistant principal at my high school claimed that grades are infinitely accurate. What I don't know is if people really don't understand accuracy and precision, or don't understand signal vs noise, or if they just don't care. Ironically, doctors are some of the people that understand it the least, perhaps because they are the people who benefitted under the current system.
Good point, and it puts you in a position where you are forced to cheat and hopefully not get caught just to compete against everybody else. I know people will say "just worry about yourself", but, unfortunately, we are judged based on how we perform against our peers, not how well we do in isolation. This is sort of an extension of how, on the Work and Employment forum, people keep claiming "average is over", but the reality is that, no matter what, half the population is below average. If everybody in the world had a PhD in a STEM field from an elite college, had perfect social skills, was willing and able to work long hours, had no commitments outside of work, was either male and over 6' tall or female and under 100 lbs, etc, that would just become the minimum requirements to work at McDonalds.
It seems the more recent alterative is grade inflation. But that causes its own problems, mostly causing high stakes decisions to be based on the "noise" rather than the "signal". I keep giving the example of, from my high school, whether or not you were in the top 5% was basically determined by which AP Bio teacher you had back in 10th grade. When nearly everybody gets an A, your rank in class will be determined by that one class where not everybody gets an A.
Another alternative is draconian penalties for cheating, in order to discourage cheating at all costs, like in college. The problem is, such penalties tend to disproportionately impact the "good" student who has a one time lapse in judgement and gets caught cheating, or who is falsely accused of cheating, or who feels that he/she needs to cheat in order to keep up with the cheaters. They are not experienced cheaters and are likely to get caught. Whereas the habitual cheaters never get caught.
I should also mention that any change in policies will needed to be done by every teacher at every school in order to be effective. There used to be a poster on this forum who openly admitted that she graded more harshly than was the norm for her school, and that she was basically the single deciding factor as to who was the valedictorian vs who was not. But I seem to remember many students cheated in her class, and her students being at a major disadvantage when it came to college admission and scholarships. What was likely happening was that students in her class felt they were at an unfair disadvantage, so they felt justified in cheating. Then those who were honest likely felt that they had to cheat in order to compete with the cheaters. And it became a vicious cycle. But if every teacher used her grading system, then there would be less of an incentive to cheat.
No- I didn't cheat. I learned all the formulas. Not impossible- just some studying.
I'm not aware of anyone who cheated.
If anyone cheated, I don't believe they would boast about it and expose their shortcomings and low ethical standards.
I had a guy who cheated off me in a test in physics. I set the problem up two ways as I wasn't sure which way to solve it and then ran through to get to the solution. Once I ran through it I erased the incorrect method. The guy copying off me had so little idea what he was doing he couldn't even tell that so he left both of them and got caught.
My daughter, along with several of my former students, can tell of letting a student copy all the answers off their test, then changing all the answers to the correct ones after the cheater had turned in their paper. My favorite question was on the topic of "A Christmas Carol." The question: What did Marley have around his neck. The answer that the cheater got from my daughter: A dead squirrel. We still laugh about that.
When he was in the second grade my younger son came home from school one day and announced that his teacher had told the class you don't cheat because you may get a better grade but it does not make you smarter. As far as I know, he never did. His school had an honor code and the students attested to it on each exam. That was back in the 80s and 90s.
I never cheated because I did not need to.
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I never cheated either, I wasn't smart enough!
