Dishonor Code: What Happens When Cheating Becomes the Norm?

Dishonor Code: What Happens When Cheating Becomes the Norm?

"This past semester, in her Intro to Accounting class, students took the midterm online--but in a proctored classroom using a browser that alerted teaching assistants if anyone navigated out of the exam in search of illicit information. To access the browser, students had to log in with an individual code given to them after they showed up for the exam....

"No one checked IDs to make sure the students enrolled in the class were the same students taking the final. Cheaters in the class paid fellow classmates--the ones who stayed in the proctored exam room--up to $100 to send them the codes so they could log in from outside the room, where they were free to look up information on their phones or brainstorm answers together. In case the Olds got smart and thought to track students' IP addresses--that is, where they actually were--students reserved study rooms in the same building as the exam room, Huntsman Hall, making it appear as though they were physically there. (It's unclear whether any proctors thought to check.)...

"Linda Griffith, an engineering professor at MIT, said bloated college bureaucracies--Harvard has roughly the same number of undergraduate students as administrators, and Stanford meets its 17,680-strong student population with approximately 15,750 administrators--are meant to cater to the every whim and need of an increasingly customer service-oriented student body."