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With finals week either already here or rapidly approaching, college students who have spent the semester boozing and playing video games might find themselves in a bit of a hole on the studying front. If they’re particularly unprepared, some slackers might feel tempted to do a little cheating to help them avoid summer school. Be careful, though; while Zack Morris and Mike Seaver may have made cheating look hilarious, there can be pretty sweeping repercussions. Just look at these epic college cheating scandals.
1. MBA Students Network a Bit Too Much
Getting to know your classmates and learning how to work together is a huge part of business school. In 2007, though, 34 first-year MBA students at Duke took things a bit too far. When faced with a take-home open-book exam they were supposed to work on individually, the students decided to instead collaborate on the test. Of course, when that many people work on a test together, the answers are going to be suspiciously similar, and the professor quickly sniffed out the trickery. After the dust settled, 34 students – nearly 10% of Duke’s first-year class – found themselves expelled, suspended, or failed for the unauthorized group work.
2. Maryland Professors Put the Sting on Cheaters
In 2004, several professors at the University of Maryland’s business school heard rumblings that students had cheated on a midterm, but they couldn’t really prove anything. To fight back, though, they decided to set up a sting operation for the final exam. Before the test, they posted an “answer key” that consisted of nothing but wrong answers on their website. Any student who used his cell phone or PDA to access the answer key during the exam would think they had struck cheating gold, when in actuality they were just giving themselves away as cheaters. The professors’ plan worked, and 12 of the 400 students in the class flunked after turning in papers that were obviously copied from the bogus answer key.
3. Naval Academy Students Go Overboard
1994 was not a banner year for the United States Naval Academy; that spring, 134 seniors were involved in a cheating scandal that caused such a stir it became national news. Somehow, a student obtained a copy of an electrical engineering exam early and started distributing copies of it for as much as $50 a pop. Students either practiced their answers before the exam or snuck in notes of the relevant formulas. After a lengthy investigation, Navy Secretary John H. Dalton expelled 24 midshipmen, including several members of the football team, and disciplined 62 others for honor code violations.
4. Henry Ford II Lacks the Drive to Write His Thesis
When automotive heir Henry Ford II attended Yale in the 1930s, he must not have been the world’s greatest student. When he had to write a thesis on the novels of Thomas Hardy, he did what any enterprising car mogul would do: he outsourced the assignment to another student in exchange for cash. According to a possibly apocryphal story that Ford later denied, the jig was up when the professor opened up the paper and the other student’s bill for writing the essay fell out. With such damning evidence against him, Ford admitted he cheated and never graduated from Yale.
5. Don’t Mess With the Honor Code
Lots of colleges make students pledge that they will follow some sort of honor code, and don’t think the schools don’t mean it. In 2001, the University of Virginia, a school with a longstanding honor code, had to drop the hammer on an absurdly large cheating racket. Professor Louis A. Bloomfield realized that students in his popular “How Things Work” introductory physics class had been turning in identical 1,500-word papers over the course of the previous five semesters. Bloomfield hadn’t noticed because the class was so large; each semester’s roster had between 300 and 500 students on it.
After running every paper he’d received through a computer program to look for identical essays, Bloomfield realized that as many as 158 students may have plagiarized their papers. The school aggressively prosecuted the plagiarizers under the honor code and eventually expelled 45 of them. Three other students got an even worse fate; since they’d already graduated, UVA revoked their degrees.
6. No Online Help for the GMAT
Getting a good score on the Graduate Management Admission Test is a key step to getting into a top MBA program, and since the admissions market is so tight, it’s only natural that students would try to find as much test prep material as they could. Last summer, though, thousands of students who had perused the test site ScoreTop got a rather nasty surprise. The site had been posting “live” GMAT questions with answers, which meant that students could potentially know the answers to a few of their test questions before the exam even began.
At first, all 6,000 of the site’s subscribers were worried their GMAT scores might be invalidated, but in the end only 72 students had their scores cancelled after investigators learned they had accessed the live questions. These students were allowed to immediately retake the GMAT. Twelve other students weren’t so lucky, though; these were the students who had actually memorized the questions and posted them on the site. Test administrators also cancelled their scores, but they weren’t allowed to retake the GMAT for another three years, which put a pretty large damper on their MBA dreams.
7. Dental School Bites Down on Cheaters
Dentists seem like a rather honest, unassuming sort, right? Apparently not at the Indiana University School of Dentistry. A scandal rocked the school in 2007 when second-year dental students figured out a way to hack into the computer system that held their exams. Once inside, students could study the X-rays on which they were going to be tested, so when the exam rolled around, they already knew all the answers. The amazing thing about this scandal wasn’t that it happened, but its scope; nearly half of the second-year class had some hand in it. At the end of the investigation, nine students were expelled, 16 more were suspended, and another 21 received letters of reprimand.
Strangely, that might not even be the most troubling dental school cheating scandal of the last few years. In the spring of 2006, 18 students at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey got caught in a cheating ring right before they graduated. Their scam involved the clinical credits each student needed to graduate; to get their degree, each student had to perform X number of root canals, Y number of fillings, etc. Instead of earning all of these credits the honest way, students swapped and sold their credits to each other.
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we actually just had a cheating scandal in one of my classes.
an outside tutor somehow managed to get a copy of the test (he apparently claimed it was an old test which is irrelevant since all tests are department proporty), and distributed to students who paid to attend his review sessions (at a cost of $40 no less!). luckily (for their sakes) the students were unaware that what they reviewed was the actual test.
after weeks and weeks of studying, imagine the possiblility of your grade being thrown out especially if you were not one of the people who got the review (like me)! in the end, the grades that included the final exam and those that didn’t were statistically the same so the prof just included the test anyway for everyone.
posted by baylee on 5-5-2009 at 2:34 pm
As a follow-up, it would be interesting to know how colleges, and even high schools, are combating the “paper-for-hire” problem, students submitting previously written papers that might be found on the internet or from a fellow student and what old-school kids had to do: not summarizing but just copying (er, quoting, haha) very liberally from books, encyclopedias and other research sources.
Also… how about how technology has changed how kids do homework and papers and what problems that has created for teachers and school administration. My son is almost 7 and I wonder alot about spell-check when he will be allowed to write homework on the computer because I want him to know how to spell, not rely on being corrected all time. If you don’t know how to spell it correctly, if you do mistype something, how you will know which choice given with spell check is correct?
posted by Sarah in CA on 5-5-2009 at 2:34 pm
RE Sarah: My son is almost 7 and I wonder alot about spell-check when he will be allowed to write homework on the computer because I want him to know how to spell, not rely on being corrected all time. If you don’t know how to spell it correctly, if you do mistype something, how you will know which choice given with spell check is correct?
Make your kid print it out and actually READ the paper. Old fashioned trick I know, but at least I know how to spell.
posted by Hastings on 5-5-2009 at 2:41 pm
@ Sarah in CA: disable spell check and buy your son a dictionary.
posted by AmyD on 5-5-2009 at 2:58 pm
Sarah in CA,
The answer is plagiarism.org and other similar anti-plagiarism databases. They have software that creates a ‘fingerprint’ of every essay submitted. When a new one is received, it is checked against and added to the archive. It is very accurate and experiences few false hits.
This system will not catch the true “paper for hire” perps. For fairly nominal fees, you can have original papers created by other people – usually residing in India and similar places. It is the same fraud, but much harder to detect.
posted by n2y2 on 5-5-2009 at 3:23 pm
One of my Fav teachers in college had a great quote that she cited before every test:
“Look up for insperation, down in desperation but never to the side for information”
She absolutly hated cheaters. The one time that she did find out about cheating was when a student aid got a coipy of the midterm and passed out copies to people which got back to the teacher. She left the first page of the test the same and then set about to make the hardest test she had ever created ( and her test were already hard). She said that you could tell the cheaters cause they all breezed through the first page and then you could see the panic when the went to page two…….i am sure it was priceless…..
posted by Jennifer on 5-5-2009 at 3:48 pm
UVA has, and is proud of, one of the strongest honor systems in the country. It is common for instructors to hand out tests or exams and leave the classroom. Students can leave the room with their tests and turn them in when the time is up.
If caught cheating, or stealing (or in some cases lying)there is only one penalty-expulsion. Every year a few people try to game the system, and every year, several of them get caught. A student has a duty to report these violations to the honor committee.
Every two or three years there some group places a referendum on the student council ballot to have the honor code change to have more than one sanction (such as probation or suspension rather than expulsion) and every time it is defeated handily – usually 2-1. The students are proud of the system, and do not want it to change.
posted by UVA grad on 5-5-2009 at 5:11 pm
I once accidentally turned another student in for cheating. Cheaty McCheaterson had a notebook clearly open to calculus notes on the seat between us in the final exam lecture hall. He finished a good 20 min. before me and after he turned in the test, the professor pulled him aside and they talked for like 10 minutes. “Justice!” I thought. Later, as I was turning my exam in, my busybody self just had to ask “So, Prof. J, what’s going to happen to that kid?” She looked blankly at me: “What kid?” Me, of course: “The one next to me… Who was cheating?” Of course she put me through the wringer trying to figure out who it was (he wasn’t in my section, so I didn’t know.) I just wanted to excuse myself as fast as possible. Never found out what happened to him, if anything.
My hesitation to turn in cheaters stems from personal and anecdotal experience, because:
posted by Lynn on 5-5-2009 at 5:28 pm
My university, like many other colleges, high schools and middle schools claim they have systems in place where one can anonymously report crimes and misdemeanors, which I know from overwhelming anecdotal evidence is nessecarily true for my institution. One instance, a friend turned in her roommate for keeping alcohol in a dry dorm and received a violation herself when the alcohol was, sure enough, found. Another friend of mine anonymously turned in a friend of a friend she knew had been cheating on exams. She was later told she’d have to testify at his hearing IN FRONT OF HIM or the case would be thrown out. She declined because they shared so many mutual friends. I am frustrated that my institution repeatedly hypes their anonymous tip line, “no questions asked policy” and doesn’t follow up with systems to protect those who report wrongdoings. The only incentive? They claim if you know of cheating or campus violations and DON’T report them, you can be punished as well. Great example of damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
posted by Lynn on 5-5-2009 at 5:29 pm
I currently teach at a local University and have had several problems with cheating, but most are so incredibly obvious that they are difficult to miss. The best attempt was a student who scanned the label of a coke bottle on his computer, typed out an essay where the ingredients were on the coke bottle, then used the coke bottle to write his essay. I only caught it after he kept staring at me then fixating on the coke bottle. With that level of creativity, he should have just studied.
posted by Jeff in TX on 5-5-2009 at 9:56 pm
Ted Kennedy – expelled twice from Harvard for cheating.
He moved on from it though, and went on to drive a car into a lake.
posted by DMC on 5-5-2009 at 10:53 pm
I had a Chemistry prof this semester that on the first page of her test was a spot that you signed and acknowledged that you weren’t cheating…knew someone was cheating or etc. I refused to sign it because it seemed rather childish to even be on there. Apparently, cheating is a problem and I expect it in high school, but not college. I guess not everyone pays for their college like I do. People should just study….cheaters never win.
posted by Aimee on 5-6-2009 at 2:55 am
I’m a high school teacher, and usually I’ll look through something that a student obviously did not write, and pick a big word- “What’s apocalyptic mean?” When the kid has no idea, I tell them to try again.
Another strategy I used as a student in cheatable courses- I would always answer every question on an exam wrong at the beginning of the testing period. Cheater copies my paper, turns it in, and I correct all my answers :o)
posted by Bob on 5-6-2009 at 11:06 am
Back in the day when I was a high school business teacher, I new copying on tests was pervasive, but hard to prove. I began to write 4 versions of the same test with exactly 0 answers being the same multiple choice letter. During the first test I gave with this method, after about 10 minutes a student actually shouted out “Hey these tests are different!” “How would you know that my friend?” was my response.
I also had another set of answers for make up tests, I had 2 students that had missed school make up an exam and score zero points. One kid was so mad that he said something along the line of “wait until I tell my parents about this (as in a threat)!” I told him that I thought that was a great idea. After thinking about it for a minute, he revoked his threat.
This is why I no longer teach…
posted by SDK on 5-6-2009 at 1:39 pm
@UVA Grad: Before you go much further in crowing about your school’s honor system you may want to Google “Olden Polynice UVA cheating.” If you want to crow about an honor system in Virginia, then look west a bit at the VMI and their “drum out.” It is simple and has not been changed in the history of the school- A cadet does not lie, cheat, steal, nor tolerate those who do.” Period.
posted by Scott-O on 5-6-2009 at 2:45 pm
LOL @ DMC
posted by Goliath The Pickle on 5-6-2009 at 2:48 pm
The best response to cheating I’ve ever seen was courtesy of one of my profs. He handed out several versions of the test, but there was no version number on the front at all. Apparently someone copied their neighbour word for word, letter for letter. The prof simply stood up at the beginning of the next class, informed us that there was a cheater in the group, and that everyone was going to receive the grade they earned on the test, no exceptions or re-takes. Only one guy looked immediately crestfallen, and the rest of the class knew exactly why.
posted by anaximander on 5-10-2009 at 10:38 pm
Ironically, Uncle Ted got his law degree from…UVA.
posted by Jim on 5-11-2009 at 12:04 pm
Nice instances of cheating. Here’s one from dartmouth that doesn’t make the national headlines, but its still interesting: http://higher-ed-reform.blogspot.com/2009/09/cheating-personal-recollection.html)
posted by Sam on 9-12-2009 at 10:57 pm
I got accused of cheating once. We had an open book take home quiz assignment and I had forgotten my book so I borrowed one from a classmate. When I returned her book I had forgotten my quiz inside and while the girl gave me back my quiz before class she had apparently copied one of my answers that she couldn’t find in the book.
I feel really guilty. You know why? This was the first quiz of the semester (August). When did we both get called up for discipline? After the semester was over (January) and I wrote an extremely unfavorable review of the teacher including that she arbitrarily changed the class meeting time from when it was scheduled and pushed a student into a position that was painful to them (she taught a brief yoga section). Since I signed a sworn form saying that I did not tell her to copy I just got a 0 for the quiz grade and my letter grade in the class stayed an A. No idea what happened to the other girl. I had nightmares that she was expelled because of my review.
posted by Angela on 3-11-2010 at 6:01 pm