Standard of cheating depressingly low in undergraduates - Page 3

LFF, you should be ashamed of yourself. Your post shows you up as arrogant and egotistical and a reason why there has been a decline in standards that you criticise.

Edited by Prog Rock Man - 12/4/10 at 12:23pm

I have saved all of my essays since my freshman year of college.  Last quarter, I was taking a class for GE credit that was similar to a class I've already taken, and was assigned as essay topic similar to one I've already written.  So I brought out the old essay I wrote years ago and removed a few paragraphs to meet the requirements and turned it in.  Is that considered cheating?

 

Here's the policy of the university where I teach:

 

If you turned in the same essay for two different classes without the professor knowing about it, then yes, that is considered cheating. It's giving you an unfair advantage. If the professor agrees to let you use an older essay due to extenuating circumstances, then it's allowed on a case by case basis.

Edited by MuppetFace - 12/4/10 at 1:29pm

As a college student aiming for a degree in Computer Engineering, I can't say how useful cheating would be for myself overall. I can say I've never cheated yet in my academics thus far, and have constently scored 85% or above.

I can honestly also say I have learned far more experimenting in my own time then in any classroom environment.

And this is the last I shall post in this thread, as I'm not interested in a moral debate over cheating, our education system, or any such items.

 

There are probably enough graduate students that cheat, but of course graduate students are a small percentage of the overall student population.  I'll bet that for every graduate student a professor teaches they teach at least 10 undergraduates.  Where I did my undergrad, it was probably like 100 undergraduates for 1 grad student.  So, of course, it's going to be easier to find undergraduates who cheat.

 

Thanks to grade inflation in lot of schools and subject areas, it's also easier to get high grades in graduate school.  So why cheat? :)

 

My wife once had a really lazy undergrad student pull the race card.  My wife is from a minority population and even she had to change the grade to suit the administration...

 

 

 

The policy at my school matches what MuppetFace stated.  I heard of at least one student who was punished very severely because they didn't know the policy.

 

I've found that many instructors are fairly understanding if you tell them what you plan to do.  However, they will probably ask you to make some changes so that you are doing *some* separate work for each class.  Now that you've done it don't tell anybody!

Edited by odigg - 12/4/10 at 3:51pm

I've taught at all levels in the past.

 

It was depressing to see the number of ads touting essay writing services around campus that many international students (not proficient in English) would use. Universities around here are heavily reliant on international students for revenue and academics have been pressured to lower their standards.

+1

 

I have learned MUCH more over the internet, in my own studies of my interest. Than i have ever learned in school.

 

I have become an expert in hydroponics, aquaponics, bodybuilding, bodybuilding dietary nutrition, computer building (I'm using a computer i built at 14 years of age, as we speak), Water/Mathanol Injection (for turbocharger use on car engines), Soap making, and soon to be hi-fidelity music.

 

All in 2 years of studying on the internet.

 

Beat that, broken American education.

Quote:

 

Are you being sarcastic?  The goal of a "good" education system is not to teach you a set of highly specific skills that are applicable only to a fixed set of situations (e.g. water injection, building a computer).  The goal of education is to give you enough flexibility with your brain that you can learn on your own and solve new (unseen to you) problems.  For example a degree in automotive engineering is not tasked with simply teaching you how to design one type of car.  The job is to teach you to understand the concepts of engineering that go into an automotive design.  So, for example, if you wanted to design a new type of cylinder head to prevent detonation, as opposed to using some off the shelf formulas to calculate water/methanol ratios, you could do it. 

 

That you could learn all that stuff on your own is evidence that some educational system somewhere taught you to use your brain and not just be a machine repeating a set of instructions.

Edited by odigg - 12/4/10 at 8:14pm

It's been my personal experience that many self-styled experts, both on the internet and in the classroom, seem to mistake the accumulation of raw data and facts for true expertise.

x2

 

I kind of laugh when I hear my colleagues say that what they learn during their course is useless because there is a kit for everything today. you know that complaint of: I am studying this but will never use it". It is so UNTRUE.

Everything I learned at school has been useful to me or will be in the future.

 

I never said that people should just buy off the shelf items and be content, or consider themselves experts. True experts are the ones who are not only knowledgeable, but they experiment with things that haven't been done before. It looks like you know something about engines, so you would understand that many people experiment with water/meth ratio's, rather than buying windshield wiper fluid. 

 

Im no expert in detonation, but there is a certain point where detonation seems to be inescapable at high boost (forced induction), without retarding. Sure, you could always forge a new cylinder head (at a huge cost), but at a certain point you will still get detonation. At least i presume.

 

Keep in mind I'm 16 here. I've had no "real life" experience, and the irrelevance of education I'm talking about are subjects of high school education.
 

and personally, if i had to design a new cylinder head, i would read up on specifics of cylinder head design, rather than creating one off a general, non-specific education.

 

My point here is, you can have enough general education to forge a new piston head, but a piston head expert will always forge a  better piston head.

 

Sure, you can be a jack of all trades master of none, but you can also be an expert in a few specific fields.

Edited by Xaborus - 12/4/10 at 9:13pm

Like LFF, I wrote papers for others in high school. I justified it because I wasn't the one turning in a fraudulent paper and because writing an essay doesn't hurt anyone. It certainly contributed to wrongdoing, though.

I didn't write for others in undergrad, though. My free time went towards having a good time. Then there weren't any papers in law school, save for one 20+ page scholarly work, suitable for publishing, under the direction of a professor. That made it almost impossible to cheat. You had to go in, give drafts, etc. and discuss it.

Though I managed to irritate a few classmates with my essay. For whatever reason, the school qualified a law and literature class for the essay. I jumped on it (I have a B.A. in English) and wound up doing a critical assessment of Wallace Stevens. Stevens was a lawyer - his link to being included. The essay was original, I met all the requirements, had the references, everything that was required. I remember handing it in. The professor sort of flipped through the pages and said, "I know you did a good job on this and I'll read it later, so I'll just sign off on it now." He then signed the form indicating completion and I went and gave it to the administration.

That really pissed off a bunch of classmates. Some of them had professors who kept them running for the better part of a year, with endless revisions, additional research, and so on. I got away with writing about poems and had it signed off without scrutiny. So I feel like I got away with something. On the other hand, I met the requirements as set out, did my own work and pulled an A in the class. Also, had the school not opened up the law and literature class to the paper, I was set to do it in one of the advanced estate planning classes. That would have involved quite a bit of work, but I would have done it.

I will say this though. I have never cheated in the sense that I have taken someone else's ideas and called them my own. I have, a few times written completely made up facts and cited them to someone else (undergrad english writing class). I'm admittedly I horrible writer. When I graduated finally I had to hire a professional writer to help me organize my thoughts. I am not saying this person wrote my dissertation, I did the research, wrote up a working draft and then he and I would sit together and he would show me where my mistakes and problem area's were and helped me keep track of the end goal of the entire thing. In the process he taught me more about how to write academic papers than any professor or class ever could. I think this is the real issue. It's not the student inability or apathy. They were never properly taught how to write papers, or weren't told how important this would be.

I'd be more careful about the use of the word "expert" in the future. Unless you've been involved in designing water/methanol injection systems for commercial applications, hydroponic farms for large scale production, or have published papers/obtained patents in those areas, it's rather unlikely that you're an expert in those fields. Merely learning enough for personal application does not qualify one as an expert in any field.

 

As for the American primary education system, you're missing the point. The system exists to impart essential language and mathematics skills, provide a basic education in a variety of fields, inculcate societal standards, and promote the value of hard work. While not a perfect system, well functioning schools do a reasonable job at fulfilling these requirements for the vast majority of students. The most proficient students tend to get the shaft as it's not cost effective to provide an alternate curriculum for a dozen students, but that's what universities and community colleges are there for. Many will let high school students take a reduced course load.

Edited by marvin - 12/5/10 at 2:25am