Comment by alephnerd
15 hours ago
You'd hope, but humans are humans - even if they attend an Ivy.
Some individuals have heady thoughts and morals like you mentioned. Others are using it as a checkbox.
15 hours ago
You'd hope, but humans are humans - even if they attend an Ivy.
Some individuals have heady thoughts and morals like you mentioned. Others are using it as a checkbox.
As I understand it Americans pay tens of thousands of dollars for university.
In my country if you can't hack it you just transfer to something else. Much less pressure. And let's face it if you can't even pass the exams maybe it is not your career? Don't live in a lie and go do something you'll enjoy.
> And let's face it if you can't even pass the exams maybe it is not your career
Most target career paths in the US (eg. Investment Banking, VC, Tech, Consulting, Entrepreneurship) now require a STEM or Engineering background, so a large subset of students do have an incentive to study a major they have no interest in.
As you are Dutch, think about it the same way certain numerus fixus programs at TU Delft, UvA, or UL open career paths unavailable to most other Dutch graduates (eg. Optiver, MBB, DeepMind, EU think tanks).
This is basically Princeton's equivalent of setting up a numerus fixus because of the deluge of students enrolling in target degree programs without the interest or background.
In all honesty cheating is common in all universities - the incentive structures for students are the same as a large portion of students do want to end up in a high prestige career.
The American higher ed system is similar to the French, British, and Italian system with regards to prestige and target programs.
> As I understand it Americans pay tens of thousands of dollars for university
Not at Ivies and Ivy-tier programs. Plenty of us got really competitive scholarships and I attended back when Obama was still in office.
> humans are humans - even if they attend an Ivy
I specifically called out two non-Ivy examples. Humans are humans. And one of those capacities is for behaving with honor. The enemy of honor, it turns out, isn't dishonor, but cynicism. (It isn't surprising that the dominant emotion on a Silicon Valley board towards an honor system is scorn.)
I agree about the cynicism thing, I like the idea of an honor code if/when it actually works, but the bad reaction here is because 1/3 of students admitted to cheating.
No argument there. Tbf given my professional and personal background, I automatically assume the worst in all people so even though I never abused honor codes (and honestly never had the need to anyhow because I liked the classes I took with one as they tend to be the kinds of classes where professors and teacher staff are the most engaged) I think it is almost impossible to enforce one in classes beyond 30 students, because anonymity does beget some amount of bad behavior.