Comment by neilv
15 hours ago
I'm very interested in how this cheating is perceived by other students.
There is no peer pressure not to cheat?
Students aren't considered sketchy or jerky for cheating?
Being seen cheating has no adverse affect on their ability to date, to join group projects, to join student startups, etc.?
As someone who attended an elite school in the post-covid era, here was my experience:
There is relatively little stigma against cheating. Maybe in smaller seminars and classes with higher collaboration there is some, but much less so in large STEM lectures. Many of the incentives in classes where exams were online led to arms races and widespread cheating (without exaggeration, over 80% of the class). For instance, a certain math class I knew of had all grades based on remote and often asynchronous tests. Many people would cheat/collaborate and ace them, leading to the professor increasing difficulty (as scores were very high). This led to more cheating and so on. It got to the point where the problem sets had such difficult problems in this intro class that only a handful of people (who had taken advanced course work in high school) in the entire 100+ person seminar were distributing proofs for everyone else. Really not great dynamics all around and it's worth noting that my school does not have a reputation for being ones with an especially competitive and cutthroat culture.
At least in my experience (MIT ’06) many of the people most comfortable gaming academics ended up in finance.
I've always felt that it was these kind of folks that caused the 2008 financial crisis
Intentionally or negligently caused '08?
Intentional negligence? In many parts any reasonable looking into future should have made it clear things were unsustainable. Both on loan origination where rates would end up unsustainable for borrowers but also the derivative side with unsustainable liabilities. Screams of being intentional and negligent at same time, but it did make money.
Intention is becoming worthless in the disinformation age.
Covid and Chatgpt are no the only changes in society in the recent years.
If you are an all around liar and cheater you can even be president!!
It's not just "the recent years". There's a reason the phrase "honest politician" is an oxymoron.