Comment by busyant
12 hours ago
I was a grad student @ Princeton a handful of decades ago.
I was a TA for a few classes and, given the honor code, we did not proctor the exams for undergrads. We just handed them out (left the room) and returned to collect them at the end.
- One of the exams in a course that I TAed had 5 free-response questions.
- There were also 5 TAs in that class, so we un-stapled the exams and each TA graded one question (for consistency).
- We re-assembled the exams and returned them to the students.
- A few days after the exam, one of "my" students (she attended my recitation) came to me with her exam and explained that I had incorrectly graded question 2.
- I told her that I didn't grade question 2, so she had to go take it up with "TA # 2"
- A few hours later, "TA #2" pays me a visit and she (TA#2) is annoyed. She tells me, "Your student is trying to pull a fast one. She answered Q2 incorrectly. She erased her answer and put in the correct answer and she wants it re-graded"
- I briefly defended the student and said something like, "Why would she do that... and how could you even know?"
- "TA#2" responded with "... because I photocopied all of the student responses after I graded them."
- Then I felt like a piece of shit for doubting my fellow TA. And felt even worse being naive enough to not be suspicious.
- "TA#2" and I brought all of this info up with the prof. who was running the course.
- We were told that the situation would be handled by an Honor Committee or something like that. We forwarded the information to the committee, but no one spoke to us and we were not allowed to participate in the deliberations.
- After about a week, all we were told was that the student was able to explain the "discrepancy" between her exam and the photocopy.
To this day, I have no idea what that student could have possibly said to explain her actions.
After that, I started photocopying every damned scrap of paper that I graded.
edits for clarity. The student did not get a zero on the exam, nor was she booted from the course. I don't remember if she was given credit for Question 2, but the TA and I were both expecting her to be tossed, which obviously didn't happen.
Academic integrity committees at prestigious schools are horribly lax. They want these types of issues to go away quietly.
I have a friend who in college had another student take his test from the "complete" pile, erase my friend's name, and put on his own instead. It was only through blind luck that my friend figured it out. He, the TA, and the professor reported it – with smoking gun proof – but nothing happened.
The same laxness applies to academic research integrity. Universities rarely punish academics who are discovered to falsify data.
Not even prestigious ones. The school needs to sound like it has strong penalties against cheating, so there are really strict-sounding policies ("zero in the course"). But also, so many students cheat that actually enforcing these policies uniformly would hurt your graduation stats, make unhappy customers (students + parents), and hurt your revenue if you actually expel them. So the equilibrium is that the burden of reporting cheating is foisted upon professors, and it is understood -- though never explicitly communicated -- that academic integrity proceedings will be a huge administrative pain for you, the professor, and it is in your interest not to initiate them.
The outcome is predictable: unless there is a scandal of massive proportions, the issues just..."go away" on their own. With some discretion for the professor to either just look the other way, or ding the student enough to feel vindicated, but not so much as to actually hurt the university's interests.
I know a guy who TA'ed at Stanford in the 1970's. He said his professor told him to give students “gentleman’s B’s” even when their work was not fully up to par, because many of them would eventually become part of the country’s future elite and power structure.
… which explains the current political climate in the US right now
I've talked to instructors who've just given up. They know the students use AI. More and more of them do every year. The instructors can spot it easily, but if they brought them all into the academic dishonesty process, the department would grind to a halt. So they just let it go. They are all paying tuition, and they'll all get the credential they paid for.
I sympathize with the instructors to an extent, but the reality is that LLMs will be a pervasive part of life going forward. Schools need to completely reinvent their curriculum around that new reality. It's going to be a painful process for instructors accustomed to the old way of teaching.
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> Academic integrity committees at prestigious schools are horribly lax. They want these types of issues to go away quietly.
Yes, because the working model is that the students are there because they want to learn. And they are paying for the professors to teach them. If they cheat in classes, they are really just cheating themselves, and this should be no concern to the staff.
I would argue they are also cheating other students in their chosen field, and any future employers who place high value on prestige of applicants’ university, no?
If the only tangible, marketable value of graduating from a prestigious school was the raw knowledge and skill, I would agree with you. But it’s not.
Having worked with people who clearly got preferential treatment in hiring based on their school’s prestige, over more capable applicants from lower-tier schools, I absolutely lose respect for staff at universities who turn a blind eye to cheating.
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Yeah because isnt it just about money and relationships? They have relationships to those student's families and need the networks. They realize too that its more about the credentials and networks and money comes in if that support those over academic honesty.
I went to a school that actually tried to enforce it, and unfortunately it ended up being enforced wildly disproportionately along racial lines. My school had a very simple rule: if you were caught cheating, you were expelled. No strikes, no exceptions.
That is a massive burden to put on an educator.
Getting expelled from your university is a very serious, mandated fork in the road for anyone it happens to. So what do they do? If they relate to/empathize with the person, they try to handle it without reporting it. If they don’t, they reported and “let the system handle it.”
As any reasonable person would expect, white people were not reported and marginalized groups were. Privileged groups also got exceptions (the football team had a massive cheating scandal that should have expelled about 15 players, and the professor reported it! But mumble mumble uhh they learned their lesson).
After over a century they finally ended the system recently and honestly? Good. I appreciated what they were attempting to do, but it didn’t work.
You could just... make punishments more proportionate? If people are regularly circumventing your punishment system because they feel it's too harsh, maybe take that as a sign.
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The obvious answer would be to make the punishment more proportionate. Caught cheating in an exam? Lose half the marks for that exam (for example).
Expulsion is far too harsh if cheating is widespread but there should be some penalty.
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What is your evidence for your assertion that it was enforced along racially discriminatory lines? Or did you go to school in 1964?
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Money talks and bullshit walks. I’m beginning to understand why a lot of US politician seem to come from ivy leagues yet are dumb as hell.
Many of them aren't even dumb, they just pretend that they are.
They know full well that what they are doing is awful.
It's a very different world from the exams I had in Denmark, both uni and high school:
* all exams were proctored
* the proctoring were done by external people hired to do this.
* you could not leave exam for the toilet without asking first and then being followed out by a watcher, which then would follow you back and check the toilet afterwards for notes.
* you were never handed back the papers you handed in.
* responses were judged both by your own teacher and by an independent teacher from another institution.
* you must use ballpoint pen (permanent) and not pencil. Pencil responses were ignored.
Today the studens are even handed Faraday-bags that their phones and smart watches must be kept in during the exam. Full instructions for exam watchers for a business school: https://www.nielsbrock.dk/da/om-niels-brock/til-eksamensvagt...
>you could not leave exam for the toilet without asking first and then being followed out by a watcher, which then would follow you back and check the toilet afterwards for notes.
That's not how you do it. The notes are in your pocket. You go to the toilet, read the notes, put the notes back into your pocket and go back to do the exam.
Exactly the same as my experience in the UK.
during GCSEs (nationally held exams at 16 for non uk people) i was sick in hospital for two weeks. when i came back i had to sit the missed exams in a special sitting.
exact same processes with external monitor etc. but with the backup exam papers that was different to the ones everyone else already did.
which is kind of in contrast to university (organised by the institution) where someone stole the exam paper for a difficult module in our final year. so they assigned one of the past year’s papers instead, as if everyone hadn’t memorised it already.
one of the benefits of scale with central organising bodies where you have to get things right (organising GCSEs nationally) is being forced to prepare for edge cases because they become a lot more common.
I had a similar experience when I was a TA at UT Austin that I wrote about on HN years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23163472
If you want rage bait, read the proceedings of honor code committees at your school. At least at Northwestern they were public record (sometimes with redaction of identities). The number of people who got off with obviously bullshit excuses was maddening even to read about.
When I was in high school, mad dad was subscribed to the California Bar Journal, and the discipline section was one of my favorite reads. The outrageous rational lawyers had for failing their clients or downright stealing from them was hilarious, and the rate they won their appeals was appalling.
Someone wrote a book about how organizations like state bars protect their members from clients, not the clients from their members as is the stated goal: https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674295421
>Someone wrote a book about how organizations like state bars protect their members from clients, not the clients from their members as is the stated goal: https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674295421
Every licensing organization does this to the extent it can get away with because it needs to provide value to its members otherwise it's members wouldn't constantly beg the state to do the licensing organization's bidding.
I should read that book. Sounds good.
I once was accused and brought before the honor counsel for a really stupid innocent mistake.
Basically it was a history worksheet requiring written paragraph answers and I swapped around answers under the wrong questions so the teacher thought I cheated. It was a careless mistake I made because I had lost the original worksheet and was working off a loose leaf copy in the cafeteria at the last minute but it made it look like I copied someone else’s work.
I don’t known if the committee bought my story or was feeling lenient but I am very thankful for lax prosecution of these cases and think a lot of the value is in scaring people straight.
That seems like it should be enough to suspect you but not enough to “convict.” Your explanation makes as much sense as cheating.
What is this honour council I've heard in a few comments? I thought Princeton was unique in having and honour system as opposed to strict academic integrity rules.
reactions -> redactions
Thanks, corrected.
That student was shameless for success. I’m sure she has navigated her way through plenty of institutions by now, confusing getting away with it for being clever.
Sounds like 30 under 30 material.
If OP remembers her name I’d be really curious to hear what she’s doing now (anonymized of course).
I have no recollection of the student's name.
~150 students in the class, so they were all a blur.
This was also a few years before the web took hold, so I could not have "Google-stalked" her even if I had been so inclined.
I do remember my fellow TA's name! But that's probably not surprising.
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She probably started a YC startup ("tell us about the time you hacked the system")
She’s probably a banker or VC pulling in $10M a year now
Or started a company, and eventually ended up being convicted for lying to the investors? Who am I kidding? She is probably giving ted talks.
Because colleges are paid by the student, and students who are expelled don't pay. Incentives explain outcomes, to quote a controversial public figure.
I'm not defending the honor code or anything, but photocopying students' exams seems like an end-run around the policy.
It makes some sense just to have a backup, especially if you’re dividing papers and recombining them. It’s not impossible that one could get misplaced or damaged.
Also, you could have an issue where the exam somehow becomes relevant again after you’ve handed them back, and some students may not have kept their copies (like if one student successfully challenges their grade and you realize other papers were also misgraded).
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Great story.
I don't think you need to feel like a piece of shit for your brief defense of the student. Erasing and replacing the answer is unusual. As is photocopying all the tests.
Asking someone for an explanation of an unusual circumstance is perfectly natural. Perhaps TA#2 should feel like a piece of shit for her lousy explanation!
Honestly - the first thing that came to my mind is that the papers got stapled back together wrong, and her original correct answer was swapped with someone else's incorrect one. And instead of simply explaining that, she decided to just erase what was there and re-submit. But who knows?
I wish I as a student had this power. I took an exam once for a class I had taken before (transfer student woes). I went into the hall, took the easy exam, turned it in, and left. They lost my test.
I had no idea until 3 weeks later when exam scores were finally uploaded and mine was missing. The quarter was over and what the hell could I possibly do at that point? I had no possible evidence to give to show that I not only took the test but definitely passed because I've already taken the class
Similar story: I had taken a college level programming course before starting college. I reported this, and was told that it would either excempt me from an intro to programming class (if it was similar enough) or get credit for it towards my degree. Fair enough. After a while I was told it was different enough, and in the school software, it said I had a half-semester's worth of study point "in reserve" through all the years I studied there. In the final year, there was a small elective topic (something about engineering leadership) which seemed really uninteresting, so I thought, "it's time I finally make use of those banked points" and so didn't sign up for it.
Then after the semester was over, after a while I realized I'd only gotten a grades transcript, not a degree. Apparently I was lacking those 5 points from the elective course for that - the 40 points from my pre-college college course were mysteriously gone. Oh, and the mail I had gotten where they confirmed it counted? On the mail server, which we were mandated to use, and which they wiped the day we were done with our last semester.
When I was at university you returned the test and singed on shared list that you had participated. So if your name was on the list it was proof that you were at least in the room at the time. Probably more so done to track registrations vs participation but would also help in these situtations.
There is an easy solution to Princeton’s problem, and it’s to have an honor system with a backbone. The way honor historically worked.
At my private high school, and at my university (although they later gutted it), we had a “single sanction” honor code.
That is, if you were caught lying, cheating, or stealing - in any way, and in or out of school, though usually it was in - you were immediately expelled. No mitigating circumstances. No negotiation.
To many of my peers this sounded very harsh, especially since these were very good schools you worked hard to get to and succeed in. But part of why they were good schools was because of this.
We do zero tolerance for so many things but integrity is the one thing that misses it for some reason.
"Zero tolerance" policies like that are much more prone to the kind of excessive leniency in application that's described, precisely because the penalty for being found to have cheated is so very high.
In those cases, the academic integrity committee is much more likely to demand a very high standard of proof of cheating, and it can ironically result in more people getting away with it again and again, where, in a system with (say) a "three strikes" policy, they might be more likely to be expelled, because the committee would not hesitate to give them their first and second strikes—and after that, they're clearly a repeat offender.
This only works if the school doesn't accept meaningfully large donations from families of some of its students.
> We do zero tolerance for so many things but integrity is the one thing that misses it for some reason
Look at the type of people in positions of power these days? If we enforced any kind of integrity they would be screwed, but since they're in charge they can undermine policies that would hold them accountable as much as they like
Having integrity in elite colleges helps society. If people graduate from these places by cheating, and they see others graduating by cheating, cheating becomes a norm in elite society. If students are observed to be honest, and those that aren't are usually caught and punished, the graduates leave with a norm of honesty.
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So, they didn't face any consequences. Did they at least keep the original grade or was this so well explained they also got the re-grade?
Unfortunately, I don't remember except that it seemed unjust to all the students who didn't cheat.
She certainly wasn't penalized, but I don't remember if she was given credit for her answer to Q2.
iirc, the student stopped attending my recitation after that.
I used to proctor accounting exams. It's insane to me that people would just leave the room to students. At the very least they might have questions and then they ask the class instead of calling the proctor
"There is no honor among elites"
I mean I get that the student broke the rules, at least per this anecdote. And what was done is dishonorable and the student deserves what is coming to the student.
But, I think it gets to a deeper issue with education.
Like, the cynic in me will say that the student learned a new tactic, one that got rewarded, and they are likely to repeat it over and over.
But the teacher, the hopeful part of me, the one that wants growth and striving, that part of me says that the student learned a lesson and is unlikely to repeat that hack. That they got dragged about, told a lot of very tough stories, saw the consequences, and then saw the light, and they will never do it again. And that experience taught them more than the class ever could about life - a much more valuable lesson in the end.
I hope that is what occurred. I think that's probably what the many admins told themself what would happen. I have worked with Princeton grads though, and it is much more likely that nothing of the sort occurred.
Most 'elite' grads think they pulled it over on the school, like they always have, that they were cleverer, somehow. That they 'won', when they really lost and learned worse than nothing, they learned the wrong thing. And then they get out into the real world and they get a successful bigjob and a nice little manageable coke habit and a not as manageable addiction or two. Then a spouse when that time comes and that other line says something no-one really wants, but not with a person they respect or that respects them. And by the time the second kid is done teething, the divorce is done and they think they are 'free' again. So they dive off a cliff in some azure water as the grandkids aren't well taken care of by expensive as hell help.
The ayahuasca vomit dries on the corner of their mouth as they check their actually-personal account for the half dozen 39th birthday wishes, they wonder where it all went wrong. They decide that it was others, not themselves, surely, that can't be true, because Dad was an asshole and Mom really wasn't ever 'there'-there when you think about it.
Because they are still trying to pull one over, to be cleverer, to be the 'good' one at whatever life is in their mind: A long fucking ladder covered in degrees and accolades and tears and jackasses. They live in the derivative.
So, look, don't be butthurt about a jackass undergrad that is too blind and treadmilled to ruin their own life.
But do be butthurt that the system is too fucking tired and old to really deeply care anymore about the young and not just hurting their 'future' - as if that could ever be measured by only a GPA.