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Comment by lopmotr | Hacker News Reader

Imagine if cheating rates for each university were somehow measured and published independently so that a cheat rank was as well known as the usual rankings. Then, to avoid a poor ranking, universities would have to pay their staff to actually assess their students instead of taking the shortcuts they are.

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Universities don't touch international students because they are cash cows. The local students though will be penalized and expelled for random matches to make the 'zero tolerance' policy look good.

Actually assessing students [1] won't usually help with this kind of thing. Well-ghostwritten assignments can be pretty hard to detect.

[1] Not sure what you mean by that, as actual assessment is already universally happening IME.

Actually assessing students could mean, you know, testing them orally instead of handing them assignments. Or at least letting them have a written exam in front of you.

This is true. The best scheme is the formal written exam, because oral exams can have issues with bias.

Assignments can be useful for learning, as a way to keep students on-track. In my undergraduate days, assignments were optional, and scores on them were ignored if the exam had a higher score. That struck me as a good approach, but nowadays I think it would lead professors to create easy final exams, to avoid the low scores that lead to student complaints and problems at tenure time.

That's a good startup idea: Provide independent testing (like Toefl/Toic) to assess if the student is up to the task!

TOEFL can be gamed and cheated, so I would not have a lot of confidence in a new startup.

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