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Comment by trway | Hacker News Reader

In a globalized world, institutions need to tighten up their safeguards against cheating, fraud and dishonesty. In much of the world, cultural attitudes toward cheating are a lot more relaxed than some of us presume.

There was a story about Indian students' rampant cheating at US colleges, that was presumably flag-killed off HN despite the horror stories that were emerging from academics. I've read about Australian universities basically selling degrees to foreigners who can't speak English and get admitted fraudulently. There is a currrent story about fraudulent admissions to US colleges by Chinese students as a result of massive SAT cheating. I'm not picking on Asians: Switzerland seems to have its fair share of scoundrels, as the FIFA scandal reminds us.

We need to acknowledge that gloablization sometimes brings unwanted side-effects and deal with these head-on.

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In my opinion, tightening up the safeguards isn't the right approach. Rather, institutions, particularly educational institutions, need to fulfill their obligation to inculcate the right values in people. Cheating and petty corruption culture is an existential threat and the solution isn't to catch the cheaters, its acculturate them to follow the rules.

Educational institutions, however, have totally abandoned this obligation. Shocking cheating behavior will merit just a note in someone's record, if administrators are even willing to take it that far. Cheating isn't publicized, shamed, and punished in the way necessary to have any impact on the cheaters' values. Instead, everyone gets to save face.

I totally agree with your opinion here, and especially that "cheating and petty corruption" - and the breakdown of public trust that follows - is an actual existential threat, something that may ultimately lead to a collapse of technological civilization. The current trend of trying to figure out trustless solutions for everything actually worries me.

The current trend of trying to figure out trustless solutions for everything actually worries me.

If you're worried about breakdown in the face of loss of trust, then these sorts of solutions seem like very important things to be looking at. Do we have any good ideas about how to create trust at the institutional level?

I agree with your concerns. I think they are representative of a broader theme - the acceleration of technical change seems like it will eventually (if it hasn't already) bring us to a point where the rate of cultural change is too slow to catch up to properly adapt to what is now possible.

When budgets depend on covering up cheating, cheating will be covered up. Educational institutions are failing to uphold their responsibility to society (partly) because society has largely abdicated its responsibility to educational institutions by slashing funding and grants. In the absence of public funding, the student (or the donor), not society at large, is the customer, and the customer is always right.

I don't think this can be solved by punishing the cheaters, or "educating" them about the consequences. The problem is that expectations and pressure on individuals have gone out of hand. If you feel that your very existence depends on getting outstanding results, of course you will consider cheating.

In my university, a small ring of students were flagged by our Computer Science department's automated plagiarism software. Upon investigation, it was determined who the culprits were. All involved students ---including the ones who shared their code--- were awarded a grade of XF, "failure due to academic dishonesty". Since the course was a gateway to other courses, most of them were effectively expelled.

In another course, the professor and assistants would view videotapes of the lecture to catch students who were taking quizzes for other students. Those students were dealt with as well. The XF grade stays on the transcript forever.

It may be one data point, but there is at least one university serious about cheating.

I would like to generalize that to all American universities, but I don't have enough data.

An issue is, academic dishonesty leads to people making life-and-death decisions without even the base knowledge that credential implies.

They'll be the physicians treating you and your family. Or the programmer conducting code reviews on the critical aviation software.

Given individuals are (unfortunately) in this position in many professions, we need academic rigor (until we get AI to make better decisions than the average driver/doctor/programmer)

That will never happen. "Dealing with these" means accepting that your entire educational system needs an overhaul. Far easier and more crowd-pleasing to dig in your heels and say that foreigners are cheating scumbags because they don't want to play by your outdated rules.

So cheating is okay as long as I think what you're doing is "outdated"? Interesting ethics you have there.

Working collaboratively and using resources like the internet is okay, since that's what real people actually do. Labelling this behavior as "cheating" in an academic context is outdated.

This is a comical level of rationalization from someone who is obviously still in school (and if not, I don't even know where to begin...). The whole point of taking a test in school is to see how well YOU know the material, not how well you can look stuff up or ask other people for help. If you have so little respect for the material or education, just drop out now, because you're wasting your parents' money and you clearly think you're smart enough to make a living without the things that school is offering you. What the hell is even the point of going to school if you're just going to "collaborate" your way through it? Just skip the pretense and go get a job someplace if you don't need the knowledge.

You are theoretically there to learn your field, not to learn how to work "collaboratively", which is a vague enough description of cheating that it could be used to justify anything. Hell, if I rob a bank am I not just "sharing"? This whole concept of "theft" in finance is so outdated!

Yes, that's what I'm saying. The whole point of taking a test in school is misguided.

Also, it's obvious you are mentally disabled. Otherwise you wouldn't disagree with me, because I'm objectively right. You should go back inside your padded cell and take your medication. /s

The definition of "objective" isn't "because I said so". Or more likely it's a case of "caskance sucks at things like taking tests and not cheating, so he has erected an alternate reality where he shouldn't have to do those things and gets to be right". Mentally disabled, indeed.

Looks like you forgot to read to the end of the paragraph.

Nope. Read it all. If your going to accuse someone of being mentally deficient, you should work harder to not be obviously an idiot yourself. You failed at that.

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