Why I will never pursue cheating again - <AUTHOR> http://behind-the-enemy-lines.blogspot.com/2011/07/why-i-will-never-pursue-cheating-again.html <comment><USER6> While there's much to be said in favor of more creative assignments that aren't minor variants of last year's assignments, the author has drawn the wrong conclusion from what happened.

22 cheats out of 108 is big - and the real proportion may have been even higher, given that it seemed like he caught only either blatant cheats or conscience-stricken/less brazen cheats (the latter category from when he acted people to own up). And it's a lot of work, and I've been around this process at a couple different institutions and seen how tough it is to see it through to an appropriate conclusion.

However, all this wasted time, and all this aggravation, wouldn't be necessary if all the other professors were doing it too. The only reason they're at 28/108 or higher is that people have obviously been getting away with almost anything.

The author has buckled (understandably) as being the only hard-ass in a environment where everyone else is getting away with it isn't feasible. From his perspective, I can see why he didn't fight this, but if he'd stuck it out for another year or two - and showed the next round of incoming classes just how ugly it will get - he'd have gone back to 'normal' cheating rates rather than 28/108.

The idea that you can always produce assignments that are 'unique flowers' that can't ever be duplicated year by year by cheating students has its own pitfalls. One problem is exactly that these assignments _are_ unique flowers, and might turn out to be systematically too hard or too easy or too vague. An advantage of the rather mechanical, "near-clone of last-years stuff" approach is that you can learn from last year's assignments and tune them onto the target. Faculty shouldn't be dumping the same material without fixes every year, but in many fields it's insane to expect that they have to prepare all new assessment material every year. They just don't get paid enough or get enough time for that.

<comment><USER7> I made a different conclusion. There are several problems, but the biggest is his approach.

Now, I'm not a teacher, and all those caveats. But in my imagination, my approach would be much less time-consuming. I cribbed this from my high school physics teacher. It involves little detective work and no long drawn out confessions.

When cheating is detected, simply send a note to the student with the following: "I'm aware that you cheated on this assignment. You have received a failing grade on it. The next instance of cheating will be referred to the honor board and you will fail the class." Any student who wished to contest the charge would be referred to the honor board immediately. Contest it with people whose job it is to handle this sort of thing. The policy on cheating would be posted at the beginning of class and strictly enforced.

The reason why this is so much more efficient is because the net time spent compared to a non-cheating assignment is probably negative. This is simply because you no longer have to read or grade the papers that are found to be copied. Since there is no conversation to be had with the student, there's also no extra time spent there. The only marginal cost is if a student wishes to appeal your verdict, but I doubt there will be much of that happening since the consequences would almost certainly be more severe.

This also solves the problem of bad ratings. There's no need to play the hard- ass in this situation, which is probably where the rating trouble comes from. Since the interaction is terse and factual, the students won't have much face- time in which to build resentment. You could even put something like, "I know you can complete this class successfully, which is why I'm not referring you to the honor board on the first offense. Please come to the TA's office hours if you're having trouble on your papers in the future. I look forward to working with you and helping you achieve your goals in this class" at the end of the email to put a positive spin on it. (Although the idea of having ratings come from people with whom the professor is in a somewhat adversarial relationship seems like one that could be improved.)

Anyway, I see where this guy is coming from but I'm not sure his is the right decision. Maybe I'm wrong though because as they say I have not walked a mile in his shoes.

<comment><AUTHOR> James, I did _exactly_ what you suggested. Every single student came to protest. I believed that things would play out exactly as you are thinking. Unfortunately, they turned out very differently.

<comment><USER7> Huh, interesting. But I got the impression from your article that you typically had a discussion with the student, presented them with the evidence, etc. after they protested to you. That's a little different than my proposal, where in the case of protest you hand it off to the honor board immediately. I.e. the students should know that the only discussion is one where they risk suspension if they don't manage to prove their innocence. Also, from what I read, you actually sent out an email inviting students to come talk with you. Hard to see what other outcome there could be than students coming and taking up a lot of your time.

Think about it in terms of incentives and scarce resources. If the students know they can come and protest to you with no additional consequences, they will certainly do so, guilty or no. Everyone has heard the story of merciful teachers and cops that don't give a ticket if you cry. At worst, they are out two hours, and at best, they may get a higher grade with very little work. Basically, your time has become a commons whose use has no real cost to the individuals taking advantage of it, but from which they believe some value can be extracted.

The economic solution is to make sure the time costs something, so that the students will consider whether there's really enough utility in protesting to make it worth the cost. The cost is that if they protest, they run the risk of suspension in the event they are actually guilty. It should be obvious to students that this will be the likely outcome if they do protest.

Let me know if I'm reading you wrong because I really am curious if students protested even though any protest would result in an immediate referral to the honor board. Also, thanks for fighting the good fight even though it got you screwed in the end. We need more folks like that.

Oh, I didn't mention the one other advantage this approach has. If you quickly and forcefully deal with students who have violated class policies, I think there will be less emotional "splash damage." It's the same way a parent should not draw out a punishment over a long period of time -- make it hard, get it over with, and wipe the slate clean so you can smile at each other the next day.

<comment><AUTHOR> When I detected 15+ cheating cases, I just asked permission from the Dean's office to notify students over email, and then direct them to the Dean's office for appeals.

So I did that, notified the cheating students they got a -30 (negative the points of the homework) and directed them to the Dean's office for appeals.

Well, it was very difficult to enforce the "talk to the Dean's office if you have a problem with my judgment." When the student comes in my office during office hours, I cannot say "I do not want to talk to you, get out of my office". Yes, I could do it, in theory. Hard to do in practice. Would I physically push the student out of my office?

<comment><USER7> Of course I would not advocate physically pushing the student out of the office.

> Instead, I sent an email to the class. I just said that there were cases of > plagiarism detected and whomever cheated, could come and find me. For the > rest, I would report the case . . .

I guess I just read this as an invitation to come and discuss the matter with you. And I understood from this that any who didn't come would be referred. If I were a student and reading this paragraph, I would make damn sure to speak with you about my indiscretions. That is the exact opposite of what I'm proposing, which is that you only refer students to the dean if they _do_ come and speak with you.

Perhaps you meant to convey something different than what I'm getting from the blog post, if so, sorry for misreading.

> When the student comes in my office during office hours . . .

Once again, I've never been a professor, although I did TA for a while when I was in college. That said, I had an expectation that my office hours would be utilized in some way or another by students. I would propose prioritizing any student that wants to ask about something other than their cheating conviction. For students who want to talk about the cheating, just say, "If you really believe you did not cheat, we can discuss the evidence. But that will only happen at an academic integrity board hearing. If they find you innocent, I will regrade your work. Think about it and let me know by email if that's what you want to do." And then just refuse to talk about it.

Again, you're the professional and I'm the backseat driver. You know more about how this works than I do. This is simply how I imagine it would go, and although you've disagreed with me several times I still haven't gotten the impression that you did what I'm proposing.

<comment><USER8> +1 on the office hours comment.

In fact, I would argue that office hours is NOT the proper venue to discuss these matters anyway. From my experience, the purpose of office hours was to clear doubts and further understanding of the class material. I would've been extremely pissed off if I came to office hours with a legitimate question about the material, only to waste my time waiting on a bunch of people arguing about cheating.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, for non-office hours I can always say to the student that they cannot come in, as I have other things to do. There is a legitimate excuse not to even start the conversation.

However, during office hours, any student can come in and discuss class- related topics. I cannot prevent students from entering my office, just because I believe that they _will_ want to discuss their cheating penalty.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> A housemate of mine had a very creative solution: as a teacher he said that he would give anybody who cheated a 0 and that appeals could be filed with the Dean's office to prove they did not cheat. Most importantly, nobody would be told if they had been caught cheating, the zero would just show up on their grades.

The system plays on the student's mind: when they submit the first assignment and cheat their motivation to bother to make the minimal effort to dick around with the next one waivers. Most of the cheaters apparently dropped before the midterms. Any whiners with the balls to claim they had not cheated get to make their case to the Dean and voluntarily submit themselves to the school judicial process, but this was generally unneeded as apparently most cheaters dropped the class before midterms. No whiners in your office, and the reviews of you as a teacher are in before you fail them. Seems like it addresses all your problems.

<comment><USER10> That's pretty awesome - it's like The Tell-Tale Heart way of dealing with cheaters

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I can't speak for college, but I cheated quite a lot in high school. I cheated "better" than the students in this post though, by copying sentence by sentence from various sources, rewriting it to make the cheating non- detectable, and reading over it to make sure the flow was good. It saved me at least 50% of the time compared to writing something from scratch, and the quality was good too.

Do I feel bad about it? Absolutely not.

It's imporant to consider why people cheat before you deem it bad. I cheated because the assignments were a waste of time. Plain and simple, a waste of time. It often felt like something the teacher gave us just so we shouldn't spend our evenings having fun. It wasn't something you were supposed to learn something from, it was something you were supposed to do because you were supposed to do it.

I should point out that that the Norwegian high school system is quite different from the American system. We couldn't choose our subjects, we had to take what the education law said we had to learn. Because of that I had a lot of subjects that I didn't have any interest in whatsoever, the only thing important was the grade I got. When you don't have any reason to study a subject other than to get a high number on a paper, it's natural to cheat. It's borderline impossible to be motivated to do something forced on you.

However, if the subject or course is your own choice, like the case with most university courses, cheating is something different. If the the only value the students get from a class is a grade and not relevant and valuable knowledge, I understand and sympathize with the cheaters.

<comment><USER12> A waste of time? Not if you learnt from them.

Still, they need to separate "formative" and "summative" assessment. If a piece of assessment is easy to game, it should be "formative" - the marks you get should not go to your final grade, and should only be used as a feedback. If the assessment is hard to game, it should be "summative".

UK universities used to give a final vocal exam, after three years of study. You _can't_ cram for it, there's too much to cover. And it's an exam, so there's a hell of a lot less cheating. Still, it does seem a little extreme.

PhD thesis (and other research-grade work) are another example, but I guess its too hard for 90% of undergrads.

Commercial quality work might be another option, but it won't assess the fundamentals that universities should be teaching.

<comment><USER11> I would surely learn a lot about the lastest in pop music if I watched MTV five hours a day for a month too, but that doesn't mean that it would be a good use of my time since I have no interest or reason for learning about pop music. A lot of the assignments I got and subsequently cheated on felt just like that.

You actually pointed of something I didn't mention in my previous comment. If you learn something, it shouldn't matter how you learned it. I actually learned the topics and passed the exam with flying colors even though I cheated on a lot of the assignments.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Holy crap. They let so many people get away with copy-paste assignments, and they call themselves a postsecondary institution? That's fucking horrific. Where I'm from, a single sentence similar to one of your sources is marks deducted. A paragraph puts you on academic probation. Anything bigger is a bus-ticket home.

<comment><USER14> Where I attended college, you get a year's suspension for getting caught copying a sentence without citation. Anything as egregious as this presented would've meant a class full of suspended students.

<comment><USER15> I'm sure that was the policy, but how often was it enforced? Most universities have draconian policies against cheating that are never enforced, except in the most egregious cases. It's extremely rare for any school to discipline as many people as this; when it does happen, it tends to be national news.

<comment><USER14> 28 students last year (out of about 4,000) were reported. 17 were suspended, 7 got probation, 3 were found not responsible, and 1 had the allegations formally rescinded.

This is roughly consistent year-to-year.

<comment><USER16> Unless your school is dramatically different from other schools, you've just provided very strong evidence that only a tiny minority of actual violations are pursued.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> One of the problems here (which I've heard is common to most universities) is the use of student evaluations to evaluate professors. That creates a very unfortunate incentive for profs to try to please their students. Not all students value the best education; some just want a high grade for as little work as possible. Their evaluations are not going to be in line with the goals of the university. By using them as part of the prof evaluation, the school is encouraging behavior it almost certainly doesn't mean to.

<comment><USER18> This +100. Surely the student's review of the teacher should only be one factor used when evaluating the students. A band-aid fix would be to preclude students found cheating of reviewing their teacher (or their review doesn't count), but all in all this systems seems set up to be abused.

<comment><USER19> How about delaying the release of this information? Students would fill out a review, but it would be locked and unaccessable by the university for a period of 3 years. (The professor ought to have access, if only to gather feedback.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> While I sympathize with the instructor and think he should be incentivized to fight cheating, I'm not pleased with the use of services like TurnItIn. Basically, the student gives someone some faceless company a license to whatever they create for perpetuity. Are these companies ever compelled to delete material on request? And who could audit that?

<comment><USER21> I completely agree with this sentiment. It is difficult for me to express how extremely inappropriate I think it is for a school to transfer ownership of a student's assignment to a third party who uses it strictly for profit. It would already be iffy if turnitin was a nonprofit, but they aren't.

Papers that students legitimately write and no third party ever gains access to, are _still_ inflating their essay counts and therefore making some guy rich.

The courts upheld that it isn't a copyright violation since they decided it was fair use, but I have to say even if it is legal it is morally abhorrent for schools to go along with it. Plagiarism is unavoidable from individuals that are trying to scam their way through school, and something that needs to be combated, but universities are supposed to be bastions of enlightenment not cronies for privately held corporations.

To be clear, I don't see any problem with automatic plagiarism detection. I do see a problem with very significant profits being made due to usage of students work that they cannot possibly opt out of (especially high school students who don't even have the option of transferring schools if they don't want their work being used that way)

<comment><USER22> So would writing "Copyright (C) 2011 J. Random Student, all rights reserved" on ever essay you hand in make any difference?

<comment><USER23> You already have a copyright just by writing it. Courts have ruled this is fair use, which means the courts feel this use of content is more valuable to society than writers keeping their rights.

I wonder if laws would change if we were talking about combatting plagiarism in film schools by keeping a database of all films to match against.

<comment><USER24> If it's fair use, the student keeps copyright, they just can't go after Turnitin etc. for copyright infringement. Lack of infringement != losing copyright. If the professor were to, say, publish an anthology of student papers, this would not be fair use and he'd have to either get permission or risk being sued by the students.

There're various other cases of fair use that make this fairly obvious, eg. when you DVR a TV show, that's fair use, but it doesn't mean that the MPAA has lost copyright over that show and can no longer go after people who share it on Bittorrent.

<comment><USER23> Yeah, my comment was unclear. I didn't mean to imply the students lost their rights, just that the courts have decided this particular use supersedes their rights under the fair use doctrine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> This professor is a huge part of the problem. He's a tenured professor saying "caring about cheating is counter productive", which to me says "I would rather have an easy life where I don't have to work hard than to protect the reputation of the institution I work for and ensure that students that graduate have learned something along the way".

He complains he had to work almost 44 hours (2 hours * 22 cheaters) and repeatedly moans and bitches about how much time that is, despite being _spread over the course of an entire semester_. I assume he's been in academia his whole career, because I can't remember a week where I've worked less than 50 hours.

My only solace is to know that this guy is a professor at a business school giving incredibly simplistic homework in excel, and his students are too stupid to do it. I can't think of a better punishment for someone who puts his leisure and student assessments above academic integrity than to have students like that.

Finally, what is the value of his class at all? If he can't tell his students are cheating without globally searching everything with this software, what are they supposedly learning? I would favor just eliminating this class; if you can't tell whether a student took it or not, they didn't learn anything. If you can't quantify the learning experience, it shouldn't carry credit.

This may be my strong bias as a Math major, but I know there is no way I could have cheated in almost any of my classes. If I had copied someone's homework, either the professor would have recognized it right away (since most professors actually knew and cared about the students in their class), or I would have failed all the exams. Do business school students not have exams that they can fail? If not, what are they supposedly learning? I know lots of business schools really drive their students hard to learn skills that they will use later. My opinion of NYU's business school (where the author of this is a tenured professor) is now so low that I will do a bit more diligence on MBA students with a degree from there as I review resumes and gauge job candidates in the future.

Edit: removed something criticized as a personal insult. This comment was modded up to 10, and at the time of this is now modded as 4. There should be some kind of meta-karma for controversial posts, since they inject lively debate instead of just attempting to game the system! That is my biased view anyway.

<comment><AUTHOR> Justin, I am the professor who wrote the article.

The 44 hours is not a number to show how much extra I had to work. Believe me, a 14-hour day is a pretty common thing for me. Teaching is only part of my overall job (I also have to do research, supervise PhD students, review papers, serve on committees and many other things).

The 44 hours figure is given just as a contrast to the actual time that I spent in class. I would _much_ rather spend these 44 hours on helping students, on creating new assignments, on finding things in the news that are relevant to tomorrow's class and so on. Instead, these 44 hours were literally wasted on the students that should have been the least deserving. (When I had the student crying in my office, I had actually lines of students waiting outside to ask me questions about the material in the class. Most of them ended up leaving, as they could not wait for so long.)

Also blaming NYU/Stern for this is a rather shortsighted approach. I would not be surprised if the situation is identical in many other schools but just nobody has the incentives to fight cheating.

Just a note: My PhD is in computer science. I have a technical background. I code for fun, and I detected cheating in the Excel assignments using my own code.

<comment><USER26> You're absolutely not alone in this experience, Panos.

A pair of my friends work for online colleges; one for a state college with a pretty good reputation, and another for a for-profit school with a decent reputation. Neither are tenured.

Both of them have had serious issues with student cheating. The one at the state college got support from one of her superiors, and was not penalized for fighting plagiarism, but it was still very time consuming. Another one of her superiors (in previous years) did not support her in any way, and she had to cut back on enforcing academic honesty to help protect her job, save for the most blatant cases.

The other one (at the for-profit college) stopped crusading against cheating when she found out that she'd (effectively) be fired if she continued. Pass rates are a sizable portion of what's used to determine which teachers are given which classes. In one class, more than half of her students should have been failed for academic honesty violations by the halfway point of the year. However, if she did that, her pass rates would have been low enough that it was extremely likely that she would not be given any classes next semester. (Not technically fired, but functionally so.)

So, you are not the only person encountering this, and you're not alone in realizing that fighting cheating can be hazardous to your career. It's a damn shame.

<comment><USER27> It's not shocking that a for-profit college was more motivated by getting happy graduates through their program than by enforcing academic honesty. But, this speaks to the larger issue of for-profit education as a whole.

As a whole, this seems like an administrative issue, rather than an issue with a single professor. In an environment where departmental heads and academic deans expected, and encouraged professors to report plagiarism - then dealt with it in a fair, consistant manner, this would be a non-issue.

Another big part of what this story illustrates is that individual professors shouldn't be responsible for both detecting and punishing academic dishonesty.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Hi Panos. I was actually a student in your class last fall semester. To alleviate any doubt you may have, the class was known as "Info Tech," and you had two sessions on Mondays and Wednesdays (2-3:15, 3:30-4:45 pm) in KMEC.

Now I have a couple of problems with your post. Firstly, you attribute your lower evaluation rating of 5.3 for last fall semester solely to your lower tolerance of cheating. However, there is something very wrong with this logic. As you may (or evidently, may not) know, correlation does not imply causation. In other words, your lower overall rating was not necessarily due to your increased surveillance of plagiarism; it could have been due to other factors. As someone who was a student in your class, I can speak for myself and say that I did give you a low rating, and it was NOT because you punished the cheaters—it was far from it. To put it rather simply and bluntly, you were unkind (that's an extreme euphemism) out of the classroom. Sure, you had your favorites (my best friend being one of them) as most professors do. However, you had, what I perceived to be, an irrational disdain for some of your students, I being one of them. When I asked questions in class, you'd quietly giggle or give me a blank stare as if the question I asked was completely stupid (forgive me, I'm not technologically inclined), which of course discouraged me from participating in class. When I stayed after class to ask you questions I was too shy to ask in class, or to just discuss the subject material in greater depth, you'd answer in a very short, annoyed tone, as if you had more important things to do. My thank you's went unanswered. My smiles to you were not reciprocated. Sure, it sounds silly, but it was very clear you did not like me. And I had no idea why. Some people noticed, while others in the class also felt like you hated them for no apparent reason. It got to the point where we, as well as others who experienced better treatment, discussed it and concluded you were just racist. Now, I know you and many others reading this post probably think I'm just a pissed off student who didn't get the grade he wanted and is now bashing his teacher out of revenge. However, that's really not the case; I just figured I'd give you my honest opinion of you seeing as your perception of your students' mentality towards you is completely mistaken. I'll just quickly recount one experience that perfectly illustrates my overall experience with you. For the WiMax assignment (which is what your blog post is based on), after all the students had received your email demanding those who plagiarized to come in to talk to you, naturally everyone, even those who didn't cheat, felt very uneasy and worried. I, who collaborated with a friend on one small part of the assignment, got worried and came in to see you during office hours. When I arrived, there was one other student waiting in the seating area; she said you weren't in your office. So we waited for a good 30 minutes until you came strolling in. She then went in to speak with you. About 20 minutes passed until she emerged. You then walked out, saw me, and then said "I'll be back soon." 50 MINUTES ELAPSED, and you finally returned. You were munching on a sandwich. As you walked by me, you mumbled "emergency." So, almost two hours after I had come to your office, I finally was able to speak with you. We went in, you looked up my assignment, and then you said "there's no problem with your assignment; you're fine." So I left. There was no apology.

Now, aside from me having a bad experience with you, what really irks me about your post is your complacence with cheating because it's not in your self- interest to pursue those who cheated. A true capitalist at heart, I guess. As a student who did not cheat, worked very hard, and still received a relatively low grade in your class, there's nothing more infuriating. Is it not your job as an educator to make sure those who put in the most effort and demonstrate the highest level of achievement are awarded grades accordingly? Is it not your job to make sure the playing field is level, especially at a school where there is such a high pressure to do well as a result of a strict grading curve policy? I guess you don't believe so. I mean, after all, you did give my friend, who consistently received a B average on assignments and exams throughout the semester, an overall grade of A (which he was very, very shocked by).

Anyway, that is not to say I did not learn a lot from your class. You were a great teacher inside the classroom. However, teaching evaluations don't just measure your ability to give good lectures; they are holistic--meaning, they also measure intangibles, such as the professor's willingness to help students, or his attitude. And that, Panos, is where you failed.

<comment><USER29> "who put in the most effort and demonstrate the highest level of achievement"

I've noticed a growing problem with people equating effort with achievement as the parent does. Just because one "works really hard" doesn't mean that one creates something of value. I'm not sure where this belief arose from, but it doesn't apply in school and it certainly doesn't apply in life.

<comment><USER24> I agree in general, but remember that we're talking about an MBA program here. Just what "value" is there to be created sitting in class?

The point of schooling is to develop the skills that will help you in the real world. Hard work is one of those skills; it's not outside the realm of plausibility that schools should incent it. (FWIW, cheating - when you don't get caught - is another one of them. Maybe schools should incent cheating and teach you how to not get caught. Oh wait, they do. Mission fucking accomplished. ;-/)

<comment><USER29> Though I certainly can't speak with authority about what might constitute value in an MBA program, I would think it would be the ability to understand systems and their organization and to think creatively about solutions to complex problems. I'm probably wildly optimistic.

<comment><USER24> From what I've heard from friends and coworkers who've gone to HBS - the value of the MBA is almost entirely in the network, in getting to know all the other folks who also got into Harvard. (This is perhaps a little bit less valuable at NYU, but the general principle still applies.) Logically, therefore, if you want to maximize value as an MBA program, you should have your students party all day. Which may not be all that far from the current truth.

The classroom aspects of the MBA have been uniformly criticized by the people I know that've gone through them, except for the few idiots who believe every business situation is like a case study and then run their businesses into the ground basing decisions on that. Business is just too complex to reduce to classroom principles. I think Marc Andreesen once wrote on his blog that at the time the executive makes the decision that an HBS case study will eventually be based upon, he has less than 10% of the information that the students who will eventually be critiquing him have.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Computer science undergrad here, final year in a very nice public university. For a long time now I've observed how business majors (my roommates) go on unpunished for years of blatant cheating. It has made me completely lose faith in the system. In computer science, cheating is not such a simple proposition. Our university CS department has a no-bullshit cheating policy: first offense results in failing grade, suspension for one semester, and mark on your transcript. Second offense results in expulsion from the school of Computer Science. I've seen this punishment applied in person many times; I know the dean isn't bluffing when he says he'll do it. Also, the school CS department uses a modified version of MOSS: <http://theory.stanford.edu/~aiken/moss/>

to detect the cheating. Maybe you can circumvent it if you're smart enough. Personally I have better things to do with my time.

Business majors, on the other hand, already have a reputation as the "bullshit major". You curriculum is a joke. You study for exams the day before. You party on finals week while the rest of us study. It's the major you go to when you want the easy ticket through life. And the blatant cheating they get away with just serves to rub it in the face of all the majors who actually have to _gasp_ work for their degree.

More reading here: [http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/17/education/edlife/edl-17bus...](http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/17/education/edlife/edl-17business-t.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2)

When my roommates are done with college, they'll be screwed. I'm not disputing that. They have a degree that won't be worth the paper it's printed on, in a heavily oversubscribed major (25% of all US undergrads are business majors), with no marketable skills, and a tendency towards laziness and dishonesty.

Why do Business schools let this kind of stuff go on? I've talked to people in other schools, hell even business majors themselves, and they all acknowledge it. Don't people realize that they're just screwing themselves over in the long-term while accumulating the animosity and disdain of their peers? It's crazy, self-destructive, sad, wasteful, and it's ruining lives.

The entire system is broken. Cheating is just a symptom.

<comment><USER31> I would be careful generalizing the business school at your university.

I went to Purdue. I started as a Physics major and switched to computer science. I had several friends who started as an engineering or science major and then switched to other majors.

The academic standards in the Physics program were significantly higher than in CS, and liberal arts was a joke. There is a reason for this more than just Physics > CS > Liberal Arts:

Let's say you're a quality student who has decided against a private college for whatever reason (e.g. you don't want 6 figures in student debt) in Indiana:

If you want to major in liberal arts, you go to Indiana U.

If you want to major in CS and you don't mind the medium increase in cost, you go to the University of Illinois

If you want to major in Physics, you go to Purdue.

So there is some selection bias here. I don't know much about business schools, so I don't know if your generalization is valid or not. This is just something I've noticed in my own narrow experience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> The takeaway of applying aikido-like redirection techniques (don't try to fight cheating head-on, but instead change the problems so cheating is meaningless) is a generally applicable life lesson.

</comment><comment><USER33> Hi Panos, another NYU Stern student here.

All I have to say is THANK YOU. The sense of entitlement in Stern classes at the undergraduate level is ridiculous. I'm glad to see someone cracking down on cheating at my university. Even though I know how prevalent cheating at Stern is, it was still shocking to hear some of the numbers (1 in 5 being admitted cheaters).

I'd like to add that as a student who genuinely enjoys learning (in certain topics that I'm interested in, of course), those "creative" or "open ended" assignments that you mentioned are way more fun as a student than the typical stuff you get in an intro Info Tech class.

I took Info Tech last year with another professor and absolutely hated it. The professor was clearly "checked out" and working on other projects. It certainly does nothing to help the atmosphere of Stern (if you don't go to work at a big financial firm, you're worthless) if the IT intro class is so boring and bland (when there's so much interesting shit going on right now in IT!).

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

</comment><comment><USER12> If universities faced de-registration for allowing plagiarism to go on, it would dry up in an instant. Create a national ombudsman. Take calls from disgruntled lecturers and the students who can't stand working 10X as hard as their peers to get the busy-work done. If the university can't clean itself up, it loses the right to profit from federal teaching loans.

Disgruntled students could abuse a complaints system, but there's tonnes of ways for them to create trouble already, so I doubt that's a big downside.

</comment><comment><USER34> I worked for 5 semesters as an undergrad teaching assistant in the CS department of my university. We had generally 1 to 2 cases of cheating per semester in classes of up to 150 students and ~10 assignments. We identified them using Moss[1] which we ran over all submitted assignments. This plagiarism rate now pales in comparison to the rate the OP has seen.

I wonder why there's such a huge gap between my experience and this professor's; undergrad vs. graduate school? CS vs. business school? Moss vs. Turnitin? Arizona vs. New York?

1\. <http://theory.stanford.edu/~aiken/moss/>

<comment><USER35> My guess? CS vs business school. You can't bullshit a compiler.

An engineer pal of mine eventually went back for an MBA at a top-tier business school. He said that in 2 years, he learned exactly one thing that he wouldn't have figured out on his own with a little thought. (It was the law of comparative advantage, which blew my mind as well.) The rest was building a rolodex and gaining skill in presenting smoothly.

His experience made me pretty suspicious of the intellectual content business schools. Given that, cheating makes a twisted sort of sense. And of course, if one plans to go on to create mortgage-backed securities or asset-stripping leveraged buyouts, one probably has an ends-justify-the-means attitude by the time graduate school rolls around.

<comment><USER36> I'm one of those people who want to genuinely learn yet was obsessed with having a perfect GPA. Here's something I experienced ...

Many years ago, when I first started grad school in CS, I wanted to learn graphics programming and enrolled in a course cross-listed between undergrads and grad students. I got the first assignment and was shocked at the amount of code needed to be written (and I consider myself to be a strong hacker!). I only got 80% of the functions working and got a lame mark for the assignment. Then assignment 2 comes along - even more complex and code-heavy than the first! During this time, I happened to go to the undergrad lab for something. What do I see? Multiple groups of undergrads (fours and five students per computer) with what seemed to be like copies of the assignments from the previous year. I subsequently verified that the prof had been using the same assignments every year. It was also a reality check for the amount of plagarism that happens in CS labs (during my undergrad days, I thought it was extremely rare). I was pretty disgusted by the state of affairs and ended up dropping this particular course. My loss.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> After reading this thread (more than once, now... it about doubled while I was asleep), I just have to say thank you to Panos. Obviously you've hit on a topic that everyone finds relevant and of merit to discuss. Unfortunately, you're encountering a lot of unconstructive negative feedback and emotional responses. In reality, I think very few of the responders truly understand what being a professor is like mentally and emotionally, and (understandably) only equate it to the three hours a week they saw their professors back in college.

You've identified a very real and very serious problem, and come up with some ways to beat it. You tried doing things the 'normal' and 'right' way (e.g. to pursue cheaters) and found the system to be a total failure in this regard. People read your title, however, and think you're giving up. They started skimming and didn't make it to the end where you explain that you aren't pursuing cheating because you are going to change your assignments to prevent it entirely. This isn't a matter of criticism - it's a matter of applause.

Simply by reading a lot of the comments here, I'm particularly bothered by people's attitudes and understanding (or lack thereof) for your situation. Your capacity thus far to proceed with calm conversation has been impressive, and I hope all the negative feedback doesn't get under your skin. I know that having thick skin is part of being a teacher (though should it, really?), but we're all human on the inside - something most people never think about the teachers they've met.

</comment><comment><USER38> That was one disturbing article, on so many levels.

I cannot even imagine that someone caught doing this wouldn't be instantly suspended from school and possibly expelled. Why on earth are you in college if you want to cheat?

Even worse is a teacher that thinks it's "not worth pursuing".

That said, I do like his ideas of changing the assignments to deter cheating, but that doesn't make it right.

With such creativity to try to "fix" cheating, why wasn't one of his suggestions to have the teacher evaluations exclude scores from students that were caught cheating? This would stop the mis-aligned incentives that caused him to find a way to not report cheaters.

</comment><comment><USER39> It seems like the professor tried to personally deal the problem on a case-by- case basis; this will always end up being more work for him in the long run. What he should have done is just immediately hand the case off to the proper authorities and let them decide the case. However, I'm assuming from the post that the council at this particular college is considered to be a last resort option; other colleges have committees that are dedicated to dealing with cheating and it's standard procedure amongst faculty to forward all cases to them immediately.

</comment><comment><USER40> Welcome to the future where the stupid with "credentials" will be ruling you.

While you're busy doing actual work, building something, they're building networks of support in your employer's structure to enable them to rise.

So when you explain something to them and get a blank look or questions that make it clear they haven't understood anything, you'll know why.

But hey, they have a Business Degree. _They_ win, not you.

Me, bitter? _maniacal laughter_

<comment><USER24> Median base salary for a Stern school graduate is only $60K:

[http://www.businessweek.com/bschools/rankings/undergraduate_...](http://www.businessweek.com/bschools/rankings/undergraduate_mba_profiles/stern.html)

I made more than that straight out of college, and now make _much_ more than that. So no, they didn't win. Technical skills pay if you're good at them.

<comment><USER41> That's nyu undergrad business majors. MBA is 150k on average.

[http://www.stern.nyu.edu/OCD/Recruiters/PlacementReports/ind...](http://www.stern.nyu.edu/OCD/Recruiters/PlacementReports/index.htm)

<comment><USER24> Total compensation. Only $100K base salary. From the salary survey posted here a couple days ago, a number of HN readers are doing better.

Also, remember that that includes an average of 5 years work experience. How much do engineers with 7 years of work experience, or 5 years and a master's degree, make?

<comment><USER42> Not sure why the distinction base/bonus matters. What counts is the total one makes at the end, no matter how it's divided.

Re: 150k, outside of the Valley & NYC, significantly less.

<comment><USER24> Right, and total compensation for skilled software engineers is easily more than $150K. So in an apples-to-apples comparison, the techies don't come out so bad.

The bulk of the NYU grads cited in the statistics above were working in the Northeast (presumably NYC), so again, comparing them to Silicon Valley engineers is totally apples-to-apples. If anything, it's unfair to the Silicon Valley folks, as cost of living is higher in Manhattan than SV.

<comment><USER42> "Right, and total compensation for skilled software engineers is easily more than $150K"

[citation needed] 150+ is still rather unusual, as far as I know. Glassdoor.com says that, for example, at Fog Creek (a company that is quite famous and brags about how well it pays its engineers; and has offices in NYC) the one engineer who filled in his salary makes between 92k and 100k. That's a long way off from 150k, and I'm highly skeptical that even 'skilled' softwared engineers will can _easily_ make more than 150 as an employee.

(EDIT: Median software engineer salary in NYC is 80k according to glassdoor.com.)

<comment><USER24> Salary survey here on Hacker News 4 days ago:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2763932>

(When I looked at it last, there were actually a lot fewer responses in the <$60K and $60-100K range...maybe all the students and junior devs responded over the weekend.) This is for base salary, so it's comparable with the $100K number. There are roughly 700 respondents that make over $100K base in the poll, and close to 200 that make $150K+ base, which I would consider a fairly decent-sized chunk.

The citation in the poll says that StackExchange's top end is about $200K.

<comment><USER42> Yes, I saw that survey, but I don't see why it's base salary only; the more logical reading of it is total compensation, and I think many people filled it in as such.

150k+ is the 93th percentile in that survey, and the whole survey is I think biased towards the upper end. But even without that, calling the 93th percentile something that a merely skilled developer can "easily" make is a stretch, to put it mildly.

All data contradicts it - not just this poll, glassdoor.com, other informal surveys, but also e.g. the bureau of labor statistics (<http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos303.htm>)

Don't be fooled by people reporting ranges and then taking the top end. By that standard, if you go work for a Fortune 500 company people make 'up to 15 million' if that's what the CEO makes. Professional basketball players don't make 'up to 50 million a year', there are maybe a few who do that, but that doesn't make it attainable for the regular ones, or even the 90th percentile.

<comment><USER24> Man, I would've felt so much better about my answer on that survey if I'd assumed it was talking total compensation. :-)

I suppose a lot depends on your definition of "easily". Yes, the poll is biased towards the high end - because it's on Hacker News, and typically people who aren't passionate about programming don't visit here. But what's the question that readers of this comment thread are asking? My guess is it's whether _they_ can be making $150K+ after being out in the real world for 7 years or so.

And I don't think that's all that unreasonable. They're already part of the self-selecting group that the poll is being drawn from. We know from other HN polls that HN skews young: I don't remember offhand the proportion of readers that are over 30, but I believe it was only 15-20%. If we assume that experience and salary are pretty sharply correlated, that's a pretty large chunk of the older crowd that are raking in the big bucks. It's not a lottery ticket; it's something that a good number of the people you're talking with have achieved.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I am surprised no one brought up the pervasive cheating within ethnic lines. From my anecdotal evidence, just graduating from a private school in Philadelphia in IT, the majority of ethnic students would simply pass assignments and essays to one another from term to term. It was extremely demoralizing seeing these students at graduation standing for the academic honors, e.g., cum laude and magna cum laude, and get applauded for their fake accolades.

Additionally, has anyone thought that people cheat because of financial reasons? I know at my alma mater people were given a grant up to 15 thousand, half of tuition, if they maintained a grade point average over a 3.0.

<comment><USER44> I haven't seen it personally within ethnic lines, but when I as a student at the University of Washington, the files of previous assignments and tests kept by the fraternities were legendary.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> It is interesting that so many people think that Panos should have taken a hard line. Panos seems to have had few options (and I applaud the approach he ultimately chose for the reasons he gave), but that is only if you constrain yourself to the current system, which is grade based. Removing the grades from the system is an option, but few consider it, and there is much evidence from the people that have stopped using grades that it nets great results. My PhD experience, since it inherently was not graded, was a data point for myself --- everyday was a day of glory, pursuing my passions; and I could dive deeper into what a professor said, or ignore other things that I wasn't yet ready to hear, without a second thought about earning a grade. I learned a ton, more than at any period of my earlier life (now I learn, as in gaining understanding, more per day than during my PhD), and I attended some "good" schools. Using grades has poor psychological side effects, one of which is to groom people for employment, as opposed to preparing them to start companies; another is to drive self consciousness and fear of mistakes (which are horrible side effects to have associated with learning); competitiveness; and focus on pleasing others to the extent of deceiving them. I think many people in their 30s or 40s realize what a waste of life those years of earning grades was (but won't admit it) --- now they probably use the skills gained from passing tests more than they use the knowledge that they accumulated.

<comment><USER46> I taught middle school science for a few years and _totally_ revamped the grading system, an experiment that worked well. I made sure that the grades were a simple and objective measurement of the mastery of the learning objectives instead of what they often are: a paycheck-like incentive or a means of manipulating student behavior.

(By the way, I used to work in Karlsruhe.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Don Norman has written on this. Here is his preamble to _In Defense of Cheating_ :

"No, I am not in favor of deception, trickery, fraud, or swindle. What I wish to change are the curriculum and examination practices of our school systems that insist on unaided work, arbitrary learning of irrelevant and uninteresting facts. I'd like to move them toward an emphasis on understanding, on knowing how to get to an answer rather than knowing the answer, and on cooperation rather than isolation. Cheating that involves deceit is, of course wrong, but we should examine the school practices that lead to cheating: change the practices, and the deceit will naturally diminish."

<http://www.jnd.org/dn.mss/in_defense_of_cheating.html>

</comment><comment><USER48> I think an easy solution would be to immediately show the TurnItIn results to the student when they submit. They are then given a chance to resubmit if it picks up plagiarism. The first time they'll probably keep tweaking the content until it passes but they'll soon get bored of it (and the time it consumes) and start writing their own papers.

<comment><USER12> No, they won't. They will just keep tweaking until it passes. Eventually, they will learn to tweak first, but that will simply make it impossible to ask them to write their own ideas.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Here's a radical idea:

Get rid of grades.

Let's think about the consequences of that for a minute. You still pay for college. There are still classes. There is still homework. Exams are unnecessary. Do away with prerequisites. In this system, everybody in class is there because they want to learn. It is the _only_ motivating force.

And what do we lose? Companies might look at grades for determining how well suited a possible employee is for a job, but it seems to me that other qualifying material such as previous jobs, skills, extracurricular activities, and projects are equally important. And besides, you wouldn't want to hire someone only based on their grades, you would want to interview them first.

Anything else? It might be a worthwhile trade off.

<comment><USER50> No, you'd still want exams as a focusing tool. But they'd be corrected, not graded. (and depending on your stance on pedagogy, they might be timed, closed book, or they might be take-home. )

Remember also to include advanced studies in your list. It was 'common but unconfirmed knowledge' that students from UCSC (where they have a 'narrative evaluation'+Pass/Fail option) would be passed over by medical schools since you couldn't reduce a student down to a GPA for the first-pass of application cuts.

I'm actually rabidly anti-grading, but I think it also has to start much, much earlier. I've literally gotten into shouting matches with (undergraduate) students who couldn't conceive of how they could function in school without grades. I found it even harder to explain to people how it could work than explaining how homeschooling/unschooling works.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> As a CS professor with a lot of concern about cheating in general, one sentence stood out to me:

> One of the offenders was actually a repeat offender from the prior > assignment and was also dismissed from the class.

This tells me that this professor who posted the blog entry may not quite understand the problem.

Ethics aside, students cheat because they believe that there is a positive utility in doing so. That is, they believe the expected likelihood of cheating is better than the expected likelihood of turning in their assignment cheat- free, even for a zero. Ultimately the only way to curb cheating is to make the utility negative. And not only negative: it has to be so obviously and publicly negative that it shatters the students' own rosy visions of cheating and getting away with it.

So what did he do wrong here? He allowed a student to cheat not once but twice, and then the only punishment was to fail him. Let us presume that turning in a zero twice, plus average work for the rest, will land you an F. If there is even an infinitesimal chance of cheating and getting away with it, this tells a desperate student that the net utility of cheating on two assignments is positive. If you need three zeros to land an F, you still only need a small probability of getting away with it. And so on.

Basically he slapped the students on the hands. He's part of the problem.

My recommendation to his institution would be as follows: a minor offense (as ultimately decided by an Honor Court, not the faculty member) would be course failure. A major first offense would be course failure plus community service. A second offense would be dismissal from the University with no readmission. And whenever a student is failed or dismissed, the department lets their students know that such an event occurred (with no details). Students should be made aware of how often they get caught as a group.

Then there was this sentence:

> Students would come to my office and deny everything.

It sounds to me that he was handling cheating on his own. This has two very high negatives. First, it sucked up enormous time on his part when there's a perfectly good institutional mechanism (the Honor Court or whatnot). Second, punishing such cases on his own opens him up to direct liability. Faculty can and are sued by students for doing such things. One of the purposes of an honor court is to have his institution take the liability since they made the decision. He should have simply written the students up, submitted to the honor court, and wiped his hands clean.

</comment><comment><USER52> Once the author decides that the academic standard allows copying and pasting, it ceases to become cheating - and he has joined those for whom the term "academic honesty" has lost all meaning. Seriously, when 44 hours over the course of a semester is too much work to uphold a minimum standard, the issue is not confined to students and the author has no moral high ground because they have abandoned the tough part of their job and are doing the grading equivalent of cutting and pasting.

<comment><USER53> I think you seriously underestimate the emotional toll it takes on a person to go through 44 hours of "I know you cheated" with dozens of students. Merely calling that "work" - as if it's equal to prepping for lecture - is not fair.

I think you also ignore the chilling effect this had on the class itself. It's quite possible that the students who did not cheat experienced a worse class because of the change in atmosphere.

<comment><USER52> If you are molly-coddling the students, then I suppose it could take a lot of time. An email with the Turnitin report would take about five minutes - <USER3> is about how long it takes for my spouse who teaches courses online to handle plagiarism.

Setting the expectation for academic honesty in the syllabus and directing students to university policies is more than enough. In any event, it should just be handled privately. There's no reason to jump up and down and hold your breath in front of the class.

<comment><USER54> scott_s is right. Enforcing cheating policies isn't as impersonal as enforcing parking laws. You can't just leave a citation behind and let the students and administration handle it. The professor will be involved.

There's also the aspect of a student being falsely accused of cheating. I was unfortunate enough to have experienced this during my college career. A fellow student, whom I didn't know outside of class, copied my answers exactly on a German exam. I don't know why he did this, because there were only 15 students in the class and the professor knew us all fairly well. To think the professor wasn't going to notice was a stupid assumption on his part.

I was called in to her office and shown the two tests. The answers were the same down to the punctuation even. It was clear the other guy was very bad at cheating and probably did it out of desperation. I was initially shocked and feared I was going to fail the class despite my innocence. She had to refer the incident to the honor board due to university policy. When I left her office I was so furious that I looked up where the other student lived because I wanted to fight him. But I took a walk, cooled off and decided against it.

I was ultimately cleared by the board and there were no marks on my record. After the proceedings were over, the professor apologized to me and said that she never believed for a moment that I had cheated, or that I had helped him cheat. She pleaded with dean to avoid sending the matter to the honor board, but she had to follow policy.

She said she never had any cheating incidents in the past, and that it was personally distressing for her to handle the situation. It was definitely stressful for me as well.

<comment><USER52> What your case shows is that the due process worked. If the professor had called you into the office and said, "Instead of handing this over to the honor court, I am going to deduct 30% from your score," that would have been far more unfair and built far more ill will.

To put it another way, a professor should focus on teaching and let those tasked with investigating cheating and listening to excuses sort it out.

And yes it can and should be as impersonal as a parking ticket. Cheating is a simple violation, and it behooves a teacher to forgo emotional investment in each case. Avoiding interrogations and Perry Masonesque cross-examinations would seem like a good way to avoid such an investment. When 1:5 students in a 100 person course is doing so, reporting cheating is a purely administrative matter of the same sort as turning in low grades for poor students - <USER3> hopefully is something the author still does not find to be too much bother.

<comment><USER53> Professors often are involved in the official process. Often they have to provide evidence at a hearing. They don't just throw the case over the administrator wall.

<comment><USER52> It is not a matter of throwing it over the wall. Administration can conduct the Spanish Inquisition more effectively than the professor.

A Turnitin report as cited in the article would be about as much evidence as would be needed. Particularly when Turnitin is the institution's official means for combating plagiarism...not to mention the level of matches described in the article would make it appear open and shut.

Yes, it might require some involvement from the professor - but the implications of complaining that such involvement is too much work is the basis of my criticism of the author's position.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> "One interesting observation: Almost all cheating happened within ethnic lines. Koreans copy from Koreans. Indians from Indians. Greeks from Greeks. Jews from Jews. Chinese from Chinese."

...or maybe it's just that people copy from their friends?

<comment><USER56> And their friends are generally within ethnic lines. In engineering school right now. You would have to be blind, or incredibly naive to not see that a majority (I cannot say how great) have their closest ring of friends from the same ethnic backgrounds.

Especially the Koreans. Most tight-knit group I know.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> "Instead of the usual evaluations that were in the region of 6.0 to 6.5 out of seven, this time my ratings went down by almost a point: 5.3 out of 7.0."

Way to bias ratings. Students caught cheating should certainly not be rating the professor who caught them. I won't say "problem solved", but that would make a fine start.

<comment><USER58> From the sound of it his honest students probably rated him lower because he wasted a lot of lecture on his forays into cheater cheater chicken eater land. I know I would have, lectures about how many people cheated on the last assignment would bore the crap out of me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> Catching copying is a O(n^2 * m) algorithm (n = no. of kids, m = length of assignment). Fuck that shit, no grad student or prof has that kind of time.

If by any chance you hire 2 TAs and if they got to catch plagiarism, they're cooked since they can't distribute work and have to go through each submission. No point in doing that.

And I am an Indian undergrad and I've seen this ethic cheating first hand - <USER4> is fucking disgusting and destroys the educational experience for everyone in the class because the honest guys are competing individually against the efforts of a 5 - 6 person team.

PROFESSORS and TAs : If you see a group of same-race people sitting together in an exam, fucking break that group up ASAP.

</comment><comment><USER60> This is why I dropped out of college. The other kids ruined it for me: while I was trying to actually do my assignments, everyone else was copying-and- pasting it, getting straight As, and partying late into the night. Nobody ever got caught cheating, but my C work certainly got me a lot of Cs.

In retrospect, most of my friends from college are still unemployed.

</comment><comment><USER61> This article made me cringe as I remembered how incompetent the M.Sc. interns from schools like this were over my summers. 4.0 GPA engineering Masters students barely worth the cubical they took up, let alone any stipend. Group think; hive mind; worthless.

Additive sum, I think academia is doomed. It's done a worse job adapting than politics and religion, equally baroque and antiquated fields. I long for something like Ars Digita or Kahn Academy to become the norm. We need to push education out to the individual and get rid of the institutionalized cookie cutter bullshit.

People either want to enhance their understanding of the world or they don't. A credential or piece of paper doesn't do that, and that's all the vast majority of people in education are going for. We need to cut down to the root and find ways to instill genuine thirst for knowledge and then let people pursue that in much less rigid ways at their own pace.

\--

As an anecdote: I went to The Citadel. We had an honor code. Lie, cheat, steal -- you're gone. The honor court is run by students. Regularly, they'd expel close friends. Point being, you can hold people to standards if you hold people to standards.

My GPA was dismal but I can say sure as shit I never cheated or plagiarized to earn it. Only people who know what the school was all about would even account for this, which is kind of depressing.

</comment><comment><USER62> > _I was also lectured by some senior professors that "I should change my > assignments from year to year". (Thanks for the suggestion, buddy, this is > exactly how I detected the cheaters.)_

what? how can there be cheaters to detect if the assignment is completely different?

<comment><USER63> My guess is that the OP was a bit imprecise, and that he kept some assignments the same as previous years. If 3 assignments are same-same-different, and a student gets grades A-A-F, that could be what they call a 'tell' :)

<comment><USER63> On second reading, the OP was being sarcastic, and derisively noting that if he changed his assignments, he never would have caught the cheaters in the first place. So he rejects one form of making cheating useless (making traditional assignments, but changing them up each year) and embraces another (choosing different types of assignments that are structurally not cheatable).

<comment><USER64> I believe the intended reading is that he does "change" them, by adjusting the font, etc, as mentioned just earlier. His colleague was suggesting that he write entirely new assignments each year.

The author misunderstood what his colleague meant (Or at least, only does a half-measure), which is why he says that "He is" changing them.

<comment><AUTHOR> (I am the blog post author).

No the suggestion was not to create entirely new assignments every year. This is problematic, not because it takes time, but because is it hard to "debug" the assignment, and make it to be not too hard, not too easy, and not ambiguous. You cannot know this before actually giving the assignment out to students.

The senior professor was just suggesting to change the numbers, or small elements of the assignment. A thing that I was doing already.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> At the school i'm going to right now (actually the other big school in nyc...), cheating in the CS department is a huge issue. Big enough that the main focus of orientation seemed to be about how if you got caught even on just weekly assignments, you'd get kicked out pretty fast. Was a bit more than I was expecting.

I later found out the reason for this, the high population of foreign students. I'm generally not one to stereotype, but to have thought otherwise was to simply be living under a rock. It was pretty obvious that they tended to work together in fairly large groups or between several groups on their assignments and projects, and that the rest of us who were not were at a significant disadvantage. And while generally, I didn't /really/ care, as my grades tended to be good enough, and I am not the type to shoot for the A+, it really did make doing the assignments on my own very frustrating when I would get stuck. Spending all that extra time to figure it out on my own just wasn't as satisfying when I knew the class average for the assignments would just be artificially high anyways.

But in the end, i'm really going to grad school to learn, and not so much for amazing grades. It just would be nice to not be penalized for doing my own work.

<comment><USER66> I went to a school in Virginia and while they spoke a good deal about what the penalties for cheating were the actual punishment was much tamer than what the student handbook would have you believe. Out of all the cheaters that I've met, and people speak pretty freely when inebriated, not one of them was ever kicked out of school.

The professors knew who the cheaters were and the cheaters knew what they were doing but when it actually came time to present the evidence to the academic review board the accused had a lame, but valid, excuse or tried the emotional appeal (death in family, drug abuse, child abuse).

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> I have taught (as a PhD student) similar material and this is no surprise to me. But then, is it realistic to expect undergrads to turn out a thoughtful piece on LTE and 4G comms? If it is a technical comparison, sure, but even if you don't plagiarise your sources what are you really doing? You're going to read some articles on the internet, form an opinion, and rewrite that stuff in your own words. So long as they are learning, what's the difference?

</comment><comment><USER68> Why not have the grade of papers be multiplied by the inverse of the plagiarism score? For example, your first author would get a maximum of a 3% grade on his paper. Of course there are false positives to think of as well, but this would force the authors into more and more original content.

The very first assignment I did in college was my own, some code I wrote for a programming class. I turned it in, but my friend was in the class didn't do his assignment. I figured it was a basic enough problem and I really just turned in the assignment for him. We both got slaps on the wrist, but I never blatantly plagiarized again. I'm not saying I've never reused a sentence from another document on occasion, but usually it was either cited or more unconscious.

The big bummer in college was exactly what he talks about though: the propensity for students in some sort of group to help each other out. The fraternities and athletes were always the worst offenders. For the general eds, everyone in class knew that so and so had a copy of this professors test which he barely changes from year to year, or this fraternity keeps all their papers from previous classes categorized(!) so other members can use them, and that sort of stuff.

<comment><USER69> Because Turnitin is pretty terrible software and there are a lot of false- positives. I remember having to "explain myself" for an essay I wrote where what was copied was direct, cited quotes. It uses word pairs sometimes and will highlight any uncommon phrasing that someone may have used in the past.

</comment></comment><comment><USER70> If I was him I would at least write a letter to the department of Academic Affairs (or whoever handles cheating) informing them of the way he was penalized for reporting students. They, if anyone, are the ones with an incentive to fix that problem.

</comment><comment><USER71> Great tale, and I like the approaches he suggest at the end that make cheating impractical. Hopefully, as a tenured professor, he can serve the likely storm of pressure he will get from his university for publishing this.

</comment><comment><USER72> My observation hanging out with friends of different nationalities was that foreigners are a lot more susceptible to plagiarizing than someone who went through the American HS system. Almost all my Indian friends who came here just for college ran into some kinda trouble with plagiarizing. The last time _I_ got into trouble for it was in 6th grade when an entire assignment was scrapped because given the few online resources for the topic, almost everyone had the same paper. This was late 90s and the teacher gave us am earful about how we cannot be doing this and the seriousness of the offense. Sometimes I feel my counterparts in other parts of the world don't get this lesson until their first offense at an American college. Good percentage of my friends who got caught end up going to med school or getting degrees far more advanced than mine leading me to rule out that plagiarism is a strong indicator of longterm failure.

</comment><comment><USER73> Here's a better solution: let students plagiarize all they want. When they are about to get their degree, do an en masse review of all incidents of plagiarism for the student and, if it's egregious and beyond doubt, retroactively fail them for everything. The university keeps their tuition dues and the student gets what they're due.

<comment><USER37> And then the university loses all that tuition handling the lawsuits from the families of all those failed students, and due to the age of the cases/faculty leaving/etc., the case becomes hard to win for the university. Losing all around, unfortunately.

<comment><USER73> Unfortunately, you're probably right. The "shucks, if it weren't for you meddling professors I would have graduated" version is unlikely to happen in the real world.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER74> When I TA'd, I took a hard line on any cheating I detected. Basically it was a 2-strikes approach.

I didn't use turnitin or other mechanisms. I figure, if someone is smart enough to cheat well enough that it's not detectable, it's okay to pass that person. It's not "great", but it's not unleashing a total disaster onto the world.

The cheating I detected was usually because those students were moronic. I am not talking "slightly different". I'm talking, copy-pasted from prior semesters, with 1 modification: the name. Or copy-pasted from the other person in the class with 1 modification.

<comment><USER75> You think that's bad? I had a pair of assignments for which the output of `diff -u` was less than 10 lines long.

</comment></comment><comment><USER76> I don't know where this guy works but there was a zero tolerance policy on cheating and plagiarism were I went to university. Heck my CEGEP had the same policy too. There's an independent review board to investigate then discipline students so that professors and TAs can focus on teaching. Students automatically fail the course and are required to take an ethics course the next semester and retake the course regardless if it was core or an elective.

EDIT: I just read where he teaches. I'm still surprised there's no policy or that the policy isn't enforced.

</comment><comment><USER77> "I decided that it makes no sense to fight it. The incentive structures simply do not reward such efforts. The Nash equilibrium is to let the students cheat and "perform well"; in exchange, I get back great evaluations." (The Professor) As an honest student this is a cowardly response and makes me loose faith in the entire system. Who gives a shit about a degree if it's just a piece of paper. I was never there to tick the box on my way to a middle class lifestyle anyway.

</comment><comment><USER78> There are a lot of comments, and most of the constructive things I've wanted to say have already been said.

Panos, I think your conclusion is the correct one - and you should stand by it. I came to a similar conclusion (different setting) about cheating, and whether it's worth it to pursue it. In more than just teaching, switching strategies is often more effective than enforcing the original strategy.

I hear you're a good lecturer - take pride in that. There aren't many, really.

</comment><comment><USER79> Even as a student, I sympathize with this professor. I've seen how pervasive cheating can be in an academic environment. It's frustrating to know that while one classmate (or myself) is spending hours perfecting an assignment, another is copying/plagiarizing their assignment. It makes the learning experience very stressful. And it's self-perpetuating, as this frustration become the factor that leads more students to cheat. By graduation, you end up with a bunch of students who have just copy and pasted their way through school, who have forgotten how to learn, and who are not prepared.

This article really shines light on why cheating is still so pervasive despite how it damages the learning process. For students, the risk tends to be low while the reward is high. For teachers, the process of eliminating cheating is draining and is often met with negative feedback.

This only leads me to think that cheating will continue to infect our education, until there is a fundamental change in the rewards/feedback system (for students and teachers) in our academic system.

</comment><comment><USER80> The original post has disappeared. Here's the google cache:

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:zlciYW0...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:zlciYW0MwtIJ:behind- the-enemy-lines.blogspot.com/2011/07/why-i-will-never-pursue-cheating- again.html+http://behind-the-enemy-lines.blogspot.com/2011/07/why-i-will- never-pursue-cheating-again.html)

</comment><comment><USER81> How about making a game out of it. A game where cheating is permitted but punishment is administered with more granularity. Let the students know that all assignments are submitted to TurnItIn. Let them also have a look at what you see on TII. Whenever a student's plagiarism threshold is above 50%, their actual score gets docked by 1-(percentage plagiarized). So if a student submits an A paper (say, 93%), but it turns out it was 70% plagiarized, the new grade with cheating penalty becomes .93*(1-.7) = 28%. Smart students will quickly realize that any cheating will at least cut their possible grade in half.

I'm not sure this will work, but people have strange behavioral motivations and incentives. It reminds me of the daycare that wanted parents to not pick up their kids late (as employees had to remain to watch the children). Their solution was to impose a penalty for any extra time over the scheduled pickup time. On the surface, you would think this helped, but instead it had the opposite effect. Parents now understood that it was OK to leave their kids longer because they were being charged for it, whereas before there was a social stigma of arriving late and inconveniencing the daycare center.

With students, it's possible that making plagiarism acceptable on the surface with well-defined penalties may have the desired (and opposite) effect of reducing total cheating.

Also, couldn't the grading structure be established in such a way that it is impossible to pass the class without knowing the material demonstrated through exams? If the only (or most significant) portion of the grade comes through reports and take-home, cheater-friendly exercises, then the grade structure would seem to be broken. Cheating on the homework should only hurt the students, since they won't be able to cheat on the tests, and obviously haven't learned the material enough to do the homework on their own.

</comment><comment><USER82> Jeez, is it so hard to do your own damn homework? Maybe the prof should just let things get messy until it becomes more work to cheat than to just do it legit and maybe actually get some value out of school.

But I guess school is now just a status thing that you do to satisfy other people instead of yourself (or so everyone says), so why should anyone care about doing it honestly?

</comment><comment><USER83> The post seems to be down. Here's the google cache:

[https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:zlciYW...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:zlciYW0MwtIJ:behind- the-enemy-lines.blogspot.com/2011/07/why-i-will-never-pursue-cheating- again.html+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&source=encrypted.google.com)

</comment><comment><USER84> " Suggestions to change completely the assignments from year to year are appealing on the first sight but they cause others types of problems: It is very difficult to know in advance if an assignment is going to be too easy, too hard, or too ambiguous. Even small-scale testing with TA's and other faculty does not help. You need to "test" the new assignment by giving it to students. If it is a good one, you want to keep it. "

I've often heard that from professors in the US, but in my university in France we had a rule forbidding professors from reusing exams and things were fine... Now one thing though, exams were made so that the average is around 10 or 12 out of 20... In cases where the gaussian curve was centered too low, the teachers would decide to grade out of 22 or 24 points...

I have to say though that the idea of using public project, competitions and peer reviewed projects is a very good idea and worked well when I was a student...

<comment><USER42> And in other news, I have first-hand reports from a professor in France using the same exam since the 1980's, each year using copies of the original version formatted with a typewriter.

My university has a lot of rules too, and the majority are worthless.

<comment><USER84> Well it also depends of the university... École d'Ingénieurs (Engineering Schools, it's a bit different from the american system) tend to be stricter about that while universities in France are less strict.

I know for a fact that no exam were reused because the previous years exams were available at the library for students who wanted to study... Since most of the exams were open book, with a world problem to solve in about 3 hours, they were actually fun to study from.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER85> I am currently a university student, and last semester I took an international economics course. As most first lectures go I expected to sit down and listen to the professor tell us what we would be learning throughout the year and what books to buy. But this was quite different, I and many other students in the class experienced a wide range of emotions from panic to excitement. This was a peer based learning course (Myself and the majority of the class did not know this and several people went on their computers and changed courses), for those of you who do not know peer based learning involves students basically teaching themselves the material and then teaching their peers their findings. This was the best course I have yet to take, I learned not only a lot about international economics but how to better my ability at teaching myself what I need to know. In this course we were given three problems throughout the term that we were to be solved in groups, the problems themselves were very vague and indirect yet through researching and presenting our findings in small groups and then in individually completed essays we became knowledgeable in international economics. A bit more on topic was the fact that our essays were to be written individually (and submitted through turnitin) yet all of our research was done in a group setting. This furthered my ability to take information from various sources (mainly the internet) and formulate my own opinion and use proper citation where needed. For me this style of learning was very awkward at first but the reward for sticking with it was great.

Another course I took that term was statistics for economics, for some of the assignments the data used for the questions were chosen by the students themselves (limited to a specific time frame to prevent plagiarism). In the end I think the professor and TAs only checked our formulas rather than our answers because of the time it would have taken to find the correct solution for each problem but this is an interesting way to combat plagiarism.

</comment><comment><USER86> I would love to see a "citation graph" of the papers in turnitin's database.

I had a professor in college who had used the exact same test for 10 years. It was so well known that a "key" had been cobbled together over the years with all of the correct answers and you could readily get n-generation photocopies of this "key".

Only a few of us declined this tempting document, wanting to actually learn the material. It eventually became known that the test _itself_ was a copy of a test from another professor at another school.

Later in my grad program, we received quite a bit of instruction from professors who were clearly just using the slides that came with the textbook as their lecture material.

I've always wondered if one could trace assignments and exams and answers through some very large citation graph...even better over time, seeing how one ancient paper has provided passing grades for generations of students.

</comment><comment><USER87> I worked at Turnitin for a good while, and the numbers we were seeing were eye-popping. I make no attestations w/r/t this particular story, but we'd see 40% or more clearly plagiarized content at every institution we'd demo for. I was shocked, but then, I'm old and my education predates much of the Internet.

</comment><comment><USER88> I have mixed feelings here. On the one hand, I congratulate the effort you spent tackling the problem.

On the other, I'm really disappointed you aren't sticking with it. Never mind anything else, isn't it your obligation to protect your honest students? I appreciate that your colleagues aren't supportive, but that doesn't change your obligations.

And I suspect it's a short-sighted view. Word gets around, in a couple of semesters you'll drive the cheaters out, and probably attract more honest students who are tired of them.

Finally, I question the value of a course that doesn't generate core skills susceptible of demonstration. I've got an MBA, and I learned a lot getting it. But most of my courses were finance and accounting. I took only a couple of strategy and accounting courses, when I was sure that the qualitative material would be handled with rigor, and in some framework that prevented the vague concepts and buzzwords from dominating the conversation. Every time I probed the "soft" courses by less rigorous teachers, I came away convinced they really weren't teaching much that would last. And I'm afraid it's my opinion that most MBA coursework is of this limited value. It is _possible_ to rigorously study qualitative subjects, but it requires considerable discipline.

If your students aren't distinguishably improved by the end of the course, just what was the point of the course? If you aren't enforcing the discipline of the honor code, why would you be expected to enforce the discipline of field? By all means, go after the cheaters -- and go after the fundamental questions of why it's even possible to cheat in your course.

For all those misgivings, I have to credit you for bringing up the issue. There is a lot of rot in our academies, and they urgently need people to demand more of the students. You've already tolerated a lot of controversy to come to this point. But don't stop now, and don't stop with students. Demand more of yourself until your course is something that changes your students in ways that can't be faked.

</comment><comment><USER89> That was an interesting read, and from my experience (both as a student and from teaching a class) is that plagiarism is a big problem.

Thinking a bit more about it, I think that plagiarism is in big parts a symptom of another, bigger problem: making education a competition.

Think about it: would stundents cheat so much if it wasn't for the pressure of getting good grades?

The pressure comes from parents, peers, from the students themselves and from the fear that they won't get a job with bad grades.

Grades serve multiple purposes as well: they give the students a feedback how well they performed, they determine pass/fail, and they tell a possible employer how well the student performed.

Maybe detangling these purposes in some way (though I don't have a good idea how) might be a good way at reducing some of the pressure, and alleviate the pressure for good grades and thus cheating somehow?

</comment><comment><USER90> Fascinating read... sort of rings bells in my head along the lines of DRM/piracy cold war.

Reading the article and see the greater and greater extents the students were going through to cheat and the arms-race occurring between the teacher and the students, he leads you to his ultimate conclusion: the game has to change.

You can see the writing on the wall as you read through. Written "brain dump" style assignments, unless changed every year, aren't going to yield great results. Interactive, group-driven projects, competitions and discussions are all things that are much harder to plagiarize, are more fun and will (hopefully) teach the students more.

Not to mention more fun to teach.

I have a lot of teachers in my family (midwest) and none of them glow when they talk about teaching... they describe it like a war of attrition between the teachers, the students and the administration... like there is some clock ticking away slowly in the background and everyone is going through the motions just trying to outlast everyone else. I am talking about 2 separate generations here, like 40 years apart saying the same thing.

I can't imagine a shittier experience.

On the other hand, I am friends with a few (younger) teachers out here in the west that are rabid about how exciting their class is and how much fun they have.

The common denominator here is that the ones having a blast frequently do highly engaging and custom events in the classroom like re-enacting scenes from a play in drama on-the-fly or the poly-sci teacher segregated his class for a week while teaching about separate-but-equal.

Those are micro-examples, but what I'm getting at is that the teachers that recognize that the game has changed are still having a great time teaching.

Just like /cgi-bin shopping carts and "DO NOT HIT 'Purchase' TWICE!" buttons are dead on the web, so is the schooling experience of yester-year. If school wants to stay relevant, it has to compete with the allure of these extremely fast lives we live now. People cashing in $100,000,000 companies at 22 makes it tough to argue why your kid should stay in school until he's 73 so he can make $80k as an architect.

I wouldn't want to go to school now, a lot of things seem in flux. Notice how popular the "Why go to college?!" conversation is now adays?

I think in 10-15 years it will be much different/more effective with a different outlook though; that'll be a more engaging and compelling experience I hope.

<comment><USER23> _Notice how popular the "Why go to college?!" conversation is now adays?_

I can assure you that conversation (in the context you mean) is not happening all over, but rather limited to a small subset of Internet echo chambers.

My kids still get the same rhetoric from all directions. Unfortunately, that rhetoric doesn't include a cost/value justification. Education is an investment and a means to an end, but most people don't see it that way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I know this is an indirect solution, but why even have papers in a business course anyway? I was a business undergrad, and after all of the lower-level BS classes, it was all about projects and discussions in class, not paper writing. Any long-form writing I had to do was in-class writing essays and stuff on exams, where you can't copy paste.

I know a lot of the CS people on here look down on business education, but the real value in it is not learning specific facts like "what is WiMax" but instead being able to work on a team to create something and being able to communicate and discuss business problems intelligently.

The team projects and case study discussions is really where I learned things. Traditional assignments in a business course don't really make a lot of sense.

<comment><AUTHOR> The essay was about doing a Porter's Five Forces analysis of the wireless industry, as the new 4G technologies enter the market. The WiMax question was just a "warm up" easy question, so that students that do not know what WiMax is can start learning about the concept, before doing the 5-forces analysis.

This was the reason that, initially, I did not bother penalizing the copy & paste behavior for these questions. But, unfortunately, this was just a signal of a deeper problem with the student. After going through unharmed in the first assignment, the student cheated again in the second, Excel-based assignment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER91> I think that it would be productive to reframe the usage of plagiarism- detection services such as Turnitin away from a "gotcha" on cheating towards teaching students to properly cite their academic work. For example, I have heard of professors requiring their students to print out the originality reports themselves and turn them in with the assignment in order to promote accountability.

In addition, the turnitin service itself has its own quirks. I remember when we used it back in high school, it would pick up direct quotes even if they were in quotation marks and use those matching strings to contribute to the total "originality score."

</comment><comment><USER92> I have had many courses in which the answers to the homework are given prior to the homework assignment. The assignment is large enough that copying the answers would take about an hour. Most students feel that if they are going to spend that much time faking it, they might as well do the assignment. Furthermore, biweekly quizzes clearly highlight a lack of understanding. Not doing the homework (or just copying the answers) is a rough road to go down, when averages midterm scores are in the low 60s (and yet some kids ace the midterm). Those who copy the homework do badly in the course. It's just that simple.

<comment><USER93> As a student, I have no complaints about weekly quizzes. I attend university because it gives a structured environment to learn new material and quizzes help keep me focused on what I know and what I only think I know. But extending the time it takes to finish graded homework assignments? It's a waste of my time. I'd rather relax, work at a part-time job, learn a new programming language, or work on some project. Busywork is not why I decided to go to university; the internet provides a free avenue to learn everything I would in university (undergraduate). I pay for the classes, the structure.

(Clarifications. To stay enrolled, I have to maintain high grades, which means homework is an obligation. And yes, I have other motives for attending uni beyond someone telling me what I should learn next. There's the value of a degree outshining being self-taught and how close to 99% of students from my highschool take higher education. University is part of the culture here.)

<comment><USER92> These are weekly homework assignments. 5 hours on average. It's not too bad.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER94> It sounds like the course marking scheme is broken.

In my engineering courses (both as a student and TA), assignments were worth very little, or sometimes not handed in at all, and were instead a tool for the student to learn the coursework. Marks were largely based on quizzes, midterms and finals (usually worth 80 to 90% of the course grade). It's not an ideal solution, as there are skills that cannot be tested in these conditions, but it eliminates the need to spend time on detecting cheating on assignments. Of course, it is important to prevent cheating during examinations, but this is a much more tractable problem.

</comment><comment><USER95> Having to write an essay for which copy/paste from the internet could be construed as a valid answer sounds mind-numbingly boring. Your job is to express the same information as your sources, but with different wording.

<comment><USER96> What do you mean? Copy/paste from the internet was _not_ a valid answer.

Pretty much any question can be answered by copy/paste from the internet. That doesn't mean it would be a good or acceptable answer.

<comment><USER97> This wasn't a class in Rhetorica ad Herennium, it was a business school class. Copy/paste is a combination of two actions and not an answer to any question (except maybe, how do you precisely move text from one file to another?). If you think that the Internet contains to answer to all questions, that's amazing. However, it may contain answers to the questions Professor Panos asked. If it does, what is wrong with properly presenting those answers? I might point out that my profession is perhaps the only one for which plagiarism is a virtue, and failure to use precedents is usually foolhardy--it ain't called boilerplate for nothing. But I didn't want to hijack the thread.

<comment><USER96> _If you think that the Internet contains to answer to all questions, that's amazing._

I don't. I think that the internet contains information that can be used to _assemble_ an answer, for pretty much any undergraduate question you can think of. (That assembly can be done using copy/paste, if you are lazy, and that will generally result in the answer being in substandard language. But it would still have all the relevant information and it would be hard to disentangle a copy/pasted answer from whether someone is just a poor writer.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER98> From the post: "My role is to educate and teach, not to enforce honest behavior. This is a university, not a kindergarten."

In my opinion this is one of the primary issues with a lot of teachers: I don't believe a teacher's job is specifically to narrowly teach the subject matter at hand, but more broadly teach the student whatever it takes to assist the student in succeeding in life, and especially within their given field. This would include cheating. Ignoring cheaters is contrary to this purpose.

<comment><USER99> I'm a university teacher myself. I typically teach a hundred students every semester. Don't you think it's a bit too much to expect me to do whatever it takes to assure each and every of my student, including cheaters, to succeed in life? That's noble, but too much for any individual.

<comment><USER98> I would love to hear your thoughts on this:

What I mean is: You do what you can within your means and within the reasonable timeframes given to you by the course, and not necessarily carry the complete burden of their success on your shoulders. In my opinion it's the responsibility of everyone -- parents, peers, the community, teachers, administrators, and whoever else -- to teach, and foster the learning environment in such a way that maximizes the chance of success to the younger citizens of this world. If you view the responsibility as being shared between all, the pressure naturally significantly decreases as you know you directly can't be blamed if things don't work out for your students. It's a complex system.

At the simplest level, don't people attend school to assist them in being successful in life? Assist them in growing and developing into whatever they want to be? If that's so, and being that teachers are the most important parts of the school environment (other than the students themselves), isn't one of the teacher's primary jobs to assist in this success? Because teachers spend so much time with students, they naturally have tremendous (though varying degrees of) influence. If a teacher is lazy, naturally students will be encouraged to be lazy. If a teacher acts like it's OK to cheat, naturally students will be more likely to think it's OK to cheat.

There are bigger questions at hand than the direct and concrete subject matter of an individual university course, and in a lot of cases I believe these questions are just as important, if not more important. Most importantly, keeping these larger questions in mind assist students in staying properly focused and motivated, and thus increasing chance of achievement.

So yes, I do believe you should do what you can to bring success to your students.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER100> A little tangential, but I think this post outlines another argument for the "higher education bubble." Is 40k a year worth learning how to effectively plagiarize?

</comment><comment><USER101> As a very random anecdote, I attended NYU myself ages ago and while I was not a business student, I did take classes at Stern.

Unless things have changed, the amount of cheating in Stern is astronomical compared to courses from the other schools within NYU: Of course there were cheating problems elsewhere, but nowhere else was it done as brazenly or as part of the shared culture of the student body.

</comment><comment><USER102> In grad school, a couple of times I proctored exams for my major professor. Every time I caught students cheating (copying off of note sheets or old exams from other students), collected the "cheat sheets" and explained the situation to my major professor. Not once were those pursued and I think all the students passed the classes. Pretty frustrating.

</comment><comment><USER103> So what can be done to change the incentives so a different Nash equilibrium is selected? Would it be possible to change the professor ranking rules so that the reviews of cheaters do not count for the average rating? A bounty per cheater caught? These both have their own poor incentives, of course, but brainstorming has to start somewhere.

</comment><comment><USER104> one of the real problems in current testing is that it requires very little of the students creativity or originality. right from school you are told there is one answer to a question and one explanation that is better than others. your job as a student ( you are told) is to know that answer or to remember/understand that explanation. how different do you think students answers will be from each other?

Asking students not to open a browser to hunt for information is akin to not opening text books. not going to happen. when you are asking for an proven explanation the best you can expect is modified regurgitation of a know existing explanation. there are times when this is not as straightforward as it seems and there is effort required to do so.

the person really getting the short straw is the student. after paying a hundred grand, to sit in a class, they spend time understanding others opinions, instead of coming up with an original/fresh understanding of the problem.

'studying' or working on problems as a group is not going to go away. working as a group is the best way to stay motivated and focused when you are have 20 + course credits a semester. the best classes i have been in are those where the instructor divides the class into work groups and them adjusts the score by the individual members scores based on their contribution to a group ( much more real word scenario)

the authors efforts to creatively test the students and his success in dong so underscores my point. the system has the wrong incentives. more so for the students by not testing for their ability ,creativity, skills and understanding.

i really do feel for the author. i feel his pain and dissapointment and i hope things get better for him and his class. there are more uncaring/misguided teachers than bad/hopeless students.and i hope this teacher does not turn that dark corner. and we all know , there needs to be just one great teacher to set a student in the right path. good luck .

</comment><comment><USER105> Hopefully this is a similar view to other students here, but I would drop the class/change professors (even if that meant going into a larger class). Being in an environment where cheating is allowed is not somewhere that I want to be, much less learn in. I would feel like my honest work was just seen as equal to the cheaters'.

</comment><comment><USER106> Blogger:Page Not Found..! Have you removed article? I was curious that the article drew so much of attention..!

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I had to remove the article from my own blog.

</comment></comment><comment><USER107> Sounds like colleges, especially with this type of software doing most of the work, should implement a 'Cheating Officer', perhaps one for each department. It could be a grad student and it would save the regular teaching staff from bad reviews and would keep students on their toes.

</comment><comment><USER108> It makes sense as long as he not published it.

Why? The university should not pursue cheating. It hurts the credibility. All the teachers do so. On your own, it makes no sense to waste your time, others will take care of. Once announced, the news spreads and everyone losses.

</comment><comment><USER109> Crikey. I failed my degree because I'm lazy and hate lectures and exams (and see them as a perverse way to test someone's ability to actually do something), but I feel less bad knowing that so many people who passed were cheats. Fuck dishonesty man.

</comment><comment><USER110> isn't this why you have closed book exams?

<comment><USER111> Open-book, open-notes exams are harder to cheat on. There's no point to smuggling in notes when you can carry them in openly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER112> Maybe I'm doing something wrong, but what's wrong with cheating? Isn't using other people's code, as in open-source, "cheating"? Isn't Google cheating just because it created a fancy clone of FB + Twitter? Wasn't Plotinus cheating because he borrowed one of Plato's main ideas and just fancied it up a little? Wasn't all Western Medieval philosophy cheating because it was barely a commentary to Aristotle and then later to Plato and Plotinus?

I know I'm exaggerating, a little, I'm just trying to make a point. Schooling other people and forcing them not to "cheat" just for the sake of, well, schooling, doesn't have any benefits and it's nothing like what happens in real life. We're all trying to build things on the shoulders of giants.

<comment><USER42> The point of these assignments, in case you don't realize, is not to write something new or groundbreaking, it's to give students experience in doing research and writing. _What_ they write about exactly isn't that relevant, it's the process of going through it. And by skipping that, the whole point is lost.

Not sure if I'm feeding a troll here, but the amount of 'why do I have to read this book, I will never need what's in it anyway'-style failure to understand the purpose of deliberate practice is high so you may actually believe yourself that your argument makes sense.

<comment><USER97> That was my point: the class isn't about writing. The class isn't about getting experience in writing. If you want to do that, there are much better alternatives. This class was about content (I used the term "Answers" in my posts). When it comes to content, the required skill set is finding the answer, compiling the answer, assembling the answer, putting a team together to collaborate to find the answer, etc. Learn writing somewhere else. The fault is thinking that writing is the only way to express these skills. Writing has certain formal conventions, such as citing sources. A failure to cite sources is considered plagiarism. Content is different. Facts cannot be copyrighted, and this class was about content and those facts. With respect to facts, the conventions are different. It makes no sense to pretend to teach students to write when you are trying to teach them content. We do it in academia because except for medical school, law school--where writing papers is relatively uncommon, compared to other disciplines--we don't know another way to do it. But don't call this cheating. Failure to document sources, OK. Academic dishonesty if there's a misrepresentation, OK. Providing the professor with the content he asked for in business school? That's not OK??

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER113> Students, this is why many great employers don't put much weight on the Education section of your CV.

(Cheaters, you should be figuring out how to crib a nice github account, not how to pass exams.)

</comment><comment><USER114> Make the papers public and have a dob in the cheaters hotline. Perhaps even offer tools and software. The game then changes because the school will be forced to be transparent.

</comment><comment><USER115> This was my dissertation back in '92. Thought you'd get a kick out of it. It was fun ... dice/red cups/randomization. I totally agree with your position and loved your New assignments. Good luck and congratulations on your tenured position. Sunny Mathews Title: ASSESSMENT OF ACADEMIC DISHONESTY IN A COMMUNITY COLLEGE: AN APPLICATION OF THE RANDOMIZED RESPONSE TECHNIQUE Author(s): MATHEWS, SARAE SUSAN Degree: ED.D. Year: 1992 Pages: 00088 Institution: UNIVERSITY OF MIAMI; 0125 Advisor: Supervisor: GILBERT CUEVAS Source: DAI, 54, no. 01A, (1992): 0067 Abstract: The purpose of this study was to estimate the extent to which cheating behaviors occur among mathematic students at a community college. The study was conducted at the Kendall Campus of Miami-Dade Community College, during the Winter term, 1992.

A pilot study compared the reported rate of cheating among 47 upper-level mathematics students and 46 mathematically underprepared students using direct questioning and the randomized response technique. The forced alternative randomized response technique was employed to assess attitudes held about cheating and to estimate reported rates of cheating among 298 community college mathematics students. Factors related to cheating such as age, gender, birthplace, religiosity, membership in a religious organization, involvement in extracurricular activities, and self-perception of honesty were also explored. Hypotheses were tested using chi square tests of independence, frequency distributions, z-tests for significance, and a randomized response formula.

The estimated percent of mathematics students who report that they cheated while attending M-DCC was 31%. The forced alternative randomized response technique was found to have utility in a group setting. Direct questioning underestimated the reported rate of cheating; however, differences were not statistically significant.

Upper-level mathematics students reported they cheated at the same rate as mathematically underprepared students. Calculus students were less likely to report someone for cheating. Males, students under 25 years old, and students born abroad also agreed that reporting cheating was worse than actually cheating. Students who reported they had cheated were more likely to be formally affiliated with a religious organization. Reported rate of cheating was inversely related to self-perception of honesty. Students over 25 years of age were the least likely to cheat.

Recommendations included: further investigation of the randomized response technique, particularly where the actual incidence of the sensitive behavior can be determined and compared with the estimated proportions; a comparison of cheating behaviors and attitudes among younger students and older students; and research to clarify the relationship between cheating and religiosity.

</comment><comment><USER116> Why not just use impromptu in-class essays/tests for 100% of the grade? Anything that allows students to paraphrase references, etc., is not really a test of understanding.

</comment><comment><USER117> The weirdest thing in all of this is the relation between artificially boosted grades and increased pay for the teacher. This also appears to be the root of the problem.

</comment><comment><USER118> It would be interesting to know the reason for the article having been removed, as I would've liked to re-read it, having only more or less skimmed it yesterday.

</comment><comment><USER119> I am completely aghast.

This professor is considering only what path will avoid the most hassle and difficulty for himself. Any duty he might owe honest students, fellow faculty, or even society at large doesn't seem to figure into it. He seems to see no problem at all with effectively selling high grades to cheaters, so long as there's no risk or hassle involved for _him_.

And because he gets to use a term like Nash Equilibrium to describe it, he's not even ashamed.

Profoundly dishonorable.

<comment><USER96> He works for the University. If the employer is not interested in rewarding him (or even penalizing him) for doing something that not only is stressful but that takes tons of time away from his useful work, why should he?

An example of what _you_ are doing in _your_ job for coworkers and society at large while being penalized for it by your employer would be appropriate here.

<comment><USER119> _If the employer is not interested in rewarding him (or even penalizing him) for doing something that not only is stressful but that takes tons of time away from his useful work, why should he?_

Because it is the right and honorable thing to do in his position. If doing the right thing were always easy and profitable, we'd have no need for morals.

There are lots of situations where people are encouraged and rewarded for doing the wrong thing in their line of work.

There are state prosecutors whose compensation depends on how many criminals they successfully prosecute, so they take cases where the law is obviously unjust but they can win (when using their discretion to safeguard justice is supposed to be part of the job).

There are salesmen whose compensation depends entirely on how many units they are able to sell, so they lie to customers.

There are soldiers who are ordered to engage in immoral acts. It is an essential part of their duty to refuse those orders, but that decision certainly does not come without stress and cost.

I worked in defense contracting, and sometimes served as an engineering liason to various national defense organizations. There was occasionally immense social pressure on me to make our products look better than they were . . . but--and never mind that it would have been in my employer's interest--that would have been wrong.

I could go on. The point is this: in _most_ circumstances in life, there are ways to make money or make life less stressful by doing the wrong thing. You can argue that that's the fault of the people at the top of the system -- they've set up the incentives wrong. I agree; having a just society literally means that the incentives point toward right behavior. But that is their problem, not yours. _Your_ duty is to do the right thing, regardless of the circumstances.

Academia has a role in both teaching and certifying knowledge, and is paid by students for the certification, not by industry for its accuracy. There is certainly moral hazard in that, and it deserves a systemic fix. That is no excuse for succumbing to it, for throwing up one's hands, blaming the system, and unleashing remorseless cheaters on fellow faculty and society.

<comment><USER120> This is a common misconception. The professor is there to perform research, only incidentally to teach. It's not _his_ responsibility to police students. It's the responsibility of the entire system to have policies in place that effectively prosecute cheating. When that system fails it is not his moral obligation to carry that burden himself.

<comment><USER119> I disagree. The incidentiality of the teaching doesn't enter into it. As long as he is giving grades, he has a responsibility to make a reasonable effort to detect and deter cheating.

(I do think the strategy he described -- spending two hours per student trying to force a confession -- is unreasonable. Detection, notification, and escalation to school enforcement is a reasonable approach. Giving up and blaming the system is not.)

I agree that it is the responsibility of the school to have systems in place that provide the right incentives. But it is _also_ the responsibility of the professors to defend the academic integrity of the school as much as they are involved with it.

Moral responsibility does not always add up to 100%.

<comment><USER120> >he has a responsibility to make a reasonable effort to detect and deter cheating. I can agree with this. But in the face of an administration that is bent on turning a blind eye, or even punishing the teacher, he has no obligation to carry the burden of defending the integrity of the institution himself. Putting a reasonable effort into detecting cheating is his responsibility. It is not his responsibility to ensure that the students are properly prosecuted.

<comment><USER119> I don't know about that. There's still the rest of society to consider. Which is to say, there's still his personal professional integrity.

I guess it depends on the circumstance. If the school knowingly encourages cheating for profit, I would think integrity demands playing whistleblower. In fact, I'd apply that to _any_ organization knowningly doing something shady -- bring it to light or accept guilt as an accomplice.

If the school believes in academic integrity, but the compensation for teachers results in perverse incentives, it is important to do the right thing anyway--defend the academic integrity of the school, work on fixing the system, and in the mean time put social pressure on other teachers to do the right thing until the system is fixed.

I agree that it's not the professor's responsibility to pursue the matter beyond his influence at the school. If there's an office of academic honesty, but it's lax, the best he can do is lobby to improve it. But inasmuch as professors have absolute control over the grades they distribute, I do think they have a responsibility to be fair with them.

I can see leaving an institution over a lack of academic honesty. I can see working to reform or improve one. I can see failing a student for cheating, but washing your hands of it when the school does nothing further. What I cannot see is saying to society at large, "On my reputation as an expert, this student can do calculus," when you aren't sure it's true, for the sake of a less stressful workplace and a higher salary.

<comment><USER120> I'm finding it hard to find fault with your argument. I think where our differences lie is that I don't believe its a moral imperative for someone to risk their livelihood to whistle-blow against something that is fundamentally someone else's responsibility. If the janitor at an investment bank overhears fraud being discussed, I don't believe the janitor has a moral responsibility to expose that fraud if it risks his own livelihood.

Similarly for a teacher who puts in a commendable effort to weed out cheaters only to be essentially punished for it by the administration. It's his job to make note of cheaters, but the responsibility for doling out consequences is a cooperative effort between the professor and the administration. If the administration isn't doing their job, and exposing this risks his own career and livelihood (for a professor publicly going against his administrations this might actually be the case), I don't think he has this responsibility.

<comment><USER119> I can understand that, though I certainly disagree.

I can respect a principle of proportionality -- I don't think it makes sense to risk a life life to stop a petty theft. But I absolutely cannot agree with the line of thinking that says because something is one person's moral responsibility, it isn't another's. To my way of thinking, _any_ evil you know about is your responsibility to fight. Or at least not cooperate with. Personal cost doesn't enter into it.

I think sometimes life doesn't offer you a middle ground between heroism and cowardice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER121> With prompt given for the assignment, I'm hardly surprised by the amount of plagiarism.

<comment><USER122> Seriously. I hated classes that had stupid assignments. Personally, I opted not to do them at all because I didn't want to cheat. I was fine accepting a B in a class to avoid these assignments. Eventually, this bit me in the butt when applying for grad schools (not severely, but reduced funding), so I totally understand why people would copy them to keep their grades from falling.

</comment></comment><comment><USER123> He used TurnItIn? That website that commits copyright infringement? Yeah, stopped reading after I saw that.

<comment><USER117> Do you have some sources for this?

</comment></comment><comment><USER97> What bothers me about this episode is that it highlights what is wrong with education in America and confirms what many think about academia as being too insular. What is the "cheating" that Professor Panos complains of? In many of the cases the cheating was not the mindless copying of math problems from someone seated nearby. Instead, the professor asked questions which the students were to research and submit an answer in the form of an essay. The class was a class in real-world business, not an exercise in rhetoric. Presumably, essay writing skills, to the extent that they are needed at all, are taught elsewhere. The job of the students is to perform research and find the answer or answers to the question. Professor Panos complains that the "cheating" students' methodology was, "research, copy, paste." There is no comment as to whether the cheating students submitted correct answers. The failure to document sources is considered plagiarism in academia, journalism and other fields. Not so much in business. In business, what is important is the answer. If McKinsey has done a study for company X on an issue and company Y has now commissioned McKinsey for the same study, does Professor Panos believe that McKinsey won't use the earlier study–or any other study done by someone else which they can get their hands on–to answer the question? I'm not picking on McKinsey–all consultants work this way. There is nothing wrong with it, and not having to reinvent the wheel is a clear benefit to the client. If I have a question to answer and a colleague has already comprehensively answered it, whether he be Korean, a fraternity brother or a sorority sister–where is the harm in saying, "I am indebted to my colleague who has answered this." The fact that I serendipitously found an answer is not a negative in the business world. Not giving credit to a colleague is a whole other issue. The Internet is a research tool and there is nothing wrong with using it wisely. What's more–and since this is not about writing essays–is the goal here to have twenty-something business students give their personal opinions, opinions that the business world tends to discount greatly; or is the goal to have them find useful answers and compile the same appropriately? Having been asked numerous times in real life, "where did you get this from?" being able to say, "someone has already looked at this and this is the conclusion they came up with" has always been helpful. On more than one occasion, it saved the day.

These were not math or language tests. The Spanish word for test is "examen" but if all I have done is copied the answer from my neighbor during a test I will not have made any progress in learning the language. Cheating is penalized because the student is cheating himself out of the opportunity to learn. I do not see how students who do research on the Internet and compile that research in answering a question have cheated. If you want to demand more rigorous citations from your students, demand them. If a fraternity brother has answered the question, give him credit. Improve on his work if you can. These are real world skills, and to the extent that business school insists on archaic essay writing the students are being done a disservice.

<comment><USER124> There is a skill called "critical thinking", another called "report writing", and it seems for this course "comprehension of a market, and competing technologies within this market".

Copy paste demonstrates or develops none of these, other than "report composition", and possibly "identifying worthwhile sources".

If you think consultants, such as McKinsey, require the later skills only, and NOT the former, you are rather misguided.

<comment><USER97> Copy/paste is not an answer, it's a method; a tool. I've worked a lot with consultants. I'm not picking on McKinsey, and when I hire them I want them to check precedents. I want them to look at their (and others) past projects and see if there's anything relevant to my problem. If they find an answer that someone else has come up with that solves my problem, and it's not a trade secret, copyrighted or otherwise off-limits, I'm thrilled. There is all too much reinvention of the wheel. I still see this as a failure to document sources, not "cheating." One of my points is that the exercise of writing papers should not be the only way to learn. Take a macro view of things: some have written that with respect to Turnitin that they are horrified at 40% of the papers are plagiarized. Really? These papers for the most part are not word-for-word copied (though I admit that some are). Do you really think that hundreds of thousands of high school students have original insights about Salinger's Catcher in the Rye? Or that there is similar originality in readings of Aristotle's On the Parts of Animals? In a way it's reassuring that statistically these papers tend to converge. Of course, whether it is worthwhile to include Salinger in a curriculum is another story. As far as original insights, my guess is that Jerry's troubles at summer camp (bed wetting) might have contributed in some way to his oeuvre. Haven't seen a college paper about it, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER125> Good god you people are sure full of yourselves sometimes. You're telling me that if you put in extra effort in your daily jobs and got kicked in the ribs for it more than once... that you'd continue to do it and wouldn't be upset about it? Armchair ivory-towerists. I'm just aghast at the paragraphs of criticism I'm reading here for people that I can just imagine being upset with wasted and unappreciated effort.

</comment><comment><USER126> "Cheating" is a meaningless concept once you reach college in my opinion. Either students are learning or they're not. They're (usually) paying money to be there and the only applicable metric is if the skills they acquire while chasing down the degree are worth the money they or their parents spend. To that end, I was impressed with the OP's thoughts on deterring this sort of behavior in the future. Because really, the only person suffering from this behavior is the student. By altering the coursework to make the motives for copying virtually meaningless the professor's goal is accomplished with a minimum amount of effort.

<comment><USER127> _the only person suffering from this behavior is the student_

You really think so?

The more diplomas you give to students who learned nothing, the more the rest of the world will pick up on it and refuse to hire anyone from your University.

<comment><USER128> Also, the more unqualified people get through college, the less a college diploma means. I wouldn't say that cheating is the only reason for the problems with the college diploma in the U.S., but it's a substantial contributor. The 20% cheating rate observed by this professor is fairly normal across the entire country and a lot of unqualified students get through by cheating.

<comment><USER12> Also, the more unqualified people get through college, the less jobs there are for non-degree holders. Why would you hire a school leaver, when there's plenty of degree holders lining up for the job?

So the diploma _is_ worth more, for the students who just scrape by. Unless diplomas start to lose _all_ credibility.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER129> I did not cheat in school. I wanted to prove things to myself and to learn. However the basic premise of opposition to cheating here is incorrect:

"habitual plagiarism ... can have very serious consequences in their professional life"

This is something academics believe because it justifies their policies, but it isn't true, at least in entrepreneurship. Those who can "cheat" without violating the trust of those who matter or facing legal consequences are those who succeed. Those who play by all the rules bitch on HN about "stolen ideas" and cutthroat business practices instead of synthesizing ideas and looking for unfair advantages.

Cheat if it suits you, learn what you want to learn, get the credentials you need, cover your ass, and build the life you want. Life is not a your grade, but neither is it the opinion of a professor over what you should be doing with your time - copying or writing.

<comment><USER23> I disagree with your conclusion. Cheating is about taking the easy way, which rarely works in the real world, unless you are comfortable riding (and perhaps crossing) the legal/ethical boundaries we, as a society, have decided on.

I would never hire someone for my startup who came to me and said, "I cheated through college, so I know how to be cutthroat in business." If you don't have the personal integrity to manage yourself, why would I ever think you would manage something of mine?

</comment></comment><comment><USER130> I don't know what it is with you US Americans and "cheating"... but it seems to be a very touchy subject in your culture, almost like violating someone's honors. I never understood that.

<comment><USER74> It is totally a question of honor. It is utterly dishonorable to cheat, and egregiously so at the levels described in the aforementioned blog.

The goal of the scholastic experience is so that you, the student, learns something.

If the school turns out people who didn't learn, they are producing worthlessness.

It is a lie to say that you have a degree, when you really have a collection of credits that you cheated through. The degree is worthless and should be sent back.

<comment><USER130> You are exaggerating by 200% and leading it ad absurdum.

"Cheating" for me means getting one or two hints at an exam and with the exam situation being what it is, those hints typically only really help to jog your memory if you did study. It does not mean downright plagiarizing your thesis and 90% of your studies.

But US Americans seem to be offended even at the idea of getting or sharing a single hint during an exam. Here in Europe you could easily loose "street cred" and be forever labeled as the worst kind of "nerd" if you did NOT at least try to help a fellow student on purpose. Again, I am not talking about writing 100% of homework for you but sharing a hint or a small piece of help during an exam.

Funnily, we had a few very, very high profile cases of plagiarized doctorates amongst politicians here in Germany. Their degree was taken away from them of course.

<comment><USER74> No.

I assure you, what you describe is considered cheating, but the cheating that usually takes place is far more comprehensive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER131> Panos, I wrote you a long response on your blog.

</comment><comment><USER132> This is fascinating, aside from one huge, glaring bit of stupidness on the authors part - highlighted here:

"One interesting observation: Almost all cheating happened within ethnic lines. Koreans copy from Koreans. Indians from Indians. Greeks from Greeks. Jews from Jews. Chinese from Chinese."

Korea=country India=country Greece=country China=country Jewish=religion

This would appear to show some form of bias, or at least a lack of cultural understanding by Panos Ipeirotis, who I'm assuming is of Greek origin based on his name.

<comment><USER133> All of those are ethnic origins.

<comment><USER132> Compared to the others listed, it's out of place - all Greeks originate from Greece - where do all Jewish people originate from? (and as much as that sounds like the start of a joke, it's not)

<comment><USER134> As someone working on converting to Judaism, I can tell you that the situation is complicated, with ethnicity and religion strongly interrelated. Anyone that claims Jewishness solely involves religion is just as wrong as anyone that claims Jewishness solely involves ethnicity. You cannot think about Judaism the same way you'd think about, say, Christianity.

With that disclaimer in mind, the vast majority of Jews - due to traditional prohibitions against intermarriage and low numbers of converts - <USER5> from the general area where the State of Israel is today. Here, both the founding myths in the Torah and modern genetic testing are in agreement.</comment></comment></comment></comment>