Bady4MVP - I have evidence Harvard is training grounds for Wall Street and Gov't
http://news.yahoo.com/harvard-dozens-students-may…
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (AP) — Harvard University is investigating whether dozens of undergraduate students cheated on a take-home exam last spring.
School officials said they discovered students may have shared answers or plagiarized on a final exam. They declined to release the name of the class, the students' names or the exact number being investigated, citing privacy laws.
The undergraduate class had a minimum of 250 students and possible cheating was discovered in roughly half the take-home exams, university officials said Thursday.
"These allegations, if proven, represent totally unacceptable behavior that betrays the trust upon which intellectual inquiry at Harvard depends," President Drew Faust said.
A Harvard spokesman said he knows of no incidents in recent memory of possible cheating at the university on this scale.
Each student whose work is in question has been called to appear before a subcommittee of the Harvard College Administrative Board, which reviews issues of academic integrity, said Jay M. Harris, dean of undergraduate education. He emphasized that none of the allegations has been proven and said there's no evidence of widespread cheating at Harvard.
"The facts that are before us are that we have a problem in this one course," Harris said. "I hope that doesn't sound overly naive, I don't want to be naive, but this is what we have. The rest would be speculation.
"Looking at the students we have and the work that they do, I would be loathe to say this is something that represents Harvard students generally."
[Related: Yale president Levin stepping down after 20 years]
The spring course included undergraduates at all class levels, Harris said. A teaching assistant noticed some possible problems on the tests, including evidence that students collaborated on answers or used the same long, identical strings of words. The exam had clear instructions that no collaboration was allowed, Harris said.
The assistant notified the professor, who referred the case in May to the administrative board. After interviewing some students, the board found what Harris characterized as "cause for concern."
Depending on the offense, the punishments range from an admonition, a sort of warning for a first offense, to being forced to withdraw from Harvard for a year. It wasn't immediately clear what sanctions any student who has graduated may face.
[Related: Paterno family adjusts to new era at Penn State]
There's no timeline for when the investigation will be finished, Harris said.
Michael Zimmet, a freshman from Aspen, Colo., said news of the investigation was surprising.
"You think of Harvard as somewhere where people are academically honest and interested in their course work," he said.
Tiffany Fonseca, a sophomore from Boston, said she didn't know the details of what happened, but that it was easy to see how students could talk to each other about a take-home test.
"I'm kind of shocked, but I'm not," she said.
In response to the allegations, a Harvard committee led by Harris will present recommendations on how to enforce faculty-wide expectations of academic honesty.
Teresa Fishman of the International Center for Academic Integrity at Clemson University said it is not surprising that Harvard isn't immune to possible cheating. She said 20 years of data shows that a quarter to a third of students across all levels of collegiate education admit cheating on tests.
tbh:
LOL @ take home tests at 250 class lvl, no reason for take home tests unless it's a upper lvl proof class/essay b.s/programming etc
take home exams- that's laughable.
Don't really see why people view top university students as such beacons of morality. If there's one thing that students there are good at, it's knowing how to get ahead through any means possible.
Next he'll be telling me that the wealthy cheat on their tax returns
haha harvard students are losers, pansies in a harvard square cocoon too scared to travel to mattapan or ruggles. 18 and 19-year-old upper-class anglos funded by parents' dime thinking they can solve the world's problems, and then cheat to try and do it...this news is old news, ivies are full of grade-inflationed, ignorant, whingeing students begging their way to A's, using 4 years of college as an excuse to party... treat college as a privilege and an institution to learn, and understand the extraordinary opportunity presented, but sadly majority of you losers arrive on campus in september and immediately start hollering spring break!
trash the lot of you
Watch out guys , we've got a badass over here
hahaha harvard has 0 gangstas...at my school (semi-target) we had a good number of thugs...i was probably upper quartile of thug but only because even the adjunct professors beat the block
"anglos"?? lol are you hispanic?
Kudos to Harvard for bringing this up publicly. Personally I'd expect cheating to be rampant in take-home exams at most colleges, so if anything I think this is a poor reflection on the Harvard professors/department that gave a take-home exam and expected something more from its students.
hahaha GS = more trash
hahaha hispanics are anglos, they just tried to hop on the minority bandwagon and get affirmative action benefits
How the hell can 125 people use the same "string of words." I can understand maybe 3 at most and even that is pushing it, and would only have the same main thesis. If your going to cheat on an essay exam at least use your own words. Even if it was a multiple choice exam cheating 101 would teach you to get random questions wrong that are different from your peers. Sounds like these students used the Fareed Zakaria school of plagiarism (lifting whole paragraphs).
There was a cheating scandal on take home tests in my IB history class in high school. People were passing around answers (and answers were never multiple choice). People were smart enough to at least change the wording. They got caught because somebody left the other person's name on their paper when they turned it in. At least half the class--maybe 3/4 of the class--was involved but one person screwed up and the wall collapsed.
Our teacher was really cool so he didn't pursue anyone else, he just informed the class that if it happened again there would be dire consequences. The cheating did stop.
I can't believe such elite students would cheat though :(
I know they wern't able to get into Princeton, but shesh!
Cheating's not possible in high level math, folks!
heard the class was calc 2
Crimson is reporting it was a govt class on congress
clearly, the students who cheated are the ones that learned the most from this class. shouldn't they be getting A's instead?
What did you expect when you hand out take-home tests....
except for the handful of kids who really are living up to the harvard name, I have to say most of the undergrads I met there are nothing special.
If it's really a math class - man I would never read a thesis from someone who can't finish a basic stats class.
but it's Harvard.
You get in Harvard, you go to Harvard,
Harvard.
haha Have you seen the test? It's on the spatial model of politics. That stiff is easy as hell. But then again, pretty much everyone cheats on a take-home test. So you gotta wonder what the profesor thought was gonna happen.
happypants what is your opinion on this I know you attended Harvard as undergrad
if you're going to cheat, why be that overt? lol'd hard at take-home exam
How the hell does a school the size of Harvard have 250+ students in the same class... with a take-home 'exam'?
I think Ec 10 had like ~750 students when I took it. There are a handful of very large classes, especially intro-types.
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