The Iron Ring

I attended a town hall meeting last night to discuss issues of ethics related to the engineering school. Everyone was pretty preoccupied with cheating. I was a little surprised because I thought ‘ethics’ would cover a lot of other topics. Anyway, at least one or two undergrads present thought that the best way to deter cheating was to make the cheaters and their punishments really public. I believe one of them said that shame was the best deterrent for anything. I was really shocked and unhappy about this. Don’t these students study history? Do they really believe in developing a culture of fear? Can’t they see how that would compromise openness and freedom in academia? Imagine the effect on young professors if instances of cheating in their courses were made public. I don’t know if the average undergraduate realizes that some of these professors need positive student evaluations in order to be seen favorably by tenure committees. Who would take a class if each semester multiple students were publicly reprimanded for cheating in it?

On a related note, it seems that plagiarism is the #1 way in which students cheat at Penn and yet the school does not subscribe to any programs to help professors scan papers for lifted words. Apparently such programs require that papers are entered into their database and that would be a privacy issue. The panelists suggested that we (as teachers) use google. Literally. Google is the best tool they had. That is a disappointment to me, especially when they can so quickly claim plagiarism as their #1. Doesn’t it seem easy then to do something about it?

And finally, someone commented last night was that there is too much emphasis on grades and not enough emphasis on learning and this fuels cheating. I agree completely. I had the good fortune of being an undergraduate in a small department that emphasized learning over grades and it is the reason I chose to pursue a doctorate.