Friday, July 01, 2005
Cheating PhD Students
So Dr. D alerted me to this article for my other blog, but I think it fits here. A bunch of doctoral students at the university of Virginia just got caught cheating on an assignment, and many will be kicked out of their program. This was very scary to me, because, quite frankly, it could have been me.
In our program (as in most econ programs, like Virginia) assignments are essentially group projects. Everyone works on them, and there is no way to succeed on your own. It is simply too hard. There is no illusion about "doing your own work" because the assignments are supposed to make you feel amounts of pain which approach "cruel and unusual" proportions. Ok, so some people don't feel all that pain, but I am not as smart as some. Additionally, we work to get help from any source available. That includes the internet. I have often searched google for help on a particular type of problem, looking for lectures, examples, or anything that would help. I was lucky, I never found an answer key to the work I was doing, for if I had, I am sure that many people in our program would have used it.
Am I guilty of cheating then? Almost yes, I suppose. So anyway, I tend to think that the punishment on these students is a bit harsh, but perhaps not.
This was very much a "there, but for the grace of God, goes I" moment.
So Dr. D alerted me to this article for my other blog, but I think it fits here. A bunch of doctoral students at the university of Virginia just got caught cheating on an assignment, and many will be kicked out of their program. This was very scary to me, because, quite frankly, it could have been me.
In our program (as in most econ programs, like Virginia) assignments are essentially group projects. Everyone works on them, and there is no way to succeed on your own. It is simply too hard. There is no illusion about "doing your own work" because the assignments are supposed to make you feel amounts of pain which approach "cruel and unusual" proportions. Ok, so some people don't feel all that pain, but I am not as smart as some. Additionally, we work to get help from any source available. That includes the internet. I have often searched google for help on a particular type of problem, looking for lectures, examples, or anything that would help. I was lucky, I never found an answer key to the work I was doing, for if I had, I am sure that many people in our program would have used it.
Am I guilty of cheating then? Almost yes, I suppose. So anyway, I tend to think that the punishment on these students is a bit harsh, but perhaps not.
This was very much a "there, but for the grace of God, goes I" moment.
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