Buisness, engineering students cheat the most...

[Ace Pace]

Reuters

BOSTON (Reuters) - Graduate business students in the United States and Canada are more likely to cheat on their work than their counterparts in other academic fields, the author of a research paper said on Wednesday.



The study of 5,300 graduate students in the United States and Canada found that 56 percent of graduate business students admitted to cheating in the past year, with many saying they cheated because they believed it was an accepted practice in business.

Following business students, 54 percent of graduate engineering students admitted to cheating, as did 50 percent of physical science students, 49 percent of medical and health-care students, 45 percent of law students, 43 percent of liberal arts students and 39 percent of social science and humanities students.



"Students have reached the point where they're making their own rules," said lead author Donald McCabe, professor of management and global business at New Jersey's Rutgers University. "They'll challenge rules that professors have made, because they think they're stupid, basically, or inappropriate."

McCabe said it's likely that more students cheat than admit to it.

The study, published in the September issue of the Academy of Management Learning and Education, defined cheating as including copying the work of other students, plagiarizing and bringing prohibited notes into exams.

McCabe said that in their survey comments, business school students described cheating as a necessary measure and the sort of practice they'd likely need to succeed in the professional world.

"The typical comment is that what's important is getting the job done. How you get it done is less important," McCabe said. "You'll have business students saying all I'm doing is emulating the behavior I'll need when I get out in the real world."

[Elessar]

I don't doubt this at all, though I do question this:

"Students have reached the point where they're making their own rules," said lead author Donald McCabe, professor of management and global business at New Jersey's Rutgers University. "They'll challenge rules that professors have made, because they think they're stupid, basically, or inappropriate."

Taking with a grain of salt because this is ancedotal evidence, at the University of Waterloo, I discovered that most Professors didn't give two shits if you were blatantly cheating. The entire faculty just turned a blind eye, no matter what the course syllabus said. Oh they would constantly throw some article and section number that threatened explusion and all sorts of related punishments if you were caught plagarizing or worse, but in general it was just ignored.

This was especially the case in subjects where coding was the norm. Computer Engineering, despite its name, is relatively light on code until the last year (depending on personal selection of courses). So there are a lot of folks who are very poor at coding yet somehow continue to pass these courses with incredibly high marks. Then came one class (Compilers) where it was run by the Computer Science faculty, and boom, at the end of that the prof had caught over 5% of the class blatantly cheating. He even said some had been so lazy they didn't even change the variable names.

I'm betting that most Universities would prefer to pretend cheating doesn't exist. They might make an example or two if things get really blatant, but never a serious crackdown. That might damage their reputation as a school, and in turn their revenue stream.

[Darth Wong]

One must also keep in mind that all qualities of school and faculty, from the best to the worst, are mixed together in stats like this. When I went through engineering, cheating was virtually impossible because the course material and assignments were designed in such a manner that it was kind of meaningless. Want to collaborate with other students on your assignments? No problem, the professor encourages you to do so. You'll need to, in order to survive. Want to bring in cheat sheets to the exam? No problem, the prof says you can do that. Want to bring in your whole textbook? No problem, you can do that too. We made the exams so fucking hard that you can do just about any damned thing you want and it won't help you.

We've had threads about this before, where I argued that in a real-life job you can look up anything you want, so only a poorly designed exam with little relevance to real-life will rely on rote memorization as an important component of testing.

[brianeyci]

We've had threads about this before, where I argued that in a real-life job you can look up anything you want, so only a poorly designed exam with little relevance to real-life will rely on rote memorization as an important component of testing.

Man tellllll me about it. Big difference between schools. At UofT my prof said the English department's thinking of getting rid of essay writing altogether, because of people going on the Internet or hiring people to write their essays for them. Cheating is easy in humanities if you have the money. Problem sets aren't being banned in the Math department, because they're so damn hard you have to go to tutorials, to professors, to friends, to whatever, just to understand what the damn question's asking. I could've gone to York or Ryerson and had it easy but noooooo I had to go to this killer school where they let you bring your textbook and class notes into a third year math class and it's still useless unless you actually understand the material.

[Elaro]

Where did you go to university, Darth Wong? (Asks as a future university student)

[wilfulton]

Cheaters never win, but they can make money until they get caught, says the business students who graduated to lead Enron.

My knowledge of engineering is limited largely to blowing shit up (I was a 12B combat engineer before I went to college and got commissioned), but wouldn't the idea behind engineering be to collaborate with other people in the first place? Not many things these days are designed by a single real smart person.

[Boyish-Tigerlilly]

Maybe more people cheat in those fields because they feel they need to because they are harder than the comparable humanities courses. They might not need to cheat if they are far easier.

[Hawkwings]

Where did you go to university, Darth Wong? (Asks as a future university student)

University of Waterloo

http://www.stardestroyer.net/Mike/

[Elessar]

One must also keep in mind that all qualities of school and faculty, from the best to the worst, are mixed together in stats like this. When I went through engineering, cheating was virtually impossible because the course material and assignments were designed in such a manner that it was kind of meaningless. Want to collaborate with other students on your assignments? No problem, the professor encourages you to do so. You'll need to, in order to survive. Want to bring in cheat sheets to the exam? No problem, the prof says you can do that. Want to bring in your whole textbook? No problem, you can do that too. We made the exams so fucking hard that you can do just about any damned thing you want and it won't help you.

Things have not changed, as in most core Engineering classes, the exams still combine for easily 80% of the marks. Of course, this shouldn't excuse the fact that people are still blatantly cheating and copying off each other's work and handing it in as their own.

In fact, it's quite pathetic considering the majority of the marks aren't even gained this way. But they want/need a high average and so every little bit helps.

We've had threads about this before, where I argued that in a real-life job you can look up anything you want, so only a poorly designed exam with little relevance to real-life will rely on rote memorization as an important component of testing.

It's too bad that the OP doesn't go into the depth about the way these students cheat. However, cheating on exams is rather difficult given the format and location. Less so for assignments, projects or labs. Things that give solid practical experience and are rarely just useless regurgitation.

[Illuminatus Primus]

Mike's right. The hardest tests I've ever taken were measurements of practice and competence regarding analysis or use of concepts. You could have the books but it wouldn't do a damn thing for you. You had a set amount of time and either you knew what you were doing from the outset or you were fucked.

[lazerus]

One must also keep in mind that all qualities of school and faculty, from the best to the worst, are mixed together in stats like this. When I went through engineering, cheating was virtually impossible because the course material and assignments were designed in such a manner that it was kind of meaningless. Want to collaborate with other students on your assignments? No problem, the professor encourages you to do so. You'll need to, in order to survive. Want to bring in cheat sheets to the exam? No problem, the prof says you can do that. Want to bring in your whole textbook? No problem, you can do that too. We made the exams so fucking hard that you can do just about any damned thing you want and it won't help you.

We've had threads about this before, where I argued that in a real-life job you can look up anything you want, so only a poorly designed exam with little relevance to real-life will rely on rote memorization as an important component of testing.

Basicly. I'm an engineering student (undergrad), and I've cheated before whenever a professor does something retarded like forbid equations sheets on the basis that "You really should commit all the equations in that chapter to memory." As in the class is going to remember any of those 30+ equations they crammed after the test ends....

However, on tests like the one you describe, there's no point to cheating. All the cheat sheets and notes won't help you if you don't understand the material like you should.

[Edi]

One must also keep in mind that all qualities of school and faculty, from the best to the worst, are mixed together in stats like this. When I went through engineering, cheating was virtually impossible because the course material and assignments were designed in such a manner that it was kind of meaningless. Want to collaborate with other students on your assignments? No problem, the professor encourages you to do so. You'll need to, in order to survive. Want to bring in cheat sheets to the exam? No problem, the prof says you can do that. Want to bring in your whole textbook? No problem, you can do that too. We made the exams so fucking hard that you can do just about any damned thing you want and it won't help you.

We've had threads about this before, where I argued that in a real-life job you can look up anything you want, so only a poorly designed exam with little relevance to real-life will rely on rote memorization as an important component of testing.

They had that approach in EVTEK too while I was studying there. The only thing they didn't allow you to do was bring a programmable calculator (such as TI 85 or 86)that had any programs in it. You needed to wipe the memory before starting and it was enforced.

Edi