I'm a real estate agent [Not an unreal one? Ed.]
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Stanford computer scientists are more likely to cheat
STANFORD UNIVERSITY'S honour system is being undermined by cheating computer science students, according to the Mercury News.
Apparently the swanky university has seen the numbers of allegations of cheating double in the past decade, with the largest number of violations involving computer science students.
Stanford is one of only 100 US campuses with an honour code, which was designed to uphold academic integrity by prohibiting plagiarism, copying work and getting outside help.
It is possible for cheats to be denied credit for a class, have a thesis be rejected or be suspended for one quarter from the university. Students also pledge to expose cheaters.
More men are reported to cheat than women, and more undergraduates than graduates.
For some reason it is mostly the techies. Although computer science students represent only 6.5 per cent of Stanford's student body, last year those students accounted for 23 per cent of the university's honour code violators.
Apparently they get so miffed when they can't get a program to run that they cheat. Most violations involve homework assignments rather than exams.
Computer science students often work as a team to complete an assignment, even though the rules stipulate that work must be done individually. They then make simple edits to disguise the work.
Of course in real life computer experts never work as a team so it shows how work related Stanford's system is. µ
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If a liberal arts student did some superficial changes to a copied document as he penned it down he'd get off scott free.
Programming projects, however, are digitally submitted, graded (except for style points), and statistically analyzed to detect cheating. If other departments started collecting more assignments digitally and ran plagiarism detection software on their essays and assignments, I'm sure CS would be one of the smaller slices of the pie graph.
This article is equivalent to saying the probability of being diagnosed with cancer is higher in a country with a better health system.
Dear IT Students:
If you have been wrongfully dismissed or penalized for using ethically-creative approaches to complete your course requirements, we have jobs (and a top-notch legal defence team) waiting for you! Your moral standards may match our corporate ethical guidelines to a tee, and you could be just the new recruits we are searching for.
Please apply in confidence to:
www.careers.microsoft.com/quasimoral
E. Bernays
Director of Ethical Reinterpretation
Microsoft Corporation
This is perfect training for them. So when they go out in the world they can manipulate it freely as a team and hide how they were actually interacting. It's all part of the bigger picture.
Does anything with the name Standford have any honor associated with it?
In a culture that esteems and rewards financial success, more or less regardless of how it is achieved, you can confidently expect huge and growing amounts of cheating and all sorts of dishonesty, both legal and illegal.
A similar syndrome has affected professional sport. Now that careers and multi-million dollar fortunes can depend on results, professional fouls and gamesmanship are just part of the winner's armoury. True, there are some real champions who manage to prevail while retaining their honesty - but they are more and more in the minority.
Granted, I'm an engineer and not a techie, but what I was taught in college was, "good programmers write good code, great programmers copy good code."
Most of the computer experts dont even seem to use computers so teamwork doesnt even come into it.
'Most computer experts just pass on press releases' would be a better phrase.