The Daily Pennsylvanian :: Adam Goodman | Cheaters never win

I hate cheaters.

I generally believe they belong in the lowest circles of the Inferno, chilling with Judas, Brutus and Cassius in Satan's mouth.

But, unlike many professors at this fine institution, I'm realistic. Cheating exists everywhere, and Penn's no exception. Which is why the honor code needs to be abolished. Immediately.

The honor code - by which I mean any instance in which a professor or TA relies on a student's sense of "honor" not to cheat - simply doesn't work.

Case in point: the OPIM 101 scandal that took place at the end of the Spring 2007 semester. Students were allowed to work in groups of up to two or three for their final case of the semester, but collaboration between groups was strictly prohibited. Once the cases were turned in, a statistical model was run over all the cases to ensure such collaboration didn't take place.

The result? As reported by the Daily Pennsylvanian in September, roughly 15 to 20 percent of Wharton's entire class of 2010 was brought under investigation by the Office of Student Conduct for having a 60-plus-percent overlap with another group's case.

Almost every Wharton student I talked to said that collaboration between groups (which, no doubt, often means good ol' plagiarism) was commonplace and that the OSC's numbers were probably underestimates. In fact, many felt that this kind of collaboration wasn't really "cheating," despite what the University's Code of Academic Integrity (which essentially functions as Penn's honor code) has to say about it.

It's not that Wharton students are black-hearted, morally bankrupt charlatans who just can't wait to take part in insider trading and corporate fraud (although this is true); it's that the honor code brings out the worst in people.

Give students a chance to cheat and they will. According to a widely-cited CollegeHumor survey which polled almost 30,000 college students, approximately 61 percent of students have cheated (and only 27 percent said they felt bad about it).

But here's the real shocker. At schools with an honor code, 67 percent of student admitted to cheating; at those universities which don't have an official honor code the number was 41 percent.

Sounds unbelievable, right? Why would an honor code exacerbate cheating? But I wasn't surprised.

Relying on students' honor needlessly tempts those who otherwise wouldn't cheat (probably most offenders). Worse, in instances where cheating is easy, many students assume they'll be at a disadvantage if they don't break the rules.

Here's the sad and unavoidable truth: cheaters do prosper.

According to the CollegeHumor survey, the average GPA of cheaters was a 3.37, while the average of non-cheaters was a 2.85. Relying on honor codes simply further incentivizes cheating.

And most inexcusably, toothless honor codes punish those with strong enough moral compasses to never cheat under any circumstances. For this last group the honor code supposedly builds character; for the rest, it builds cheaters.Forgive me, but I'd rather build character in less harmful ways.

Don't get me wrong. I wish that we all had such robust moral compasses. I wish that those antediluvian notions of honor and rectitude which yielded the honor code still permeated our society. I wish the word "integrity" was something we actually believed in, rather than merely paid lip service to.

But that's not the world we live in. Perhaps past generations merited the honor code; ours doesn't deserve it.

Of course, the honor code can never be truly abolished and doing so would only be a symbolic measure. Responsibility lies with professors and TAs who need to recognize that cheating is a serious problem.

"I think professors could do more to deter cheating," wrote Caitlin Devlin, the outgoing chairwoman of the University Honor Council, in an e-mail.

Devlin's right.

That means no more take-home tests. It means not using the same test for the 17th year in a row that everyone knew about before they even enrolled in the class. It means checking calculators before exams (or Penn providing its own). It means TAs actively monitoring tests, not listening to their iPods while they chip away at a moderately hard Sudoku.

Finally, it means doing away with reliance on a counter-productive and meaningless honor code. Penn doesn't need to publicly lead a nation-wide crusade against cheating, but is it too much to ask for our professors to stop facilitating it? Cheaters are here and they're here to stay. The sooner the higher ed community can figure that out, the better.

Adam Goodman is a College junior from San Diego. His e-mail address is goodman@dailypennsylvanian.com. The Devil's Advocate appears on Thursdays.

Comments (7)

Don't you know my dear boy that the admissions office has already done so? Why, we have students entering who lie on their common application. Want an example? Ask your admissions office about the early acceptance students from prestigiuos private girls mid-atlantic schools that say they have not been disciplined in their school (it's a question on the common application), even though they were suspended for cheating. It's a tough investigative job, though, because the school does not include the information on the transcript. Instead, they look the other way as the student lies her way into illustrious Penn!

Nice editorial with some interesting points. I agree that honor codes are unlikely to help. But I'm not sure if I agree that increased monitoring and doing a way with take-home exams is the right way to go. Before I explain way, let me raise a few potential issues regarding the survey data used here. What we can conclude from a survey like the College Humor one? At school's with an honor code, it is possible that students are more aware of what cheating is, as it is laid out explicitly, while in schools without honor codes it could be that students are less aware of what cheating is, and so the results may simply be an artifact of that process. Similarly, if we assume that "cheaters" have a tendency to cheat, then it is also possible that they inflate their GPA when responding to the survey, while "honest students" are likely to report honestly, which could explain some portion of the disparity in GPA's. Now I am not sure if either of these are the case, but I just caution you from drawing conclusions without knowing more about how the data were collected and so on. Now let's get to the issue of cheating and its causes. What is "cheating"? It is failure to comply with the rules specifying the "proper" conduct in completing an assignment or exam. I think Mr. Goodman rightly points out that an honor code is unhelpful by itself. But I'm not sure if added monitoring and whatnot is appropriate either. It may help in the short run, but in the long run, cheaters are highly adaptive to their environments. As long as we have a system that places such a high weight on grades, with unnecessary curves that overemphasize small distinctions between otherwise similarly intelligent and hard-working students, the incentive will be to cheat. If you add monitoring, then you may deter some cheaters, but that can easily backfire and lead to more inventive ways of cheating. It can also have the perverse consequence of discouraging collaboration of any kind. Learning with your peers is one of the best ways of learning. The real problem, in my view, is that universities have to rethink fundamentally what constitutes a university education. If it is to prepare students for a rat race, then cheating, lack of cooperation, and all other kinds of issues should be expected. If it is to encourage students to think, interrogate, learn how to reason, and develop intellectually, then cheating is simply a moot point. No student would benefit from it. Of course, in the "real world" we need some way of distinguishing performance for the purposes of job and graduate school applications. But I wonder if we really need to go such lengths to create distinctions between students and undermine the incentives to really learn.

You make a very good point and you have the numbers to back it up. It should definitely be considered.

It's not that Wharton students are black-hearted, morally bankrupt charlatans who just can't wait to take part in insider trading and corporate fraud (although this is true); That statement alone makes you seem like an absolute idiot who should be laughed at more than listened to.

I wouldn't say that you have the numbers to back it up. One college humor survey isn't exactly the most reliable source... Also, Penn's Code of Academic Integrity doesn't exactly function as a true 'Honor Code.' Simply by virtue of the fact that the OPIM professors double-checked their students shows that Penn is stricter than a true honor code. When I was applying to colleges, one liberal arts school had its applicants take a scholarship test and left no supervisors in the room as a testament to its honor code. Plus, karma will bite those cheaters... it always does.

I think that the statement about Wharton students being black hearted is like a tongue in cheek statement or kind of a joke. It is something that is not true but has some truth in it. If you say "how do you know when a rabbi is lying?" When his lips are moving. It is not funny and does not make sense. But if you say "how do you know when a lawyer is lying?" When his lips are moving. This is funny, but not really true. For example Governor Ed Rendell and Senator Arlen Specter are lawyers and graduated from Penn, but I think that both of them are really trying to help people.

Correlation is not causation....Isnt it more likely that schools where cheating has been a problem are more likely to develop an honor code? Rather than saying that honor codes "cause cheating"? Also, have you read the Honor Code at Penn. It is a statement of intent and clarification of dishonest academic performance. In other words, if someone gets caught, they can't claim ignorance because Penn does in fact have a policy about honor in work. "At schools with an honor code, 67 percent of student admitted to cheating; at those universities which don't have an official honor code the number was 41 percent. Sounds unbelievable, right? Why would an honor code exacerbate cheating?" The answer is that it very likely doesn't. Plan on staying another 3 years in college, because you are not a very good writer or very cogent thinker.

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