Harvard’s “Culture of Cheating”?
Posted on September 4th, 2012 in Uncategorized | 19 Comments »
Harvard grad Eric Kestler tells ABCNews.com that a “culture of cheating” exists at the university, making the current investigation into mass cheating the rule and not the exception.
“When I was a student there, I definitely noticed there was a culture of cheating there,” Kester [author of this book about Harvard] told ABC News today. “There’s a lot of pressure internally and externally to succeed at Harvard and when kids who are not used to failing feel these things, it can really bend their ethics in ways I didn’t expect to see.”
Kester said he struggled through a calculus class during his time at Harvard, and at one point was approached by a group of students who were planning to cheat….
Doing just a brief bit of web surfing shows a couple of things about this matter: One, it’s getting a huge amount of attention (no surprise there, given the brand name involved); and two, Harvard is getting off, in a sense, by getting lumped in with students cheating at colleges across the country. While in the short term this conflation may be something of a mitigating factor, in the longer term it does have the effect of diminishing Harvard’s sense of exceptionalism; the idea that it is not like every other college in the country.
I’d posit that it’s possible Harvard is actually far worse than other colleges when it comes to cheating. Here’s why: Students around the country do whatever it takes to get into Harvard, which must take them into lots of grey areas, so why wouldn’t they continue that behavior while they’re there? THe end justifies the means.
Two, academics have long been secondary to extracurricular pursuits at Harvard, so students may feel more comfortable cutting ethical corners than they would at other colleges.
And three, some of the faculty’s most celebrated figures rely on ghostwriters and graduate students to do their work, or, as Niall Ferguson recently showed, pursue work that is more popular and remunerative than credible, and show little interest in traditional academic pursuits such as teaching—so what message does that send?
I’ll admit to stirring the pot somewhat here for the sake of argument. But to me the larger question underneath this discussion is really to what extent scholarship is valued at Harvard, as opposed to the pursuit of worldly success?
As the competition to get in only increases, and the tuition continues to soar, that emphasis on results—money, power, fame—only intensifies. Learning becomes not an end in itself, but a means to an end. And you now have students from ever more diverse backgrounds without a common cultural appreciation for the virtue of scholarship per se, at the same time that Harvard has largely abandoned any teaching of ethics or attempts to shape the character of its students in any particular fashion.
All things considered, perhaps what’s surprising about this cheating investigation is not the size of it, but the fact that it didn’t happen sooner…..
19 Responses
9/4/2024 8:24 am
After reading Chris Winship’s good comment below about what we used to call human nature, I keep coming back to where I started. Bring back final exams! Yalie pot-stirring notwithstanding, there could actually be a difference in cheating rates between schools if they handle their evaluation protocols differently. An obvious thing Harvard could do is to remove temptations by having students take tests rather than these “take it at home over 8 days during reading period while you are writing term papers but don’t talk to anybody” pseudo-exams. Sometimes good, simple mechanics are more useful than sanctimony.
9/4/2024 8:33 am
Yalie *and* Harvardian, please, Harry!
9/4/2024 8:34 am
And I’ve got the fundraising letters to prove it….
9/4/2024 9:49 am
It was a take-home exam that resulted in the widely reported cheating scandal at Columbia Journalism School-in the ethics class, no less.
That said, I do think the ethic a generation back was stricter on this, both for students and faculty.
9/4/2024 4:46 pm
There Is No Harvard Cheating Scandal.
9/4/2024 7:16 pm
http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2012/9/4/interview-quote-policy/
9/4/2024 7:42 pm
We should be proud of the Crimson editors who wrote:
“We share this internal decision with you, our readers, because you have put your trust in us to bring you fair, unbiased, rigorously reported news, and we are grateful every day for that faith. As custodians of your trust, we feel bound to tell you about the ways in which we strive to live up to our responsibility—to answer the questions so important to us all as members of the Harvard community.”
Clearly, Harvard still admits students who understand principles and ethical values. Any administrator intent in forcing The Crimson to go back to ‘quote review’ should ponder whether that stance is more likely to foster the kind of academic culture that produces cheaters or principled leaders.
And The Crimson might consider publishing the names of those who insist on ‘quote review’. Maybe our students can be the change they want to see in Harvard… and contribute to that change in the process.
9/5/2024 6:30 am
This article illustrates what clear thinking on ethics in the academy looks like. Perhaps Dean Smith could send this article to all faculty, staff and students, and encourage them to read it and discuss it.
http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion
9/5/2024 3:20 pm
Who is on the Committee for Academic Integrity? Why can’t it be found on the FAS website?
9/5/2024 4:13 pm
http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/04/how-we-teach-students-to-cheat/?src=rechp
I found this article, simple and straightforward, haunting.
9/5/2024 6:22 pm
I don’t believe there is any Committee for Academic Integrity, just a new Dean of it. I understand that person will work with the Administrative Board and with faculty. We’ll see if throwing a dean at a problem is a good move.
9/5/2024 6:29 pm
Only Standing Committees (created by vote of the Faculty) are listed on the web site. Ad hoc committees (created and appointed by the dean) are not.
Given the way the course was run, I continue to find a lot of the writing about the grand lessons and searing, deep meaning of all this way overblown. Though in addition to the practical mechanics I mentioned, I think there is a lesson about reducing the distance between the parallel universes in which the teaching staff and the enrolled students lived. That is one useful takeaway from the Globe op-ed.
9/5/2024 6:45 pm
I hadn’t even heard of the new dean until I read RT’s post. Basically, I was focusing on teaching today.
9/5/2024 7:11 pm
http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2012/9/5/flehinger-dean-academic-integrity/
9/5/2024 8:05 pm
But apparently there is a committee. According to Harvard Magazine,
ABOUT TWO YEARS AGO, Harris said, given “a feeling that the landscaped had shifted,” especially as technological tools had altered “how people think of intellectual property,” he began investigating attitudes and behaviors on campus. The College Committee on Academic Integrity (including faculty members, undergraduates, resident deans, and administrators), chaired by Harris, engaged the International Center for Academic Integrity—which was organized in 1992, following earlier survey research on the issue by Donald L. McCabe, a professor at Rutgers Business School—to create an assessment of academic integrity like that it has conducted at other institutions. Sounds like it is a policy-brainstorming committee, not at all concerned with the adjudication of individual cases.
TEACHING, Judith? Where are your priorities?! No committee work to do? No deans to meet with?
A new type of college administration has been called into being by the great expansion on the material side. A ponderous machinery has come into existence for carrying on the multiplicity of business and quasi-business matters without which the modern university would come to a standstill. This machinery tends to come between the individual and the region of moral aims in which he should assert himself. Personality counts for less than the apparatus thru which, it sometimes seems, the individual alone can accomplish anything. Moreover, the minutiae, the routine turning of the machinery, absorb time and energy. Many a modern college man is asking himself where he is to get the leisure and strength to devote himself to his ultimate ends, so much, willy-nilly, has to be spent on the intermediate means. The side-tracking of personal energy into the routine of academic machinery is a serious problem. -John Dewey, 1902
9/5/2024 8:41 pm
I stand corrected then. Interesting that Harry, Judith and I (as engaged faculty members as there are out there) were unaware of the existence of this committee.
Good Dewey quote there Harry.
9/5/2024 10:43 pm
Yes, Harry: there is that thing called teaching that first fascinated me in pre-school. I loved to watch how the teacher did it, especially when she was showing us how to make papier maché. Committee work will descend with a vengeance next week.
I trust that we’ll learn more about the Committee on Academic Integrity at the next FAS meeting.
9/5/2024 11:13 pm
I spent four years dealing with academic dishonesty at Harvard as a Resident Dean and Board member. It was eye-opening when I moved to Northwestern and saw different procedures, standards, and regimes in action. The difference was most apparent when I filled in one spring for the dean responsible for academic integrity. As I fielded cases, I was the sole adjudicator-a radical change from being one of 25 votes on the Board. Also, some Northwestern faculty have students submit work through plagiarism detection software, which made packets of evidence quite distinct from anything Harvard faculty turned over to the Board. Working in two systems made me rethink my prior Board experience and led me to ask some tough questions of the person running Northwestern’s system. The comparative perspective has been invaluable as I’ve delved more deeply into questions about academic integrity at the college level and how to prepare high school students for those realities. If Harvard is going to have a committee on academic integrity, maybe it needs to be a visiting committee stocked with representatives from peer institutions and feeder schools. The insights and critical distance of administrators and faculty from beyond Harvard Yard might stoke meaningful dialogue on campus and generate plans for pedagogical and administrative innovation.
9/6/2024 10:48 am
The editors of the Crimson have taken up a very important role in educating the wider community about ethics.
This article is exactly the kind of information that would help students -and faculty, perhaps- discern right from wrong, and understand that the consequences are.
http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2012/9/6/hauser-misconduct-investigation/