The recent post about the parole prospects of one of Manson’s remote-control murderers wasn’t the only one to spark several Comment of the Day-worthy responses. The ethics quiz about the ethics professor’s sting to catch cheaters also was a catalyst for outstanding feedback.
Here is Sarah B’s Comment of the Day on Michael R‘s COTD on Parts 1 and 2 of “The Philosophy Prof’s “Animal House” Ethics Quiz.”
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First, let it be stated that I am in NO way agreeing that cheating is a good thing. However, there is an addendum to make on this wonderful comment.
Professors sometimes make it impossible not to cheat. I am thinking back to my undergraduate years in chemical engineering. We would have a 17-18 hour average class-load each semester and if you couldn’t keep up, you tended to get a lot of scorn from the faculty. Four years was the expectation, not five, though many people went the five route to stay somewhat sane. Each of the 3 hour classes would give 20-40 hour of homework a week. Lab write-ups would require at least 20 hours too.
We routinely made fun of students in other colleges who complained about having to write a forty-page paper for their midterm or final. We turned in 5-8 of those a week, all covered in detailed calculations. Homework was worth as much or more than the tests. So…most of us made deals with our fellow students. “I’ll do problems 1 and 2 from Dr. A, 3 and 4 from Dr. B, 5-7 of Dr. C’s, and 10-12 of Dr. D’s. I’ll write up the first third of the P Chem lab report, the second third for the O Chem lab report, and final third of the Units Ops lab report. Sunday night, we’ll get together and each of us will trade answers and copy work.”
I’m not proud to admit I did that for two weeks of my college career. The faculty all knew we did it, they encouraged cheat <ahem> study sessions, and frankly, you were more severely punished for not finishing an assignment than for cheating.
Frankly, higher education needs to be rebuilt just as much as elementary, middle, and high school do. Academic dishonesty is not only present, but practically a part of the process.
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I’m back for an observation: what Sarah B describes reminds me of the unethical scam several retail chains have been found guilty of engaging in. Branch managers are told that their jobs will be forfeited if their outlet doesn’t meet impossible income-over-expense targets. The managers, in turn, tell the staff that unless the store meets the goal, staff will be cut or the store closed. The manager also says that there is no provision for increased over-time, so in order to save their jobs, the staff works longer hours without being paid for them.
If and when the store’s violation of labor regulations is the subject of a complaint and investigation, the headquarters supervisors swear that they never asked the manager to pressure staff into working uncompensated over-time hours. They swear that they would never do such a thing, and never have. It works: the manager takes the fall.
Ethics Alarms 
I may have to come back to Sarah B.’s COTD on cheating, but the follow-on rang my bell on business ethics. We had to buy a car recently; ours was totaled by a freak rainstorm with epic flooding in Fort Lauderdale. At the dealership, we were shown ‘evidence’ of the ‘market adjustment’ a number of dealers were adding to the price of a car. Capitalism at work — if the demand for new cars exceeds the supply, jack (excuse me, raise) the price. (No offense intended, Jack). Our dealer said they considered the practice unethical, and they wouldn’t do that. Turned out, what they would do is add a bunch of dealer ‘options’, and if we would not pay for those (grossly overpriced and of questionable value), then they would just sell the car to the next person in line. We had no car, there were others ready to buy.
I tracked down an address for the owner of the conglomerate; my request for an explanation of the ethical differences between market adjustment and mandatory options is pending a reply.
Thank you, Jack.
Sarah, congratulations on COTD. I must say I found the widespread cheating and the professors allowing it almost beyond belief. I thought it was a terrible practice. Something I never engaged in or even thought about doing. I thought maybe it was a difference in culture between the school you went, to or when you went.
My university days are in the distant past. Before I felt morally superior I remembered my last semester of PChem. I remember vividly the final exam we were allowed calculators. But they weren’t much more advanced than slide rulers, which I used in high school. The total possible point values of the questions equaled 135 points. Out of the possible 135 points, I scored 62 points. After the curve, my grade for the final was a B+. I thought how is the practice of professors condoning cheating much different than applying a ridiculously large curve to an exam? I concluded not much. Both methods push “passing” students through their classes.
Such a curve in P-chem is typical. The reality is that those problems can be very challenging and difficult due to the multi-step nature. My P-chem class had a mean of 40%. The professor recycled his exams and would tell us the previous means. The first time he gave the exams (in the 1960’s), the means were typically in the mid-80% range. The second time (typically in the 1970’s, the means had slipped to the high 60% range, and the third time (early 80’s), they were in the mid 50%. Our mean was 40% in the 90’s. Now, the tests weren’t impossible, my group of friends and I were still getting in the 80% range, but we were using calculators, not slide rules. However, this does neatly illustrate the decline of the US school system.
I still remember that the last test had 6 questions and 1 of them was a Huckel analysis of a 6-membered ring. Yes, a 6×6 determinant in less than 10 minutes. Yes, it is possible, if you can anticipate the test question and work it out in advance ( a 4 membered ring in class, a 5 membered ring on the homework, that leaves a 3 or 6 for the test, work them both out). Ahh, taking classes from the greatest generation.
Congratulations for the COTD Sarah. Having taught Economics in a post-secondary school I am all for academic rigor. With that said it makes no sense to load up students with an insurmountable workload that seems to require cheating to pass the course. The purpose of the academic rigor is to instill an understanding of the topic and not see how many answers can be put on a piece of paper.
Obviously, the 20-40 hours of homework per week per class is probably an exaggeration given that there are only 168 hours in a week and 5 -6, 3-hour classes would approach or exceed that maximum number. Nonetheless, I know faculty who believe that the earth and sky move around their course and students have a duty and obligation to do whatever it takes to meet their standard. I see this as an extension of the professional (x) who takes a job as an adjunct to teach an introductory course and then expects the students to understand the graduate level concepts he or she believes the students should know. Faculty need to be reasonable.
I never graded on a curve, but I did evaluate the questions I put on a test. In some cases, I threw out a question when virtually the entire class answered in error. Even trying to be somewhat even-handed students have learned that whining about testing and grading will win them favor among administrators who, by the way, are measured on student retention and not actual success. I was counseled once on the write-up of my evaluation that students said there were too few A’s and B’s and too many F’s on my tests despite the fact that I used the test bank supplied to me by Department Chair or the workbook that came with the textbook. I decided to end my teaching after that because one of two things was occurring either I was a subpar teacher or that I would have to pass people that had no understanding of the concepts of Micro or Macro-Economics. Neither appealed to me.
I wish I could say that 20-40 hour homework assignments were a made up number. One of my professors taught two of the required junior year classes we timed ourselves on his homework. For his Transport Phenomena homework, the average student took around 35 hours to finish the homework. The homework for Unit Operations took the average student 45 hours. He was known as the “full-time job”. He would give homework assignments that had 6-8 problems with around ten sub problems on each main problem. A sub problem would require 10-20 minutes to solve. The way we had to write up the problems just to show that we were following procedure could add ten minutes to a sub-problem before a solution was sought. He also gave those massive homework assignments on test weeks, and tested on things on the homework assignments that we had turned in that morning and obviously had not graded. Monday he would hand out the week’s homework, and sometimes would not cover the material in the lecture until Friday. It was brutal.
That professor did not do well on evaluations, but it was blamed on the students being mad that he didn’t curve. He flunked half the class the first semester. He had to teach the first semester junior class second semester, and he held study sessions every night. I made one a week (I had other classes and other homework, after all, not to mention my job as a TA to pay for this degree) and he was always mad that we weren’t coming during his office hours (held during the thermodynamics class) or more often at night. I could have made it more of a priority, but not by much, and I was one of very few who passed his classes, though my C’s here guaranteed that I couldn’t make the honor’s program which required a 3.4 GPA.
Most professors were not that bad, but you could trust that your engineering courses would require a huge amount of homework. My fourth year (I did it in five) was marked by my calculating how many assignments I could skip for Linear Algebra (easy peasy class for my minor in mathematics) and still pull a passing grade so I could spend that time on other classes’ work.
Oops, that posted too soon.
Chris, I believe that you may be a FANTASTIC professor, but my experience taught me that many professors believe that the only class you take in a semester is theirs. Should Tranport Phenomena take around 40 hours study a week? Maybe, but not when I have to do P-Chem, Multicomponent Thermodynamics, Elements of Chemical Process Design, Physics 3, and the University’s required science class because four physics classes and a minor in Chemistry don’t count to administrations.
Again, there needs to be a change.
This reminded me of “War” a Government course at Harvard, in which the summer reading list contained over 50 books, including “War and Peace,” and that wasn’t even the longest book on the list. I believe I read a Cliffs Notes on one of them, and that was all.