This is interesting because there is a cheating epidemic going on in higher education and I'm continuously wondering what happens if it isn't resolved. Students cheating with impunity breeds more students cheating, into a spiral until all students cheat and the credentials becomes meaningless.

The credentials enable trust at scale.

You're pointing at people leaning on reputations for trust. What happens when the most reputable institutional credentials no longer represent the quality they once did?

Just one more unsettling thing to think about

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afpx 14 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Also high schools. demographics of Thomas Jefferson High School (one of the best in the country) vs. Fairfax county.

I spent decades foolishly believing people didn’t cheat because I grew up around a bunch of Christians. Now, cheating is pervasive. Game theory in action

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two_handfuls 13 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> I spent decades foolishly believing people didn’t cheat because I grew up around a bunch of Christians.

I will just say this: "Christians" is not a wholly uniform population.

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afpx 13 hours ago | parent [-]

Good point. Presbyterians specifically

	▲	esseph 13 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		That's... Not what they are saying. They are saying, ironically, that claimed membership of that group or belief isn't actually a high trust signal.
	▲	analognoise 12 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		I think they meant Christians cheat a lot (or, enough of them do so as to not be a high trust signal).

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14 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

[deleted]

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mc32 14 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Interesting. When I was at university there were a few foreign contingents known for cheating academically. It was unexpected and strange ...yet, despite that, some of the students were smart yet cheated in areas they were weak in. But also didn't seem to mind sharing assignments in any area among themselves. I guess they assumed they'd learn much of what they needed in the real-world on the job.

It's sad to learn this attitude has begun to permeate our own students. People want to take short-cuts and skip the work necessary to get to the goal and miss out on the learning aspect. Maybe they expect "A.I" to do the thinking for them --but then what will they have to offer a prospective emplyer?

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jdw64 14 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

[flagged]

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WalterBright 13 hours ago | parent [-]

I attended Caltech in the 70s when it had an honor system. An anecdote on how it worked:

A fellow student of mine, "Bob", was taking Ama95, a required class that was one of the hardest classes. All exams were take home, open book, open note, but with a time limit of 2 hours. There was no proctoring, and nobody would know if one took extra time or not.

Bob took the exam to his dorm room, closed the door, and set the timer at 2 hours. He had been up late studying, and fell asleep. The timer woke him. He figured he'd been asleep for an hour. So he drew a line in his blue book, and continued taking the test for another hour. He then wrote an explanation of the line and what had happened, and turned it in.

He received an F. The professor was very apologetic, but explained that he had no choice.

Bob received the news with equanimity, and signed up to take the class again next year. He related this story in a matter of fact manner to a group of us in the dorm library.

The thing about the honor system is it turned the students and professors into collaborators rather than adversaries. The students liked the honor system very much. If their best friend cheated, they'd turn him in. Hence, any attempt at organized cheating meant ostracism. I never saw any of that in my time there.

Nobody stole anything in the dorm that I was aware of.

For contrast, I attended a class at a local college. One of the other students befriended me, and it turned out he did that to convince me to help him cheat. (I declined.) A friend of mine attended another university, and the day he moved into his freshman dorm room it was looted.

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throwup238 13 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Caltech still has the honor system and it was in full effect when I was there in the 2000s-2010s. According to a family member attending as undergrad now, it hasn’t changed.

(Was PCC the local college? That also hasn’t changed except for higher fees and a nicer engineering building)

	▲	WalterBright 13 hours ago \| parent [-]
		No, the local college was in Kansas where my parents lived.

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WalterBright 13 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Some evidence that there wasn't rampant cheating:

On a sophomore physics midterm, 60% of the students failed the test (including yours truly). The professor was rather angry about that in the next lecture. Said we needed to work harder.

(Grading on a curve was against institute policy.)

Another unusual oddity: there were no "honors" courses or "weeder" course tracks. No remedial classes, either. (Sadly, Harvard now offers remedial math for their incoming students. Given the intense competition for admission to Harvard, one wonders what their criteria is. The Prof Kingsley days must be long gone.)

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jdw64 13 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

[dead]

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threatofrain 13 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The more people lose trust in your work history and other credentials, the more metaphorical leetcode becomes relevant.