I did ChemE for undergrad and aerospace focused on systems engineering for postgrad so that colored my experience a bit. The former was brutal and the latter naturally collaborative with a bunch of projects, so we all worked together.

The postgrad continuum mechanics class (I think taught by the geophysics department?) was the biggest exception so I’m betting there’s quite a bit of variance among fields.

I don’t doubt there’s academic fraud (living in the dorm my first year wiped away any illusion) but within my major it didn’t end well.

Can you give examples of what you consider to be high trust communities? Without specifics it’s hard to calibrate and figure out whether we‘re talking past each other.

I spent two seasons working with the SPCC Icefall Doctors who put up the infrastructure to cross the Khumbu Icefall each year for Everest climbers so I feel like I have a pretty good idea of what a high trust community looks like (the Nepalese guiding community on Everest). Perhaps it’s because I’ve seen what happens when the situation quickly turns dire, but I’m skeptical that there’s anything special about high trust communities other than a higher baseline of morale

This is an unbelievably pretentious take that sounds like it's coming from someone who is either lying or was oblivious to the cheating that was going on around them.

The advantage(?) of take-home exams à la Caltech is that they can be open everything and 3–5 hours long :-P (For what it's worth, being able to listen to music during an exam, ctrl+F a digital textbook, etc. was super awesome; it would deeply sadden me if that becomes infeasible in the future once enough students stop caring about the Honor Code....)

> it can affect your ability to rent housing

This is insane, but I guess it fits the Swiss (and Geneva more specifically) quite well. And before anyone starts babbling here about the Swiss's rectitude, Geneva itself is host to this giant international money-laundering abomination:

> Geneva Freeport (French: Ports Francs et Entrepôts de Genève SA) is a warehouse complex in Geneva, Switzerland, for the storage of art and other valuables and collectibles. It is the world's oldest and largest freeport facility, and the one with the most artworks, with 40% of its collection being art with an estimated value of US$100 billion

But yeah, not pay the tram ticket once or twice and suddenly you're not worthy of renting in that shithole called Geneva, meanwhile the city itself launders hundreds of billions of dollars.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geneva_Freeport

No argument there. Tbf given my professional and personal background, I automatically assume the worst in all people so even though I never abused honor codes (and honestly never had the need to anyhow because I liked the classes I took with one as they tend to be the kinds of classes where professors and teacher staff are the most engaged) I think it is almost impossible to enforce one in classes beyond 30 students, because anonymity does beget some amount of bad behavior.

I came to this country as an immigrant and one of the first memories I have was walking to the gas station to get the Sunday paper for my host father. I remember opening up the door and seeing tens of Sunday papers and was taken aback thinking how can this be, wouldn't someone just put in a quarter and take ALL of the Sunday papers home with her/him. In today's society (and especially if we are talking Princeton-like places) I do not believe honor-anything "works" anymore and am wondering just how small a place needs to be where this exists today...

just as a small recent-ish example, I live in a white-collar affluent area and this Halloween we took our daughter to her friend's neighborhood but left a dish full of candy outside with a sign to take a couple. we have a camera outside and the very first "group" of 3 kids (with two adults) that came took all of the candy that was there...

> I'm not that old

I'm not sure. Most HNers appear to be in their late 30s to early 40s, which is a massive generation gap.

Classes and incentive structures have changed for people who graduated in the early 2010s compared to the late 1990s or early 2000s and neither would understand students who graduate in the mid-late 2020s.