Comment University's fault - hear me out (Score 3, Insightful) 127
The first time someone cheats, puts no effort into the assignment and you see the university does nothing about it you might think it is a one off thing. Maybe a few more students will cheat but not 32 out of 35. What has happened is after watching their class mates put zero effort in and get better grades than them, more and more students started cheating. They became more and more confident as there it became obvious there would be no repercussion. We see this with any honor system that rewards cheating. Also 32 out of 35 got caught. The other 3 probably still cheated. 2 of them might not have known how to use copy and paste and one might have proof skimmed the AI output.
When I was in university in the early 90s there were students graduating who couldn't speak English and it's questionable if they could read the assignments and exam questions well enough to answer them. Their secret was to only take classes from professors who never changed their exams or assignments. We confronted one such prof that his assignments were too hard and everyone else was cheating, he removed some of the requirements from the assignment and guess what, everyone but our group submitted assignments that magically had the removed features. There were threats of consequence but in the end absolutely nothing happened. (University of Waterloo Computer science)
It has always been true that you can cheat, memorize old exams, or just memorize patterns to pass university or you can actually learn the material. And it is also true that unless you have a good prof, who truly spends the time to see if his class understands, the former method will lead to better marks.
When I was in university in the early 90s there were students graduating who couldn't speak English and it's questionable if they could read the assignments and exam questions well enough to answer them. Their secret was to only take classes from professors who never changed their exams or assignments. We confronted one such prof that his assignments were too hard and everyone else was cheating, he removed some of the requirements from the assignment and guess what, everyone but our group submitted assignments that magically had the removed features. There were threats of consequence but in the end absolutely nothing happened. (University of Waterloo Computer science)
It has always been true that you can cheat, memorize old exams, or just memorize patterns to pass university or you can actually learn the material. And it is also true that unless you have a good prof, who truly spends the time to see if his class understands, the former method will lead to better marks.