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Priceless

August 31, 2012, 10:04 am

I usually don't take notice of this type of story, even when it involves a lot of schadenfreude in seeing problems at Harvard.  But how can you not enjoy a story about over a hundred Harvard students cheating on an open-book take-home test in ... get ready for it ...  Goverment 1310 – “Introduction to Congress.”  Given the subject of the course, I wonder if the ones who did not cheat could be failed for not really understanding the subject matter?

Category: Government, Politics
  • SamWah

    Yowza. Those who cheated clearly passed/don't need the course. They understand.

  • Nehemiah

    Ah, the ivy walls and venerable halls of Harvard, where only the best of the best attend. The future business, academic and political leaders of the next era. Bet old Samuel Langdon is spinning in his grave.

  • Andrew Garland

    How can you cheat on a take-home test? The idea is to answer the questions with any resources available to you. That is typically the course notes and textbooks; but why shouldn't it include classmates and on-line resources?

    A take home test is merely very important homework. The only real test is supervised, possibly open-book, to determine what the student has mastered.

    If you cheat on homework (copying answers) then you are only cheating yourself. The final testing should reveal who knows the material and who only copies it.

    If we had real education, every final test would be administered 6 weeks into the next semester, to find out what the students have more permanently mastered, rather than what is remembered just after 3 days of cramming.

  • Andrew

    This makes me suspect a very poorly written test.