Cheating at UK's top universities soars by 30%

The number of students caught cheating at the UK’s top universities has shot up by a third in three years, with experts warning that institutions are ignoring the problem.
..
Thomas Lancaster, a senior teaching fellow at Imperial College London and one of the UK’s leading experts on essay cheating, said: “A growing number of young people also feel more pressure than ever before, often turning to cheating to help them get through their degrees. It’s also easier to access websites that offer paid-to-order essays.”

Lancaster said universities were getting better at recording incidents, but that they were often inconsistent in how they tackled cheating, with many “assuming it’s not their problem”.

Cheating at UK's top universities soars by 30%

This may not only be the case in the UK (not at all!), but this made prominent headlines today in Germany.

Too expensive = too much pressure for success =>

(Assumed Benefit of Graduation / Risk of Detection) seems better than (Assumed Benefit of Graduation / Risk of Exmatriculation by bad grades). And that is where it is going wrong.

Nobody should feel that cheating is better than failing, at least if you still have a chance to rescue your grades by repeating the test. If you promote cheating by increasing the monetary value you had to invest to this point, you will always find students willing to pay (a bit) more instead of losing all their invested money.

a reply to: ManFromEurope

What percentage don't get caught
Scary, these people go on to be trusted members of their fields that some people put their faith in

a reply to: ManFromEurope

I'm a non-traditional college student here in the states. 36 years old, walking around and taking classes with kids nearly half my age. I typically tend to sit in the back of classrooms (I like to be able to have a full view of my surroundings...old military habit), and in doing so have full view of most of the other students computers. It is utterly insane how many of these kids don't pay attention to the information being taught.

Athletes are the worst, they watch football clips and fortnight video game clips on youtube. If the student has a MacBook, they are texting throughout the entire class. I had a study group session the other day and one of the kids was watching a friggin movie while the other 3 of us were trying to do the work. I told him if he wasn't going to help us out then he'd be best to go ahead and leave. He looked at me as if no one had ever talked to him like that.

The teachers seem like they care, but can't do much. Their hands are tied. They can't call out a student in class...especially the student-athletes. Most of the course work has gone online...meaning the quiz's and homework is all turned in electronically...making cheating very easy. Exam's are done in the classroom, but I've been told that for most classes, you can find the questions and answers on paid websites.

The only other thing I'd add is that with technology, they are probably able to identify more cheating through 3rd party websites such as TurnItIn...which compares an essay, for instance, to just about every document on the internet. If it looks like you copied from a book, or another paper, it'll catch it and flag it for the teacher to look at. If it's not properly cited, then it's up to the teacher to administer action.

But I can say this...the expectations are insane in terms of what you're expected to learn these days. They cram more into a semester than the typical human mind can adequately process. I can't speak for the U.K., but here in the U.S. I'd say the way we teach needs to be completely remodeled.

Note**My solution to this problem would be that after high school, everyone has 2 years of continued college level general education. No declared majors...just math, english, science, technology. Then, I'd mandate 2 years of either military service, trade school, or humanitarian service...individuals preference. Then...declare a major and continue your education if you'd like. By the time people get a real taste of the real world...they'll have a finer appreciation for the knowledge that they have before them....and, closer to having a fully developed pre-frontal cortex.

a reply to: Assassin82

Our ancestors were deciding their future careers at around 12-14.

I wonder what happened.

P

originally posted by: Assassin82
a reply to: ManFromEurope

I'm a non-traditional college student here in the states. 36 years old, walking around and taking classes with kids nearly half my age. I typically tend to sit in the back of classrooms (I like to be able to have a full view of my surroundings...old military habit), and in doing so have full view of most of the other students computers. It is utterly insane how many of these kids don't pay attention to the information being taught.

Athletes are the worst, they watch football clips and fortnight video game clips on youtube. If the student has a MacBook, they are texting throughout the entire class. I had a study group session the other day and one of the kids was watching a friggin movie while the other 3 of us were trying to do the work. I told him if he wasn't going to help us out then he'd be best to go ahead and leave. He looked at me as if no one had ever talked to him like that.

The teachers seem like they care, but can't do much. Their hands are tied. They can't call out a student in class...especially the student-athletes. Most of the course work has gone online...meaning the quiz's and homework is all turned in electronically...making cheating very easy. Exam's are done in the classroom, but I've been told that for most classes, you can find the questions and answers on paid websites.

The only other thing I'd add is that with technology, they are probably able to identify more cheating through 3rd party websites such as TurnItIn...which compares an essay, for instance, to just about every document on the internet. If it looks like you copied from a book, or another paper, it'll catch it and flag it for the teacher to look at. If it's not properly cited, then it's up to the teacher to administer action.

But I can say this...the expectations are insane in terms of what you're expected to learn these days. They cram more into a semester than the typical human mind can adequately process. I can't speak for the U.K., but here in the U.S. I'd say the way we teach needs to be completely remodeled.

Note**My solution to this problem would be that after high school, everyone has 2 years of continued college level general education. No declared majors...just math, english, science, technology. Then, I'd mandate 2 years of either military service, trade school, or humanitarian service...individuals preference. Then...declare a major and continue your education if you'd like. By the time people get a real taste of the real world...they'll have a finer appreciation for the knowledge that they have before them....and, closer to having a fully developed pre-frontal cortex.

I'm from the "old school". I agree with you.

Further proof that not all college educations are equal. I have interviewed kids with degrees in an actual useful field and they are clueless.
Maybe they cheated.
They might be the type that can study for the tests and then forgets everything in a week.

The guy that finished med school first has the same degree that finished 250th.
Both are called doctor.

originally posted by: Assassin82
a reply to: ManFromEurope

I'm a non-traditional college student here in the states. 36 years old, walking around and taking classes with kids nearly half my age. I typically tend to sit in the back of classrooms (I like to be able to have a full view of my surroundings...old military habit), and in doing so have full view of most of the other students computers. It is utterly insane how many of these kids don't pay attention to the information being taught.

Athletes are the worst, they watch football clips and fortnight video game clips on youtube. If the student has a MacBook, they are texting throughout the entire class. I had a study group session the other day and one of the kids was watching a friggin movie while the other 3 of us were trying to do the work. I told him if he wasn't going to help us out then he'd be best to go ahead and leave. He looked at me as if no one had ever talked to him like that.

The teachers seem like they care, but can't do much. Their hands are tied. They can't call out a student in class...especially the student-athletes. Most of the course work has gone online...meaning the quiz's and homework is all turned in electronically...making cheating very easy. Exam's are done in the classroom, but I've been told that for most classes, you can find the questions and answers on paid websites.

The only other thing I'd add is that with technology, they are probably able to identify more cheating through 3rd party websites such as TurnItIn...which compares an essay, for instance, to just about every document on the internet. If it looks like you copied from a book, or another paper, it'll catch it and flag it for the teacher to look at. If it's not properly cited, then it's up to the teacher to administer action.

But I can say this...the expectations are insane in terms of what you're expected to learn these days. They cram more into a semester than the typical human mind can adequately process. I can't speak for the U.K., but here in the U.S. I'd say the way we teach needs to be completely remodeled.

Note**My solution to this problem would be that after high school, everyone has 2 years of continued college level general education. No declared majors...just math, english, science, technology. Then, I'd mandate 2 years of either military service, trade school, or humanitarian service...individuals preference. Then...declare a major and continue your education if you'd like. By the time people get a real taste of the real world...they'll have a finer appreciation for the knowledge that they have before them....and, closer to having a fully developed pre-frontal cortex.

In my undergraduate degree in the UK, we were using all the textbooks used in the USA. Each week was packed from 9 to 5 with lectures and tutorial sessions. We had to spend the evenings doing courseworks. I stayed with my parents and got a car ride every day at 7am. Didn't get to bed until 12pm or 1pm. Actually ended up pipelining my work so that I was doing design/reviews on the 45-minute bus ride home seven miles out of the city. The crazy thing is that none of what we learnt back then isn't actually used now (Pascal, Modula-2, Fortran-77, 80x86, 680x0, Prolog, Lisp). Other universities actually keep their computer labs open 24-hours day/night. I had to go back and do a MSc to get a completely new set of skills (C++), and again with a PhD (3D graphics).
set of skills 5 years later (C++, parallel processing).

a reply to: Assassin82


That's a great plan, but I didn't see you mention when we would have time for Instagram, snapchat or fortnite... soooo

a reply to: PsychoEmperor

I suppose those extra-curricular activities could be done in between the binge-drinking and the pursuit of sex. And...if the majority of college students would take the time wasted in trying to get laid (success is approximately 2% of the overall effort)....then a plethora of fortnite, instagram and snappychat could be absorbed. lol

2% may be generous

originally posted by: pheonix358
a reply to: Assassin82

Our ancestors were deciding their future careers at around 12-14.

I wonder what happened.

P

Apprentice programs died out. Progressives became overly zealous about child labor and turned to preventing them from working instead of helping them to transition as adults. The same group wants to infantilize everyone and make them dependent on government.

I feel very fortunate to have apprenticed twice.
Long-term teacher/student relationships are becoming very rare sadly.

When I did comp sci in the late 90's we had a maths class that was as you can imagine based on stuff and included things like proof by induction which to this day I hate and was at the time a mix of A and degree level maths aimed at us computing peeps so array/probability and matrix and much more.

So the exam time came and we had a revision session and went through practice questions, now the uni's set their own papers and the people who teach except under certain reasons can see them and he went through the questions and we all thought he's dropping us a hint on what sort of questions will be on the paper but you'll still have to do the dirty work.

NOPE we opened the paper and the same questions we had done the day before were there and there was a lot of WTF as we left the exam hall.

Should be said that we also got dicked on coding question as we had to lay lout a cobol reportwriter bit of code and given we hadn't had any official training on it and I was due to having cobol experience the only person from out group to pass but everyone slapped in a complaint at that.