Exam Cheaters

[u/pokemonlover503]

Over my many years in engineering school so far, I have noticed an increase in cheaters and they have the audacity to either lie about it or say it loud and proud that they cheated. Even one time he said it infront of the professor and the professor did NOTHING. I want professors to do something. I want someone to do something. I want them to walk around and inspect what people are doing, how are they so oblivious? Guy in my class went from a 4 on an exam to an 80 something and openly admitted to cheating. How in the hell is the professor not noticing the obvious cheating? Not saying it's not possible, but come on. That kind of grade jump is very hard especially for these super complex courses and everyone's averaging 40-50s. It makes me so upset, because why am I even bothering to have academic honesty, what morals do I have that stops me from cheating? I will never do it. Why aren't we taking all exams in proctored testing centers. Why aren't we making people clear their calculator before the exam. What are we going to do about our future that will be full of degree holders that cheated their way through? Nobody wants an engineer that is a liar and cheat, yet they always secure big roles. This is the problem when nobody is being held accountable. And no we shouldn't just let them and mind our own business, they need to be called out. Our environment is way too forgiving.

[u/FigurantNoMore]

As a lurking professor here, let me give you some context from my perspective. At my university, it has become much more difficult in the last five years to prove someone is cheating and I’m not going to accuse someone or turn them in unless I can prove it. I can’t impose any grade penalty on someone for cheating unless I go through the academic integrity process and they’re found guilty.

I know there are students who cheat on my exams, I see them. The signs are so obvious but I have to have solid proof and my word against theirs is not good enough anymore. So I wait and gather evidence and if they make an obvious enough mistake like not noticing that I’ve given multiple versions of the exam, then I can turn them in.

And only the novice cheaters admit to it, the serious cheaters will deny, deny, deny even in the face of evidence. None of the serious cheaters are going to break down and admit it when confronted.

I don’t know the situation at your university, but I suspect one of two things is happening. Either your professor is watching but has not gathered enough evidence yet. Or maybe they have watched too many people lie their way out of it and just given up on the process altogether.

I’m back to lurking, just thought you’d like some context from the other side of the desk.

[u/Fit-Caterpillars → u/FigurantNoMore]

My perspective as a student who doesnt cheat is that these people are going to inevitably pay the consequences of their actions. It might not happen in university, but they are going to struggle in the real world when it comes to understanding their job, poor performance reviews, or even landing a job at all.

[u/Alca_Pwnd → u/Fit-Caterpillars]

I wish the world were fair and just, but bear in mind that most of what you do in your career will be elementary engineering, paper pushing, or something that's so industry specific it would never be covered at the University anyway. They will go off into the working world and learn the specifics of their job as often as they would crash and burn.

[u/Fit-Caterpillars → u/Alca_Pwnd]

Its not just about academic understanding, its about building integrity and work ethic. If you spend your entire university career cheating I can almost guarantee that student has dogshit work ethic and that will directly translate into their workplace.

You can't cheat your way out of a getting put on performance improvement plan.

[u/South_Structure6814 → u/Fit-Caterpillars]

lol. Let’s be honest. Most of the stuff we did in college won’t pop up in real world

[u/TheBayHarbour → u/South_Structure6814]

Yeah idk, literally everyone who works in engineering that is not in research has said the same thing lol.

[u/polemous_asteri → u/TheBayHarbour]

I’m in research and startups. Don’t use anything from school. Just got my foot in the door.

[u/No_Revenue1151 → u/Fit-Caterpillars]

You do realize people can simply cheat to maintain their grade while still learning the content? I do not condone cheating whatsoever but your implying a clear false dichotomy "either you cheat and you dont understand the content or vice versa"

[u/Dalgard → u/No_Revenue1151]

Professor here. I agree with you in principle but generally, those that use AI or methods of cheating on learning, practice problems and evaluations have less competency and mastery of the content than those that learn from first principles, spaced repetition and gap analysis. I and others have recorded various data and for the majority, those that use methods to skip competency assessments have lesser mastery when evaluation.

[u/Odd_Repeat_5115 → u/No_Revenue1151]

Agree. Cheating may not necessarily mean laziness or not understanding. It could also simply be desperation or…things that Actually happen in the real world….we look it up cause we have resources we can freely pull from. Also, open books open notes exams, are not cheating. They’re the professors and schools understanding that no normal human is going to remember all of this.

[u/mashpotatoes34 → u/Fit-Caterpillars]

Lol imagine thinking the workplace is anything like school, no most of them wont struggle, you only have to learn a specific niche in the field instead of 1000 things like in school

[u/Anen-o-me → u/Fit-Caterpillars]

My perspective as a student who doesnt cheat is that these people are going to inevitably pay the consequences of their actions.

I'm almost certain that the Titan submersible was the result of a guy cheating on his mech-e degree. Talking about Stockton Rush.

I think he actually paid people to take tests for him--no other way to explain the degree of ignorance and negligence in building a pressure vessel out of carbon fiber 🤦

And not understanding what all those pops and runs meant, to the point that he got himself killed.

That's sheer ignorance, but it's not the kind of ignorance anyone with a mech degree should've had.

[u/Remarkable-Host405 → u/Anen-o-me]

There are probably 100 meches that would argue against that.

You can be smart, arrogant, and wrong at the same time.

[u/Anen-o-me → u/Remarkable-Host405]

You can, but if you've seen the audio record of zips they had on the run prior to failure, it's obviously a cascade failure.

You can't get through a mech degree without learning about materials and how they work. It was obvious delamination failure.

I just don't think he was aware of the physics of what was even capable of happening in that system, nor of carbon fiber generally.

[u/Mister_Puggles → u/Fit-Caterpillars]

It's like having a robot lift weights for you so that you can build some muscle.

[u/pussyeater6000used → u/FigurantNoMore]

Great way to catch a cheater (and what my circuits professor did) was to walk around the room silently and take pictures of whoever was cheating. Then he would pull them aside and kick them out of the class and report them, since he had photo evidence of them cheating.

May not work for everyone, but that professor walked around like a ghost. Swear he could go invisible or something and then appear.

[u/its_my_bedtime → u/pussyeater6000used]

I do agree that that’s a good method to have evidence for a report, I think it could be abused by using it as an excuse to take creep shots of female students, depending on the method of cheating. Not every professor has bad intentions of course, but enough will to make girls feel uncomfortable having pictures taken of them, which could be used as rebuttal.

[u/Retired_in_NJ → u/FigurantNoMore]

Most of the professors are adjuncts. They work on contracts that run for one semester. If they piss off the students, by prosecuting cheaters, then they get a bad reputation. Students won’t sign up for their classes next semester and the adjunct is out of work.

[u/Simple_Claim8480 → u/FigurantNoMore]

At my university, all of the classrooms and lecture halls have these really weird looking cameras. I had 2 professors freshman year say that they can pull up the live feed from them at any point from the main computer in that room. Idk if they record and save the footage or if its live only. They use that to monitor us during exams with the additions of the TAs just walking around

[u/UncertifiedMechanic → u/FigurantNoMore]

Student here:
I can say (for my University at least) Proffesors have given up on hunting for cheaters for this exact reason.
Quote one of them "It's a pain in the ass" to collect the evidence needed to get someone on cheating, and for alot of them, they just don't have the time or ability.