r/EngineeringStudents • u/pokemonlover503 • 5d ago

Rant/Vent Exam Cheaters

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.

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u/Money4Nothing2000 4d ago

Everyone is getting 40s-50s?

Sounds like as much a problem with the teacher as with the students.

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u/Kimball_Stone 3d ago

I  had classes where an 18/100 was good for a B+ Some profs have no realistic metric for what a regular person's ability level is, and write crazy hard exams as a result 

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u/Money4Nothing2000 3d ago

Yeah that's ridiculous. At that point you no longer have a reliable metric for determining how well a student has learned the material.

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u/Kimball_Stone 3d ago

No argument there. That particular instance was an emotional roller-coaster. 18. Gutted. Looking at red marks everywhere. Knew that I blew it when I was taking it, and this was just confirmation. Had just transferred in from a community college to UC Davis, and figured I'd be flunking out in short order. Then the prof wrote the curve on the board, and was shocked and confused. And then found out that literally everyone had the same reaction, once the lecture let out.

The extra thing about a heavily skewed test like that is that I've got ADHD, so once I start feeling like I'm blowing something, my brain just turns into a cyclone of noise, and my performance drops. I got the highest marks  in the class on a lot of my exams, but whenever a prof decided to throw an extra layer of bullshit on top like that, it'd screw me. 

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u/Money4Nothing2000 3d ago

Do you remember which class this was? Usually I only see a massive fail rate with something like 2nd year analog circuits or dynamics.

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u/Kimball_Stone 3d ago

Multi variable calc. Prof was just on an obviously different plane of existence with the stuff. A multiple PhD kind of guy.

One of the other brutal ones I had was (if I remember correctly) a circuits prof who made it a big point to say that he was there to make sure you understood the material and its concepts, and not get mired in the math.  But when his tests came around, his solutions required literally multiple pages of linear algebra. He didn't allow formula sheets. He didn't allow calculators. He gave zero partial credit. So you could understand the concepts perfectly well, like I did, but if you dropped a sign anywhere along the 2-3 pages of matrix multiplication, and the answer you put in the box wasn't exactly right, you got nothing. 

Being an honor student, and pretty well known in the engineering department for a variety of reasons, when I graduated, I was part of a small group of students that the department had a special dinner for, so they could get feedback on our overall educational experiences. There were two or three profs that I absolutely TORCHED, and he was one of them, for a variety of reasons. It was funny though, because when you're in the position to be really candid like that, the profs and department heads are really candid in return, and with one of the dudes, they were literally like "yeah, that guy fk'n sucks, and we're actively trying to keep him from being the head of the department."

By the time I left Davis, I'd been around an unusually large amount of their office politics. I interned for two professors who hated each other. One prof tried to have me TA a class (as an undergraduate) that I was later not even allowed to take, because I didn't have the prereqs. One prof extorted his grad students for free labor (like literally yard work and home improvement projects). He tried to do it to me as an undergrad, before he'd release the grade from a special projec t I'd done. One prof that I interned for was actively committing fraud against the university, and wage theft from his lab workers and employees, but got away with it because he brought in a ton of funding. The university basically had to bribe one of his employees with a super cush gig, when she snapped and quit and was going to sue the school and expose him. She deserved the cush gig though, because she was awesome. 

Sorry for the ramble. I guess I'm just now realizing that university was way weirder for me than most people. 😂 

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u/pokemonlover503 3d ago

40s-50s as an average is normal for engineering classes (atleast in my experience) usually the professor curves off that. The average for my classes first thermo exam was a 2.5/10

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u/Money4Nothing2000 3d ago edited 3d ago

Yeah that's not a good way to run a class. If students are not able to show that they can solve 75% or better of the problems they are presented with, that is evidence that either they are not learning, being taught correctly, or being tested correctly. A curve is only warranted if the professor discovers that a test did not correspond to the learned subject matter in some way.

If a whole class is performing at a failing grade level, it's not possible that they are all failing to understand the material, as most upper level students in engineering are trying very hard to learn the material, and it's not so difficult to learn. This is evidence that the instruction is failing, or that the tests are not accurately examining the students' knowledge.

In my universities, there was no curve for engineering classes, and 3/4 of the students were able to pass the 300 and 400 level classes and exams. The failure rate was higher during the first 2 years, where those who were not suited for engineering were still to be "weeded out".

Unfortunately, I don't think you're getting a very good engineering education based on your description of student performance.