Cheating: The Good News!
D. Rayner (the pen name of a professor at a Southern University)

I returned to undergraduate teaching a year or so ago after more than a decade away. “You won’t recognize the students” I was told, “so demanding, so grade-conscious.” I was pleasantly surprised to find no more grade-grubbing than I was used to. But I did have an interesting experience of cheating. What was interesting about it was not so much that it occurred, but the way I heard about it and who did it.

I went to school and college in England, to the University of London. Cheating there, at that remote time, was almost impossible. What would now be called “high-stakes” testing was done under quasi-military conditions in a special building, monitored by gowned “invigilators” especially hired for the occasion, in a space especially arranged for exam-taking. Each student, identified anonymously by number only, sat at a separate small table removed from his neighbors by several feet. Other European countries followed similar practices in high school and college. In an era without cell-phones or PDAs, the possibilities for cheating were severely limited. So there was little cheating, not so much for lack of intent as for lack of opportunity.

When opportunity did present itself -- in the low-stakes testing within each college (a largely pass-fail affair that allowed students who maintained a minimal level of competence to remain in college but had no effect their final degree level) -- then cheating was much more common. Lab results were copied, essays cribbed, and so on.

Now contrast this system with the American one, based on honor codes. To Europeans, most of whom view the college experience as a battle of wits between students and examiners, an honor code looks like a very soft target. “You mean there’s no one watching to see if you cheat?” So perhaps it is not surprising that my first experience of cheating was provided by a foreign student, a European girl. She apparently copied from her notes during an hour exam in the loosely supervised situation typical of an American college classroom. But she was caught. What she failed to reckon with was the other students. Unlike students in Europe, typically united against a tough-to-beat system, students here are taught to behave according to an honor code. And grade-curving, which makes performance in a course something approaching a zero-sum game, gives each student a real interest in the honesty of others. After all, if one does well some others are forced to do badly. So a couple of students reported the girl to the rather relaxed assistant supervising the exam. Later questioning revealed little evidence that she had succeeded in cheating on that occasion -- although a suspiciously high grade on an earlier test, and testimony from some more students -- suggested that she had probably succeeded on that occasion.

Conclusion: American students in general are more honest than European ones. Indeed, I would go further and say that in general Americans are more honest than Europeans. Property crime is higher in most European countries than in the U.S., for example. The interesting question is Why? The crime question is too complex to tackle here. But the behavior of college students provides a clue to a level of cheating here that seems very low to Europeans, given the rather lax set of precau-tions to prevent it. The reason, of course, is social pressure -- which, in the criminal domain, translates into more severe punishment for infractions, and in the academic domain into a willingness to “rat” on cheating fellow students. For historical reasons, perhaps related to the relative strength of religious belief in this country and our pioneer heritage, there is here a belief in the importance of honesty that may well be stronger than is now the case in Europe.

And this seems also true not just of students but of faculty. Consider again how grades are given under the system I grew up with: students identified anonymously, grading done not by the teacher but by an anonymous examining committee. All designed to prevent cheating by students and favoritism or grade inflation by faculty. But the U.S. system has none of those safeguards: faculty examine their own students -- and know who they are; students are not segregated into cheating-proof examination halls. The miracle is not that we are now seeing some grade inflation; the miracle is that the system did not collapse into corruption many years ago!

I apologize for a blog that actually finds something good about the American higher education system. It is a violation of very many expectations. But, from time to time, we must face good news with fortitude.

NAS1:51 PM