<i>"If you've worked hard to get to university, you potentially thro...

Jefferey Cave - 2018-05-01 18:12:43-0400 - Updated: 2018-05-01 18:20:21-0400

"If you've worked hard to get to university, you potentially throw it all away by cheating and getting found out. It is wrong, full stop," Mr Gyimah said.

I think Mr. Gyimah is has missed a major point, students should not be warned that cheating is risky. Instead students should have it explained that when other students cheat, everyone's reputation is on the line.

This whole thing is a game of trust. If your peers are cheating, but sneak through with certification from the institution, then make their way into the workforce and are found out to be incompetent at that point; the employers are going to question whether the school is worth trusting.

That means the piece of paper you received is no longer trusted.

That means you are no longer trusted.

YouTube stars paid to sell cheating

Alan Light - 2018-05-01 22:25:05-0400

You make an excellent point about reputation. A degree from a school which is known to encourage cheating is nearly worthless. On the hand, most degrees are pretty nearly worthless these days anyhow.

Jefferey Cave - 2018-05-02 10:08:10-0400

I don't think any University encourages cheating, at most I think some have better mechanisms in place to discourage it. Unfortunately, from the employers perspective, they cannot distinguish between successful cheating, and low standards.

A post-secondary may have high standards, but many people cheating to evade the standards. Alternately, they may have low standards and therefore nobody cheats. In both cases, the possession of the degree is a poor indicator of quality.

As a student, I control one scenario by simply selecting for an institution whose standards match my ability. In the other case, there is a shared responsibility between the institution and the student: the institution would need to demand integrity of students, and students would need to demand integrity from their peers.

Alan Light - 2018-05-03 05:06:33-0400

I've attended plenty of 'training sessions" where after a little talk, the instructor passes out tests and then proceeds to tell the students what to write down as their answers. Then the tests are collected and kept as evidence that everyone passed the test.

Most real, brick-and-mortar universities won't allow this sort of thing to go on, but plenty of lesser schools do, and plenty of diploma mills do.

And some universities tolerate, if not actually encourage, less obvious forms of cheating. Even UNC facilitated cheating for some of its athletes, creating special classes just for them so that they could get high grades and maintain their eligibility.