Monday, March 8, 2010

Honor system

Business students are generally ambitious and willing to do anything to get what they want. The question is their likelihood of suffering the consequences. Coming from a Baruch College student's point of view, I see students getting away with cheating everyday.

Just to name a few acts of cheating I have seen students commit during exams:
  • Having a whole textbook on the floor in front of them
  • Sitting on their textbooks and/or notes
  • Asking for help when the instructor steps out of the room
  • Asking for help from students in the previous classes that just took the exam
  • Having notes written on the labels of their water bottles
  • Sticking notes inside pens with the clear tubes
  • Storing information in their graphing calculators
  • Whispering between test-takers
Baruch requires students pursuing a B.B.A. degree to take a lot of humanity courses as part of the core curriculum. A lot of these introductory courses have at least a chapter on ethics. Attempting to get students involved, Baruch also hosts a lot of ethics discussions. The original purpose of Baruch mandating students to take these humanity classes is so that students do not enter the society as heartless and money-hungry cheaters. Not very effective.

Most instructors that believe in the honor system are just too lazy to take action. The most they do is say "keep your eyes on your own paper" when they catch someone taking a peek. As business students in the 21st century and possessing the luxuries of electronic devices, ethics is out of the question when the low-risk opportunities arise. If they're not going to take measures in preventing cheaters, I don't see how anyone could possibly fail their class.

I'm not saying I'm not guilty of these acts. As are most other students, I'm careful about it. What still baffles me is the amount of trust instructors put on their students by implementing the "honor system".
Posted by boundtruth at 8:23 PM
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1 comment:

  1. AmyMarch 8, 2010 at 10:22 PM

    From my education class, we studied many theories that's used to teach high school students. Most HS students are spoon-fed and once they graduate, they're expected to be on their own. Some take this opportunity to mature from it and some just sorta wait to be spoonfed again. I was spoonfed throughout most of my school-life and i took the opportunity to benefit from this transition. I feel great knowing that my knowledge is growing but kind of bitter that students that do absolutely nothing get the same grades as me. I realized most of the students in MY college are heartless. They purposely make friends with people so during the test time, they can cheat. otherwise they could care less about you. There's much to be said about this but i'm pretty sure everyone has been in this situation where someone undeserving got the same and/or higher grade than someone more deserving. But what can you doooo. the educational system is corrupt.

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