Harvard investigates 125 students for cheating on final exam

[jsr]

http://bostonglobe.com/metro/2012/08/30/harvard-investigates-students-for-cheating-final-exam/RIb6915NqHQ73nQQxoZOpO/story.html

Harvard University is investigating some 125 undergraduates accused of collaborating on a spring take-home final exam in the largest cheating scandal in recent memory to hit the Ivy League.

Nearly half the students in a class of more than 250 are suspected of jointly coming up with answers or copying off one another, said Jay Harris, Harvard’s dean of undergraduate education. Independent groups of students appear to have worked together by e-mail or other means on responses to short questions and an essay assignment, violating a no-collaboration policy that was printed on the exam itself.

Although no students appear to have lifted text from outside sources, some apparently plagiarized their classmates’ work, submitting answers that were either identical or “too close for comfort,” Harris said.

A teaching fellow noticed the similarities in May while grading a subset of the exams. He alerted the professor, who approached the college’s Administrative Board, the body that oversees student behavior. The board was worried enough to spend the summer interviewing some of the students and reviewing every exam in the class.

[Auggie]

1. They're just preparing for a career on Wall Street

[wilt the stilt]

2. for people who are supposedly so smart

this is really dumb.

[sadbear]

3. Let me guess the course

Business ethics?

[alp227]

4. Harvard newspaper reported it was a political science class.

(Image from Harvard Crimson)

Asst. prof. Matthew B. Platt's Harvard webpage says GOV 1310 at Harvard is "Introduction to Congress".