Harvard cheating evidence prompts investigation

Harvard cheating scandal: Harvard University is investigating possible cheating on a take-home exam. Harvard says that as many as half of a class of 250 students may have been involved in cheating.

|
(AP Photo/Elise Amendola)
Pedestrians walk through a gate on the campus of Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass. Dozens of Harvard University students are being investigated for cheating after school officials discovered evidence they may have wrongly shared answers or plagiarized on a final exam.

Harvard University is investigating whether dozens of undergraduate students cheated on a take-home exam last spring.

School officials said they discovered students may have shared answers or plagiarized on a final exam. They declined to release the name of the class, the students' names or the exact number being investigated, citing privacy laws.

The undergraduate class had a minimum of 250 students and possible cheating was discovered in roughly half the take-home exams, university officials said Thursday.

"These allegations, if proven, represent totally unacceptable behavior that betrays the trust upon which intellectual inquiry at Harvard depends," President Drew Faust said.

RECOMMENDED: Are you as well read as a 10th grader?

A Harvard spokesman said he knows of no incidents in recent memory of possible cheating at the university on this scale.

Each student whose work is in question has been called to appear before a subcommittee of the Harvard College Administrative Board, which reviews issues of academic integrity, said Jay M. Harris, dean of undergraduate education. He emphasized that none of the allegations has been proven and said there's no evidence of widespread cheating at Harvard.

"The facts that are before us are that we have a problem in this one course," Harris said. "I hope that doesn't sound overly naive, I don't want to be naive, but this is what we have. The rest would be speculation.

"Looking at the students we have and the work that they do, I would be loathe to say this is something that represents Harvard students generally."

The spring course included undergraduates at all class levels, Harris said. A teaching assistant noticed some possible problems on the tests, including evidence that students collaborated on answers or used the same long, identical strings of words. The exam had clear instructions that no collaboration was allowed, Harris said.

The assistant notified the professor, who referred the case in May to the administrative board. After interviewing some students, the board found what Harris characterized as "cause for concern."

Depending on the offense, the punishments range from an admonition, a sort of warning for a first offense, to being forced to withdraw from Harvard for a year. It wasn't immediately clear what sanctions any student who has graduated may face.

There's no timeline for when the investigation will be finished, Harris said.

Michael Zimmet, a freshman from Aspen, Colo., said news of the investigation was surprising.

"You think of Harvard as somewhere where people are academically honest and interested in their course work," he said.

Tiffany Fonseca, a sophomore from Boston, said she didn't know the details of what happened, but that it was easy to see how students could talk to each other about a take-home test.

"I'm kind of shocked, but I'm not," she said.

In response to the allegations, a Harvard committee led by Harris will present recommendations on how to enforce faculty-wide expectations of academic honesty.

Teresa Fishman of the International Center for Academic Integrity at Clemson University said it is not surprising that Harvard isn't immune to possible cheating. She said 20 years of data shows that a quarter to a third of students across all levels of collegiate education admit cheating on tests.

RECOMMENDED: Are you as well read as a 10th grader?

Copyright 2012 The Associated Press.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Harvard cheating evidence prompts investigation
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Latest-News-Wires/2012/0831/Harvard-cheating-evidence-prompts-investigation
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe