Take-home Exam Was Invitation To Cheat

May 10, 2007|By Irwin W. Silverman

Researchers have long known that under conditions of low surveillance, cheating occurs at high rates on academic tests. Teachers and school administrators have tried to curb cheating by establishing honor codes, but studies have found that substantial proportions of students continue to cheat. Another finding is that many students believe that cheating can be excused in certain circumstances, for example, "because other students are doing it."

None of this should come as a surprise to educators, but the recent cheating scandal at Duke University's business school suggests that its faculty has been living in Alice in Wonderland. This observation is prompted by news stories reporting that 34 of this school's first-year graduate students were found guilty of having cheated on an open-book, take-home final. The students were told not to collaborate on the exam, but it became evident that many of them had collaborated because their answers were so similar.

Although a take-home exam is an open invitation to cheat, some business school faculty were taken aback by the cheating. They believed that cheating is a rare behavior among their students because fewer than 10 students a year had been found guilty of cheating, and in some years no accusations of cheating had been brought forward. But it appears they did not consider the possibility that cheating was going on but was just not being detected.

According to the news stories, Duke's business school has been attempting to impress on its students the importance of ethical standards. Thus, it has created an honor code, the preamble to which is affixed on every classroom: "Duke University's Fuqua School of Business is a community of scholars and learners, committed to the principles of honesty, trustworthiness, fairness, and respect for others." Additionally, it has required incoming graduate students to take a weeklong course in which issues relating to leadership and ethical issues are discussed. All this is commendable, but the evidence alluded to above indicates that honor codes do not eradicate cheating.

Mentioned in the news stories is that a survey of 54 universities published last year found that cheating is higher among graduate business students than among nonbusiness students, 54 percent versus 47 percent, respectively. A sidelight is that this survey is part of a larger project being conducted by the Center for Academic Integrity at Duke University. If red flags did not go up at Duke's business school as a result of this survey, one wonders what it would have taken to get its attention.

Given the pitfalls associated with take-home exams, why do professors give them? Part of the answer may lie in the fact that students in many schools are asked to rate their professors. These ratings often influence pay, promotion, and tenure decisions. Hence, it is extremely important for professors to make a favorable impression on their students.

One way to achieve this goal is by giving students a chance to raise their grades. Although professors who make use of take-home exams may assuage their consciences by writing difficult questions that require gobs of time to answer, for students who have not mastered the course material, the take-home exam can seem like something that is truly heaven-sent, especially if they are willing to cheat. And as students are apt to give higher ratings to professors who give take-home exams than to professors who do not, what we have here is an implicit exchange between professor and student, best described as "I will scratch your back and you will scratch mine."

What can be learned from the Duke cheating scandal? My answer: take-home exams have little or no place in education.

Irwin W. Silverman is a retired college professor living in Boynton Beach.

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