Saturday, September 8, 2012

Why Harvard Students Cheat

Harvard Professor Howard Gardner has now written a column analyzing some of the reasons behind the Harvard mass-cheating case.   I found the following observations especially   telling (and discouraging): 
Colleagues and I undertook a study of “good work.” As part of that study, we interviewed 100 of the “best and brightest” students and spoke with them in depth about life and work.
The results of that study, reported in the book “Making Good,” surprised us. Over and over again, students told us that they admired good work and wanted to be good workers. But they also told us they wanted — ardently — to be successful. They feared that their peers were cutting corners and that if they themselves behaved ethically, they would be bested. And so, they told us in effect, “Let us cut corners now and one day, when we have achieved fame and fortune, we’ll be good workers and set a good example.” A classic case of the ends justify the means.
And this is probably all too true: 

One clue to the troubling state of affairs came from a Harvard classmate who asked me: “Howard, don’t you realize that Harvard has always been primarily about one thing — success?” The students admitted to Harvard these days have watched their every step, lest they fail in their goal of admission to an elite school. But once admitted, they begin to look for new goals, and being a successful scholar is usually not high on the list. What is admired is success on Wall Street, Silicon Valley, Hollywood — a lavish lifestyle that, among other things, allows you to support your alma mater and get the recognition that follows. 
There's some additional discussion of student perspectives on various things, including claiming degrees one doesn't have and otherwise inflating c.v.s (everybody does it, apparently), and some (appropriate, I think) criticism of professors for setting a bad example by "cutting corners" in teaching, and, in some cases, research as well.  The whole thing is here.   

P.S.  Has anyone heard Harvard called "MGU (Man's Greatest University)" before?  That's a new one to me, but sounds a bit retro -- the "man" thing, you know.   There's also the small matter of Oxford,  that other university located in a town named Cambridge, the Sorbonne, and a few others I could name if my perspective weren't hopelessly Euro/Anglo/U.S.-centric.  

P.P.S.  Yes, I realize Gardner is using the cheating case in part to publicize his own book, a choice which raises ethical questions of its own.  Personally, I don't mind, since it sounds like "good work" itself.  

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14 comments:

  1. I've heard similar excuses here, everyone cheats so I have to also.

    Kolmogrov was at Moscow State University.

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  2. Even worse was an appeal of a disciplinary decision: Yes, I cheated on the test but not all of it so ...

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  3. Gardner's book was published seven years ago--with no revised editions forthcoming. I doubt he was shilling. He was just referring to an old book, much like I'd refer to my old pal Wildfire.



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    1. Nice horse. And yes, I'm probably being a bit too skeptical/cynical. I do respect Gardner's work in general, and the study he references sounds like one that needed doing, and yielded some useful, if discouraging, results. Still, it sometimes hard to tell a citation/establishment of ethos from a promotion these days.

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  4. However, I suspect Howard Gardner probably plagiarized most of his material from his brother Chauncey Gardner. Everybody knows Chauncey was the real genius in the family.

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    1. No, Chauncey was the one who plagiarized. He liked to watch, you know.

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  5. All of this is a very good reason to go to the University of Chicago, where people are actually smart and will kick your ass in the classroom. I pray my kid doesn't want to go Ivy.

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    1. I think there may have been a brief moment, in between the time when the Ivies tended to cater mostly to the upper class and the time when they became the ultimate status symbol for the most super-ambitious of the present competitive, entitled, and relatively overpopulated generation,when at least some of the Ivies were a pretty exciting place to be. That was certainly my experience in the '80s, and I think it was even my father's as well (in the '50s). Of course, the majors and friends whom we each chose may have played a role, too; it's possible to get a really good education in all kinds of places, from Ivies to community colleges, if you're proactive and thoughtful about those choices. And the old "the hardest part of getting an Ivy degree is getting in" thing was certainly true, even in my day. But I fear the worst parts of the experience (the competitiveness, which drove me out of science classes populated mostly by pre-meds, and the entitled laziness, which I didn't really see, but I'm pretty sure was there, too) are getting worse, and the best parts (the chance to work with really smart people, professors, grad students, and undergrads alike) may be fading somewhat. Unlike Gardner, I'm guessing that neglect of undergraduate teaching is, in fact, the more blatant form of faculty corner-cutting. The question is how to concede that, while still supporting the value of research, and the necessity of students' taking responsibility for their own educations (including a commitment not to cheat no matter what anyone else may or may not be doing). I'm not sure exactly how one does that, but places like Harvard and Chicago certainly have the resources, human and financial, to lead the way.

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    2. "All of this is a very good reason to go to the University of Chicago, where people are actually smart and will kick your ass in the classroom. I pray my kid doesn't want to go Ivy."

      - Frog and Toad

      All true, but then at Chicago you have to deal with their crazy economics school....these were the guys who gave us TINA (there is no alternative - to the form of capitalism that collapsed five years ago), supported what Pinochet did to Chile's economy in the 1980s, and gave intellectual heft to Thatcher's monetarist policy. The song should go "Mammas, don't let your babies grow up to be Milton Friedman clones."

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  6. It's just Gresham's Dynamic extended to a different kind of "marketplace."

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  7. Once the rationalization of cutting corners begins, it's hard to stop.

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    1. Indeed. And as somebody (Aristotle, perhaps?) said, education is all about forming habits -- preferably virtuous ones, but the vicious ones, sadly, tend to stick at least equally well.

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  8. Oh Strelly, how right you are. I was just thinking, though, that for undergrads the hardest part about Chicago is definitely not getting in. For the record, I wasn't an undergrad there.

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  9. So we're ultimately claiming that we cheat because it's the only way to get ahead if everyone else is doing it?

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