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Tuesday, May 08, 2007
Cheating
Dishonesty. A week ago the New York Times ran an article about a cheating scandal at Duke’s business school in which the statement was made (if I remember correctly) that 45% (!) of law students admitted to cheating of some sort. From the lonely and lofty (OK, just lonely) perch of the deans’ suite, I don’t get much of a chance to take the faculty's and the students' pulses about cheating. (As the song says, I really don’t get around much anymore.) Is cheating really that prevalent? Does everyone but the administration know it? Are faculty in the dark too or do they look the other way? Maybe even more relevant to my concerns, what do people think about their administration’s handling of academic dishonesty claims?
By “their administration’s handling” I mean everything from policies (honor codes or not, and how stringent) to institutional safeguards (from tightly controlled exam procedures to complete reliance on student honesty) to post-incident procedures (such as fact-gathering with the particular faculty member, associate dean sit-downs with suspected students, pre-hearing settlements of charges, the functioning of student disciplinary boards). For example, at Loyola-L.A., I think we control the exam process fairly tightly, using a bureaucratic system I believe that was originally designed for computing the amount by which the third Five Year Plan’s goal for pig iron production was exceeded. But I’ve visited at other schools where controls were nearly as lackadaisical as those of the Coalition Provisional Authority. So schools are all over the map, on this and probably on the other issues noted above.
So what works and what doesn’t? Maybe preliminarily to that question, what should we be trying to accomplish with our policies and checks? Deterrence? Punishment? Shaming? Communication of our expectations of professional conduct? Keeping fundamentally dishonest people from becoming lawyers? Finally, how much credibility does your school’s administration have in dealing with these issues? Is that level justified? As should be clear, I’m in listening mode on this one, though I’ll be happy to respond to particular thoughts or arguments as I think I’m able.
Posted by Bill Araiza on May 8, 2007 at 12:09 AM in Life of Law Schools | Permalink
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Comments
Funny to see this on today of all days when I just finished a corporations exam where several of the folks around me managed to finish a 96-question, 40-page, 3-hour exam in just around an hour. You can barely fill out the Scantron sheet in an hour! The class has been fishy from start to finish. Lectures come from a script purchased at a copy shop around the corner (I didn't figure this out until over halfway through), and NO ONE reads the casebook, only the script. Looks like the exam is the same way. If the approach, as a previous poster noted is '“hear no evil, speak no evil.” Most administrations don’t respond nicely to reports of cheating, especially after grades are in, and ranks are given. It would be too embarrassing to undo what was done.' I was thinking about reporting this, but not anymore. Nice profession we've got here...
Posted by: sg | May 8, 2007 10:38:18 PM
Surely what "we" should be trying to accomplish by catching/punishing cheaters, is fairly rewarding the effort honest students put into learning the material, and thus providing students with an incentive to actually learn. The biggest temptation to cheat comes from the perception that lots of other people are doing so and getting away with it.
I suspect that preventing fundamentally dishonest people from becoming lawyers is not a realistic goal.
Posted by: Tom | May 8, 2007 9:50:21 PM
I suspect cheating happens pretty frequently, but egregious cheating happens pretty rarely. On my corporations exam yesterday, we were allowed to use any notes or outlines we had "substantially participated in preparing." I don't think anyone had google or commercial outlines out (it was in-class) or stashed in the bathrooms, but I bet a bunch had other people's outlines on their computers.
Posted by: anon | May 8, 2007 12:14:44 PM
Deterrence: yes, obviously, but when students are in constant competition with other students for a limited number A's, how do you define what's enough?
Punishment: never saw it happening, never heard of it happening.
Shaming: a strung out first year student has no concept of "shame."
Communication of our expectations of professional conduct: Cheating on an exam is not the equivalent of withholding discovery documents. Students know this. Cheating as an indicator of future conduct works better than using stances as a communication tool.
Keeping fundamentally dishonest people from becoming lawyers: only happens if proper deterrence and punishment rationales are in place, and I do not believe they are.
The honor code is not frequently broken but is probably flexed far more often than the 40% mentioned.
Posted by: jps | May 8, 2007 10:53:52 AM
The general sense at most law schools (and law students) is “hear no evil, speak no evil.” Most administrations don’t respond nicely to reports of cheating, especially after grades are in, and ranks are given. It would be too embarrassing to undo what was done.
Posted by: S.cotus | May 8, 2007 10:42:26 AM
As a current law student who doesn't cheat, I can say that this statistic is largely in how students define cheating. Some may define it as working together on a homework assignment that was supposed to be done alone (something I know happens a good deal). Others may define it as using someone else's, or a part of someone else's outline on a test (something that happens a lot). As far as downright cheating, like cribbing notes for a closed book test, or using a commercial outline for a test where you can only use a your own outline, I have no idea how frequently that occurs.
As for the administration's handling of the claims? I really have no idea how that goes in most cases. I actually haven't read the honor code. On the flip side, I also haven't heard of anyone being caught cheating at my school. My theory? If you're smart enough to get into law school, but dumb enough to get caught cheating, you deserve whatever punishment gets dolled out to you.
Posted by: Ben Snitkoff | May 7, 2007 10:43:18 PM
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