Reference no: EM133378939

Case Study: Yes. Cheating occurs at the prestigious Harvard University. In 2012, Harvard forced dozens of students to leave in its largest cheating scandal in memory, but the institution would not address assertions that the blame rested partly with a professor and his teaching assistants. The issue is whether cheating is truly cheating when students collaborate with each other to find the right.

Harvard released the results of its investigation into the controversy, in which 125 undergraduates were alleged to have cheated in May 2012. The university said that more than half of the students were forced to withdraw, a penalty that typically lasts from two to four semesters. Many returned by 2015. Of the remaining cases, about half were put on disciplinary probation-a strong warning that becomes part of a student's official record. The rest of the students avoided punishment.

In previous years, students thought of Government 1310 as an easy class with optional attendance and frequent collaboration. But students who took it in spring 2012 said that it had suddenly become quite difficult, with tests that were hard to comprehend, so they sought help from the graduate teaching assistants who ran the class discussion groups, graded assignments, and advised them on interpreting exam questions.

Administrators said that on questions, some students supplied identical answers (right down to typographical errors in some cases), indicating that they had written them together. But some students claimed that the similarities in their answers were due to sharing notes or sitting in on sessions with the same teaching assistants. The instructions on the take-home exam explicitly prohibited collaboration, but many students said they did not think that included talking with teaching assistants.

The first page of the exam contained these instructions: "The exam is completely open book, open note, open Internet, etc. However, in all other regards, this should fall under similar guidelines that apply to in-class exams. More specifically, students may not discuss the exam with others-this includes resident tutors, writing centers, etc."

Students complained about confusing questions. Due to "some good questions" from students, the instructor clarified three exam questions by email before the due date of the exams.

Students claim to have believed that collaboration was allowed in the course. The course's instructor and the teaching assistants sometimes encouraged collaboration, in fact. The teaching assistants-graduate students who graded the exams and ran weekly discussion sessions-varied widely in how they prepared students for the exams, so it was common for students in different sections to share lecture notes and reading materials. During, some teaching assistants even worked with students to define unfamiliar terms and help them figure out exactly what certain test questions were asking.

Some have questioned whether it is the test's design, rather than the students' conduct, that should be criticized. Others place the blame on the teaching assistants who opened the door to collaboration outside of class by their own behavior in helping students to understand the questions better.

Harvard adopted an honor code on May 6, 2014. In May 2017, Harvard announced that more than 60 students enrolled in Computer Science 50 (CS50): Introduction to Computer Science I appeared before the College's Honor Council investigating cases of academic dishonesty. While the facts have been kept confidential so far, a statement on the course website establishes standards for behavior: "The course recognizes that interactions with classmates and others can facilitate mastery of the course's material, [but] there remains a line between enlisting the help of another and submitting the work of another." The site provides some guidance: Acts of collaboration that are reasonable include sharing a few lines of code. Acts not reasonable include soliciting solutions to homework problems online. CS50 introduced a "regret clause," allowing students who commit "unreasonable" acts to face only course-specific penalties [not institutional] if they report the violation within 72 hours.

Question: Who is at fault for the cheating scandal? Is it the students, the teaching assistants, the professor, or the institution? Use ethical reasoning to support.