Their teachable moment is that plagiarism has consequences, and they earned that lesson entirely by themselves.

If you give cheaters too many chances, the other students will feel betrayed. And I guess rightly so.

It's not uncommon to get mails directly, or later in course evaluation, from students who complain about other students that didn't put in the work. I can only remember few cases where there were names involved. Typically it's some general complaint, but the frustration is obvious.

It sucks when you make an effort but witness other students cheating their way through the class. What are we supposed to tell them when the dishonest behaviour of other students doesn't cause any consequences?

It's University. If you don't know by 18-22 if cheating is bad, despite each class at the beginning of the semester explaining the penalties for cheating, you deserve to get expelled.

Surely these kids knew that cheating is bad before they enrolled in college.

"Teachable moments" are for freshmen. Cheating seniors can get fucked.

On a very related note, I actually earned my CS degree.

Believe it or not, one of the goals of a good university is to not graduate stupid people who don't know anything.

Keep in mind, it's likely that more people cheated, but the smarter ones changed just enough code to make it look "their own", or actually tested to ensure it'd work, and thus weren't caught. Those 22 caught are very likely the ones that copy-pasted verbatim.

universities take plagiarism very seriously. Friend of mine teaches stage craft (how to make sets, props, costumes, lighting and sound design/planning/execution/engineering)

First semester, first test, easy pass: Someone pokes their head into the class and my friend goes to the door to answer them, stepping outside for like ~30 seconds

comes to mark the papers:

"In a proscenium theater, what is the very front of the stage called?"

Real answer: apron

55% of the student answers: the same made up word that sounded vaguely Portuguese with no hits on Google.

even though it's super dumb and super easy and barely matters at all and is a one word answer to a basic question - the students ended up being investigated by the university and my friend had all his classes audited.

Cheating is taken VERY seriously at every decent University. As it should.

On the other hand: expulsion from the university for a first offense seems… harsh.

Oh, Mr. Kirk, I'm as upset as you to learn of Dexter's ~~truancy~~ cheating, but surely expulsion is not the answer!

It's a masters program, I have no issue with high level cheaters getting slapped with consequences. When I was in undergrad, first offence was an immediate F in the class, with a second being expulsion. Given the requirements for masters/doctorate (my MIL got both while I was dating my wife), getting an F is probably going to bounce you from the program anyway, so it's not that much difference IMO.

I'm going to allege that such "educational" institutions' focus on "cheating" is harmful and dangerous for their students.

I'm a flight instructor. Students would show up to my class actually afraid to be caught writing things down to refer to them later. They were afraid to be caught using checklists. They would overwhelm themselves trying to commit entire technical manuals to memory. That's not how anything actually works. The FAA prints all these references so pilots can read them. We don't take them away from you when you pass your practical.

Checklist usage in the cockpit is a required skill to pass a practical test. The examiner has to see you using a checklist during the test in order to pass you. Writing things down so you can refer to them later, like flight planning and ATC clearances, also a required skill. Schools make people afraid to do these things.

If you've got a kneeboard that has the tower light gun signal chart printed on it, and you lose the radio and need light gun signals, you're not going to have your license taken away from you if you use that quick reference. Too many students bring that pressure into flight training with them. It's a fun bit of deprogramming to do.

i didnt have a big problem with cheating, except with the caveat if a test is weighted via averages, then it actively fucks over those who dont cheat, as the curve is set higher than it should.

I have average intelligence and maintained a 3.5 at a top bioengineering school. I barely went to lectures, and just made sure to stay on top of the material through online resources (we have literally everything ever available to us). Id say not being a dumbass is the name of the game.

It always surprises me when I interview new graduates now and they can't explain any of their projects or pass a basic software proficiency test that most intro classes should cover (I usually ask them to write code to reverse complement a DNA sequence.. just swap out some letters and reverse a string, I do include the rules in the prompt). I think cheating is really rampant in software students.

There was an early episode of Naruto that involved a test that was nigh impossible for someone of their grade level. The actual purpose of the test was to see how good they were at cheating without getting caught, which would translate to their ability to gather information in enemy territory. I think about that a lot.

At a certain point though, you've just plain done the work. If you jump through enough hoops to cheat then you have to know the material well enough. Like doing a bunch of editing passes on downloaded papers.

The same mentality that tries to cheat also doesn't understand that actually knowing the material is crucial to actually doing the job.

Sure, they'll argue that we only use about 2 weeks of accumulated college knowledge in our professional careers, and that claim apparently checks out; but it's the very last few weeks that we've built on the years of pre-req that we use later on. I.e it's just the tip of the iceberg, but it's the tip of a fucking iceberg.

This is just what happens when you send a bunch of people to higher education who didn't really want to go.

At university most teachers have serious dedication. It's just not for teaching, lmao.

But once you do your thesis, discussion in their respective fields of research or general expertise is really awesome.

Teacher's Assistant/Teaching Aide

Basically an older student helping teach the younger ones as a parttime job. Generally involves a lot of crappy work like supervising labwork, helping out with grading and answering the same question 18 times.

TITS ASS

Teaching assistant. They do a whole bunch of stuff for professors like grading, teaching, and the like