Playing education columnist this weekend, I thought I'd weigh in a little on the cheating scandal that rocked the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism yesterday.
The gist of the story is that a number of students allegedly cheated on an open-book take-home exam in a pass/fail course focusing on ethics. Jokes about the course's effectiveness aside, there is clearly something about this that, as the Times puts it, "seems odd." The conventional wisdom seems to be that with the stakes so low, a student would either have to be so incredibly lazy or such an incredibly poor student to need cheat on such an exam, in a pass/fail course no less.
I see it differently. With the stakes so low, why not cheat? Now sure, there's a sense of morality out there, sadly a rather antiquated one, whereby cheating is absolutely wrong and not to be done under any circumstances whatsoever, but beyond that, in the eyes of most students, what harm really comes from obtaining the essay questions early from a classmate? As a student in the higher education system, cheating in this case seems so natural, so painless, and so trivial, that, apart from a fear of getting caught, it seems almost a no-brainer.
Let me clarify here that I am by no means condoning such a breach of academic integrity. I do not cheat, and I expect others to do the same. Under any and all circumstances, by the time these students are getting a Master's Degree, they clearly ought to be well aware of the rules, and the moral and ethical lapse here, not to mention the complete failure of those who cheated to follow simple, clearly outlined directions is inexcusable under any circumstances.
That being said, consider the assignment. Students were given 90 minutes to read two questions, complete any appropriate research, construct responses, compose two eloquent short essays, rethink and revise their answers, and submit them for grading. Such an experience can hardly be considered meaningful, interesting, or even worthwhile. There is no reason the students cannot be given more time to review and ponder the questions, allowing them to develop more advanced and meaningful responses that would better reflect their knowledge and capacity for independent thought.
Furthermore, these are Journalism students. What is it that journalists are paid to do? They are paid to get the scoop, to get to and report the story faster and better then their competitions. Journalists equalize information asymmetry; when one group has information that others do not, they bring that information to all. And when, in the professional judgment of the reporter and his/her editor, the benefits of making such information public outweighs the potential disadvantages and risks, journalists frequently make public information that is deemed secret or confidential.
So in this situation, where students who took the 90-minute essay exam earlier then others, there existed a natural information asymmetry: students who already took the exam knew the questions, while students who had not yet began did not. Several students apparently did exactly what their training has taught them to do: get the story. They did so with apparent success, as some students had the opportunity to ponder and/or prepare their answers before starting the time-limited exam.
However, just as most reporters will not publish secret information when doing so is not in the public interest, or when the effects are particularly harmful (except in certain despicable exceptions), so too should these aspiring journalists-to-be have considered the consequences of making the exam questions more broadly available then permitted, which will doubtless extend to academic integrity hearings and irreparable harm to the reputation of the Columbia J-School. Certainly, these students should have considered their actions in this light, and hindsight acting in its usual ways, one of the Columbia students taking the exam today would certainly buckle down and complete the assignment as intended, no matter how much of a waste of time it may appear.
In a world where reporters just make stuff up nowadays, clearly ethics deserve more attention in future journalists' educations. But I feel that there is more to this story then an incredibly unfortunate ethical lapse on the part of several students. I believe that some of the blame here lies with the assignment as well.
The student-teacher relationship is a partnership. Teachers create meaningful opportunities to impart knowledge to students and allow them to demonstrate that knowledge in assessment activities. In return, students, in the ideal case, pursue these opportunities with tenacity and rigor. However, if the teacher creates assignments that are unrealistic, uninteresting, and otherwise meaningless to the students, pupils are likely to respond in kind with poor quality responses, uninteresting thought, and cheating.
Professor Friedman has now assigned the students a new essay, with the question available immediately and unlimited time up until its Thursday's due date. The new question: "You are the executive editor of a newspaper. You receive a tip from a credible source that one or more unspecified articles in recent editions of the newspaper contain fabricated material. No more details are given...What do you do?" Now there's a more interesting one...