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427 points JumpCrisscross | 6 comments | | HN request time: 0.859s | source | bottom
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skhunted ◴[] No.41904004[source]
I’ve been teaching in higher education for 30 years and am soon retiring. I teach math. In every math course there is massive amounts of cheating on everything that is graded that is not proctored in a classroom setting. Locking down browsers and whatnot does not prevent cheating.

The only solution is to require face-to-face proctored exams and not allow students to use technology of any kind while taking the test. But any teacher doing this will end up with no students signing up for their class. The only solution I see is the Higher Learning Commission mandating this for all classes.

But even requiring in person proctored exams is not the full solution. Students are not used to doing the necessary work to learn. They are used to doing the necessary work to pass. And that work is increasingly cheating. It’s a clusterfuck. I have calculus students who don’t know how to work with fractions. If we did truly devise a system that prevents cheating we’ll see that a very high percentage of current college students are not ready to be truly college educated.

K-12 needs to be changed as well.

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SkyBelow ◴[] No.41904186[source]
>If we did truly devise a system that prevents cheating we’ll see that a very high percentage of current college students are not ready to be truly college educated.

Isn't it to either do that now, or to lose the signaling value of college degrees as indicating knowledge.

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1. pdonis ◴[] No.41904509[source]
> the signaling value of college degrees as indicating knowledge

I'm not sure knowledge is what a college degree signals to prospective employers. The alternative hypothesis, which AFAIK has a fair bit of support, is that it signals a willingness to do whatever it takes to fulfill a set of on paper requirements imposed by an institution, by hook or by crook.

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2. ericjmorey ◴[] No.41904772[source]
I think you have a clearer understanding of the signalling that colleges have been providing for centuries than others who have been sold the lies that have been perpetuated by school administrators and those trying to justify their social advantages to those that didn't have similar advantages.
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3. sevensor ◴[] No.41905192[source]
In a weird paradox, students who believe the lie and actually study to learn the material get more value from their education.
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4. pdonis ◴[] No.41905277{3}[source]
> get more value

If actually learning is valuable to them, independent of whether it will actually help them with prospective employers, then yes. But I don't think we can assume that all students value that.

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5. SkyBelow ◴[] No.41906850[source]
It has signaled different things over the years, and generally more than one thing at a time. I think it will still signal things to employers so that having a college degree isn't going to be become useless, but it will become less sufficient. Things like internships, references, and significant take home projects/complex and long interviews will now be needed to vouch for skills in a way that a degree mostly covered in the past.
6. sevensor ◴[] No.41908682{4}[source]
I’m thinking about the long term here. I don’t care about grades, I think they’re a poor signal. What I care about is whether the engineer I’m working with fifteen years and four employers later actually learned the fundamentals. Some did, some didn’t, and I can tell the difference.