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427 points JumpCrisscross | 7 comments | | HN request time: 0.846s | 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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bonoboTP ◴[] No.41904319[source]
> 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.

In Germany, all exams are like this. Homework assignments are either just a prerequisite for taking exam but the grade is solely from the exam, or you may get some small point bonus for assignments/projects.

> But any teacher doing this will end up with no students signing up for their class.

The main courses are mandatory in order to obtain the degree. You can't "not sign up" for linear algebra if it's in your curriculum. Fail 3 times and you're exmatriculated.

This is because universities are paid from tax money in Germany and most of Europe.

The US will continue down on the path you describe because it's in the interest of colleges to keep well-paying students around. It's a service. You buy a degree, you are a customer.

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2OEH8eoCRo0 ◴[] No.41904545[source]
> The main courses are mandatory in order to obtain the degree. You can't "not sign up" for linear algebra if it's in your curriculum.

The course might be mandatory but which professor you choose isn't. What if multiple professors teach it? Word gets around and everyone chooses the easy profs.

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1. aniviacat ◴[] No.41905169[source]
I studied for a popular degree at one of the largest universities in Germany. I never had a course be taught by multiple professors. If a course had many attendants, the room just got bigger.

But that's just my personal experience. I don't know if it's different at other large universities.

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2. stanford_labrat ◴[] No.41905695[source]
Ironically enough, our lecture halls were simply not big enough. The space capped out at around 300-600 people and for popular topics such as programming 101 every semester would easily have 1500+ enrolled.
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3. alasdair_ ◴[] No.41907069[source]
The difference is that in Europe, you apply to take a specific subject at university, like Computer Science, and there are only so many spots available so that effectively caps the class sizes. You don't have a bunch of other people taking the class that are not working on that specific degree.
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4. MerManMaid ◴[] No.41908018[source]
In smaller countries like Germany increasing the class size makes sense but countries like the US, it just doesn't scale. Just to give a better sense, my quick google-fu (so take it with a grain of salt) shows Germany having 2.8M people actively enrolled in college vs the US with 18.1M.

So roughly 6x the amount of students.

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5. aniviacat ◴[] No.41908813[source]
6x the amount of students, but also 6x the amount of universities, so each individual university has about the same count. At least that's what I assume; unless the USA have fewer universities for some reason?
6. ginko ◴[] No.41908869[source]
>smaller countries like Germany

wat

7. vineyardlabs ◴[] No.41909352{3}[source]
This is also the case in the US. The majority of college courses are limited to people within a given major and can't be taken by outside majors with limited exceptions.