On Cheating, Engineering and Millenials 16

[Scrip]

I have a slight problem - I'm in my 2nd Year of my MechE bachelors' degree and I feel out of place. And not in a way that I feel like my classmates are smarter than me, no - I don't think that I'm that smart, but I still manage. No. It's that I feel like I'm doing so much work and not getting rewarded for it, while others are doing substandard work - and often cheating - and getting all the top prizes for that. I need someone experienced to assure me that I'll be OK.

I'll explain my problems as well as I can.

I was always the youngest guy in my class from primary school to my first year in my first university. I was usually two/three years younger than the 2nd youngest person, because I was put into school at 2. You can imagine how I was always considered the baby by my classmates.

In my first year in university, I made a lot of mistakes. I thought that campus life was just like high school life - that as long as I did my exams, I'd be alright and go on to the next year (I placed 8th in my high school exam, out of 220 kids. Being in the 4th percentile can give you a big head sometimes.). I didn't know about hard work, and about seeing projects through. Only when I almost got kicked out did I seriously start studying.

After 3 years there, I eventually left because of quite a lot of issues that I'd be belabouring myself with if I were to explain them here, and transferred to another university in a rural part of my country. My thoughts then were - hey, this is a fresh start for me. I've lived almost all my life in a city with traffic jams and all that, I've been swamped with supplementary exams (I don't know what you guys call them where you are? Retakes?) for courses I'd probably get kicked out off, I can finally leave my Mom's helicopter hover radius and make my own decisions... this new university ain't so bad!

The moment I got my student ID, I dove into my books like nothing else. In my life, I don't think I've ever studied like I have been doing these past two years. I've been doing my assignments on time, finishing up lab reports days before they're due (TBH, 2 or 3 days, at least), truthfully providing proper references for all my work... and not cheating in exams or in my CATs. Another difference is that I'm not the youngest any more - I'm actually the 2nd eldest fella in my class. The median age is about 3 years less than mine.

And herein lie the problems: 1) of late, my school hasn't been sticking to its honour code, and 2) I feel that I was born in the wrong generation.

Problem 1)
Cheating is rampant among my current classmates. The reason why is kinda complicated to explain, but lemme try. In my previous university, I got into the engineering program after doing my national secondary school exams of 2009. Where I am, currently, I'm in the same class as people who did their exams in 2014. Higher education is(was/is again) a meritocracy in Kenya, and for you to get into a polytechnic/college/university you list down in a particular order what you wanna study and the uni's you selected are notified by the nation's Joint Admissions Board that you'd like to join them. If your grade in the secondary school exam passes the uni's cut, you get called. If it doesn't, you can try again. STEM programmes are usually reserved for the high achievers. So, back to my problems - between 2012 and 2015, there were lots of leakages of the national exams, and as you might have guessed, there were lots of "high" grades, and lots of people got called to do engineering, even though a lot of them didn't deserve it. It's been stopped now, and the freshers (freshmen?) of this academic year are gonna be here because they deserve it, but what kind of damage has already been done? You then get a situation where people cheat because they know that they'd get really low marks even if they studied, and those who truly deserve to be here have started cheating because everyone else is doing it. The class' first year exam results didn't even fit a normal distribution.

So here I am, in a class with lots of people younger than me who just cheat cheat cheat. Most of my peers have already graduated (had I done well the first time, I'd have graduated in 2015) and are now working, my one true friend who is also an engineering student is on the other side of the country, and he's graduating this year (what will that mean for our friendship?), and here I am, stuck with millenials who can't even use all the resources that we have today to make campus life better for themselves.

You know that joke? "In engineering school, you have 3 choices: proper sleep, a good social life, good grades - pick 2." It helps me no bit that I chose good sleep and good grades, because people see me as that creepy guy who keeps to himself and doesn't talk about shitty shittity shit like sports betting, the latest fashion, current "music", the latest new "musician", mobile games, mindless apps and get-rich-quick schemes, who won't give them my assignments and lab reports to copy (I mean, if you wanna cheat, at least change a few things here and there. They copy-pasted my ENTIRE work word-for-word the few times I've done it. Didn't even change my sentence structure. ????).

Problem 2)
I'm a huge fan of music, and have a 1,500-album collection. All genres, all artistes, all decades... as long as it's music, I'll listen to it. I have to say that it's getting more and more difficult to find good music as the years go by. Why? I don't know, but I recently read somewhere that the reason we think music from long ago was the greatest is because we only remember the good music from long ago. I try to use that to counter feeling that I was born in the wrong generation. But honestly, if I think about it, I'm embarrassed to be a millenial. All these communication methods we have, yet we're lacking in social skills. The whole internet at our fingertips, yet research is difficult for most people (just look at the Reddit sub for engineering students [that's reddit.com/r/engineeringstudents] for example, where most people ask the same mundane questions day in day out). People want to be given prizes just for having been in a competition; should we lower the bar for millenials because nobody's tall enough or no-one can jump high enough? Should we say that a 10kg barbell is 20kg because nobody can carry it, then award everyone equal prizes, including the few who managed to carry 9kg? When did competition become wrong? Why is the society I'm in sissified?

So... I feel like I was born too late to explore new corners of the earth, and too early to explore space. Why was I born at this time? I just want to be a good engineer in a properly-functioning society - that is a society that stands to its beliefs, be they conservative, be they progressive. But today, everyone's mad - the left is mad, the right is mad.

I was reading a thread here where one guy (I've forgotten who) said he's working with millenials, and they (the millenials) think that the instructions he sends them are verbose; they keep writing tl;dr. It made me sad.


Winding up:
There's this story called The King and the Poisoned Well (I'm not good at retelling stories and won't try to do that here, so you should just look it up). Should I just stop resisting and drink the poison?
Those who know how to use a slide rule, am I worrying too much? Was engineering school then the same as now - were people just as lazy then?
Does it get better? When I graduate and start work, will I meet engineers who know what they're doing, or will it just be the same thing that's happening here?
How do I let go of all this stress?


THANK YOU FOR LISTENING.

........................................
The EAC - One People, One Destiny... One Federation.

 

[CWB1]

When I went to University, if you got caught cheating like that, you were out on your ear.

My alma mater was the same only ten years ago in that getting caught cheating, being arrested, or otherwise violating the student honor code in a significant manner led to a very quick expulsion. I lost a chem lab partner after he drunkenly urinated on a campus emergency call box one weekend - good riddance! Along a similarly rare anymore and strict(?) vein they also had a limit of five years to complete a bachelor's and a requirement to earn a 3.0 GPA to graduate. When my wife attended a large state school known for its "top" engineering program a few years later I remember being amazed that engineering students could and did graduate with a 2.0 and criminal record!

 

[IRstuff]

There is a basic conflict of interest between academic integrity and profit. Some schools are large enough and have sufficient demand that they can afford to kick out cheaters; other schools might not have that luxury.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
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[hokie66]

Mine was a state university, but I don't think that finances affected decisions of the Honor Court.

 

[SwinnyGG]

As a Millenial (barely, and depending on which year you choose as the line.. but still) I find the 'Millenial' discussion often quite insulting.

I busted my ass through engineering school, and I bust my ass at work now- which is why I'm responsible for monitoring the work of other Millenials, and some Gen X people too.

There have always been, and will always be, people who take shortcuts.

Your integrity is just that- yours. If you're unwilling to compromise, you will come out ahead in the end.

I would never advocate that cheaters in college are a good thing- but in a way they're preparing you for the real world. People who take shortcuts in school become people who take shortcuts in the real world. They don't magically become ethical when they receive a diploma.

If nothing else, dealing with this in school is excellent practice for real world situations when your ethics and integrity will need to be exercised- and rest assured, this absolutely will happen.

 

[Scrip]

Thank you all for your answers. You've helped me out a lot!

........................................
The EAC - One People, One Destiny... One Federation.

 

[beej67]

Can you describe the ways in which they cheat?

In my undergraduate program, for instance, the entire school had a heavy reliance on "Word Files," which were maintained by fraternities or dorm halls. They were basically files of old tests and projects issued by professors, which people used as study aids. Occasionally a sloppy professor would put together a test with an identical question from prior years, but typically the use of "word" in classes really just facilitated studying. I would be surprised if many of the people on this forum didn't resort to using "word" during their undergraduate education, as a study aid. (not a source of plagiarism)

Or are you talking about people copying each other's papers during tests? That sort of thing?

There is a basic conflict of interest between academic integrity and profit.

There's something deeper to this than most of the older generation realizes, and it's caused by federally backed student loans. My eyes were really opened to it when I taught as an adjunct.

The way it used to work, was engineering programs brought a lot of students in, failed the bad ones out, and turned out a high caliber of graduate through attrition. Now there is a completely different dynamic. Professors are instructed by the administration to do everything they can to keep poor students in school, so the university can farm them for money. Money the student will eventually have to pay back, of course, but by that time the university is out of the picture. Their only motivation is enrollment.

As a corollary, the US News and World Report rankings give positive credit to schools for having HIGHER GPAs, and having HIGHER retention rates. The more straight A students a school puts out, and the fewest students the school fails out, the HIGHER their national ranking as a university. In the 1990s, Georgia Tech students used to make fun of Stanford because GT would equal or better them on every category in the USNWR ranks, and then tank our overall ranking once retention and GPA were included. Since, there has been a structural shift in the mentality at GT, as well as all other schools nationwide, to focus on student retention and quit wearing their students out so much. I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, I went through the trial by fire and in my opinion emerged a better future employee. On the other, it was thoroughly unfun and honestly didn't help me much in learning the material. Further, I don't think the attrition model was necessarily a great educational tool. I have many friends who failed out and went on to earn six figure salaries.

I still have that "drop day nightmare" where you wake up one morning and realize that you forgot to file the forms to drop a class, and the final is tomorrow. Other folks I've spoken to from GT have the same nightmare, I wonder if it's common here on ENG-TIPS.



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[IRstuff]

"it's caused by federally backed student loans."

More likely, it's because the tuition rates have been on a rampage exceeding inflation for the past several decades. NDSL has been around since the last big wars of the 20th century. There's been a cycle where professors have gotten better salaries while corporate and government support have decreased, putting more pressure on tuition as a source of income. State universities have fallen into that trap as well, since non-resident tuition is double or triple that of residents. For-profit universities obviously have an even worse conflict of interest.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
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[Scrip]

Hi bee.

Can you describe the ways in which they cheat?

Using Google and saved PDF documents to search for answers, and WhatsApp and other messaging apps to share them, in the exam room. Or not doing their assignments and copying from someone who did the day before it's due. If in a lab group, contributing very little but getting the same grade.

There's something deeper to this than most of the older generation realizes, and it's caused by federally backed student loans.

Whoa. You just opened my eyes to something there.

Over here it's somewhat similar. As I said before, higher education is a meritocracy, and as long as you get the right grades in your high school exam, the government will pay roughly 80% of your boarding and tuition fees, and give you pocket money on top of that. But at some point in the late 90s, universities started accepting anyone for their programs as long as that person could pay all their tuition and boarding.

Because a higher ed degree made one really marketable then (and also because of a lot of other factors like growing purchasing power, higher literacy levels, etc.), more and more people started paying for themselves. This meant that anyone with the money could get into any degree they wanted, as long as they paid and had gotten at least a C+ grade (the minimum grade to get a government sponsorship to engineering school is an A-, and our grading system goes from A, A-, B+, B ... D, D- to E). Imagine being in the same Thermo class as someone who got a C+ in Math, and the only reason they're there is because they have the money.

The only good thing I see is that the cut-off points for going on to the next year are still in place, so whether or not you have the money, if you don't pass the exam, You Shall Not Pass!!!

........................................
The EAC - One People, One Destiny... One Federation.

 

[SwinnyGG]

Imagine being in the same Thermo class as someone who got a C+ in Math, and the only reason they're there is because they have the money.

In the American system, whether they went to a state/local college or an elite world class university, every degreed engineer on this board doesn't have to imagine this scenario- we all experienced it first hand, at least once.

But that fact is immaterial. You can't control who gets admitted, and you can't control their moral decisions. Focus on what you can control- your reactions to things that frustrate or annoy you. This is a lesson that will apply for the duration of your natural life.

By my estimation, 90% of all unhappiness in the world is due to people attempting to control things that are out of their scope of control.

 

[IRstuff]

What do they call the person who is ranked last in their class in medical school? Doctor...

"Imagine being in the same Thermo class as someone who got a C+ in Math, and the only reason they're there is because they have the money."

Imagine being in the same Thermo class as someone who has a 180 IQ. Now, don't you feel stupid? I think you should concentrate on the things you can control or influence, all else is pretty much irrelevant.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
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[FoxRox]

What an interesting thread - where to begin?

To the OP, I too am a millennial who (I hope) doesn't quite fit the mold, although I attribute that to my US heart-land upbringing as much as anything. I do however recognize in myself a few of the tell-tale signs of being a millennial, probably because my mom always told me how special I am (and still does...). Anyway, I think the key to rise above the stigma is to be self-aware. Recognizing your own flaws and observing traits you want to avoid in others is a wise way to mold one's self into the person/citizen/student/employee you want to become.

On the cheating, some of the stories above really brought back memories for me. I had a programming class taught by a very bright and diligent grad student who took his job very seriously. People thought they could cheat by copying files and changing a few lines of code. He actually had a way to dig into the digital signature of the files to see if they originated from the same source. I do not know if there were actually expulsions, but I know some people quickly disappeared from the class.

Also, on the archives of old tests and assignments kept by frats and sororities - guilty. I was never a member, but a had some friends that were. One professor in-particular was well-known for a few things: 1.) rambling on about topics completely unrelated to the class for weeks at a time, 2.) putting tough questions on tests that were not taught in the lecture or the textbook, 3.) putting the same questions on tests year after year. I was warned, but I went at it alone on the first test, thinking to maintain my integrity. I did all the homework and studied hard, but the stories were true. There was no reasonable way to prepare for such an exam, and I was always very good at exams. I studied with the frat guys on the remaining tests and ultimately did well in the class.

 

[SwinnyGG]

Also, on the archives of old tests and assignments kept by frats and sororities - guilty.

As am I- I was a fraternity member. Our crib system was robust, and ridiculously organized (what else would you expect from 50-odd engineers left to roam without any influence from business/art/history/phys ed majors...). We were a studying hub as a result.

I realize that opinions on this range from 'you are a dyed-in-the-wool cheater' to 'shrug'.

At my university, many professors were highly anti-crib-systems. Others were fine with it.

The ones who were anti-crib coped by not returning tests. You were usually allowed a few minutes during the next class to review your mistakes, but the tests were collected and we couldn't take them home. Not returning your test was cause for an F regardless of what grade you earned.

Professors who weren't anti-crib-system wrote new questions every semester, and many of them would say something to the effect of "I know you all have access to cribs, they will be an excellent study aid" on the day(s) before the test.

Professors which allowed their material to be absorbed into the crib system always wrote exams which were objectively much harder- but the raw grades would even out, because we prepared for those exams by doing real problems, so our levels of competency were higher, and we were fluent in that particular professor's style of questions.

When allowed by the professor, we used cribs as study aids- but we certainly weren't allowed to bring them to the exam or reference them in any way. I also went to college during a time when smart phones existed but had not yet proliferated into every pocket and purse- so this rule was probably much easier to police then than it is now.

In other words, I have no shame about that system because it was known by everyone including professors and school administration- and they were allowed to shape their own policies to prevent the system from creating an environment where we were not learning, and access was equal to everyone. We let anyone study at our house, whether they were members or not. We never turned anyone away so long as they were there to actually work.

I'm telling you this long story because there's one other thing to consider. You absolutely should not compromise your own ethical point of view. If you view a certain behavior as dishonest, than don't do it. But you should also be using any resource available to you to learn- again, so long as your ethics and integrity are not being compromised.

Sorry for the long post, guys- this thread has me fired up I guess.

 

[Scrip]

Imagine being in the same Thermo class as someone who has a 180 IQ. Now, don't you feel stupid? I think you should concentrate on the things you can control or influence, all else is pretty much irrelevant.

Touché. I think this is what I needed to hear the most.

probably because my mom always told me how special I am (and still does...).

Hahaha. Same thing I always heard!
I think that nowadays it's nonconformist to be a conformist.

I was warned, but I went at it alone on the first test, thinking to maintain my integrity. I did all the homework and studied hard, but the stories were true. There was no reasonable way to prepare for such an exam, and I was always very good at exams. I studied with the frat guys on the remaining tests and ultimately did well in the class.

The same thing happened to me, in my Mechanics class. What I do now is I study as widely as I want to during the semester, and then when exams are around the corner, I'll go through the lecturer's past papers.

By my estimation, 90% of all unhappiness in the world is due to people attempting to control things that are out of their scope of control.

You absolutely should not compromise your own ethical point of view. If you view a certain behavior as dishonest, than don't do it. But you should also be using any resource available to you to learn- again, so long as your ethics and integrity are not being compromised.

I hear you.

........................................
The EAC - One People, One Destiny... One Federation.

 

[lacajun]

You've gotten some great responses based upon experience from around the world. That means, to me, people are pretty much the same everywhere. But don't focus on them because that is a distraction you don't need. Your job is to focus on who you are, who you want to be, how you want to conduct yourself, etc. If you focus on them, you'll lose your way. Don't compare yourself to others because that is a distraction that leads to losing yourself, too. Focus on your life and living a good one. The details will come into focus much later in life. Hang in there and find the good eggs to surround yourself with.

Pamela K. Quillin, P.E.
Quillin Engineering, LLC
NSPE-CO, Central Chapter

 

[IRstuff]

Actually, I was almost in AP Physics with a 180 IQ, or would have been he hadn't taken it 2 yrs before I was even allowed to. He actually gave a lecture for my AP Physics class on elliptical integrals which went over the heads of everyone, including the instructor.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
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[CWB1]

Imagine being in the same Thermo class as someone who got a C+ in Math, and the only reason they're there is because they have the money.

Depends on where they got the C+, if it was at a decently difficult school then I'd feel honored to be their peer. As beej67 mentioned above, many colleges today will happily graduate anyone who pays the bill and have dumbed-down their programs to minimize attrition. Usually these schools are easily identified as having dozens of students with a 3.9+/4.0 GPA and typically with no tangible skills or ability. At my alma mater students were told at orientation they would be challenged to the point of getting a few lousy grades (Cs, Ds) and that attrition would be extremely high, particularly compared to "better" schools. We graduated engineers with real design ability, not junior apprentices and most were recruited prior to graduation with top salaries, not "hired" through the standard process.

The way it used to work, was engineering programs brought a lot of students in, failed the bad ones out, and turned out a high caliber of graduate through attrition.

 

[hokie66]

Interesting the different opinions about "cribs". We called them "koofers", and they were not considered to be cheating, but just like any other study aid.

 

[SomptingGuy]

My M.O. for each year was:
- Select modules with exams. (Minimise coursework)
- Attend all lectures. Be sure that the material is understandable.
- Postpone any serious study until exams are 1 month away.
- Two years of past papers, all questions. Night-time sessions. With colleague.
- Sail through exams.

Past papers were a key part of my education. Not cheating in my view. I even gave my worked past papers to friends in lower years as study aids.

(1990 ME graduate)



Steve

 

[beej67]

"it's caused by federally backed student loans."

More likely, it's because the tuition rates have been on a rampage exceeding inflation for the past several decades.

Cart / horse. Tuition rates are skyrocketing because kids can/will pay it, and colleges bend over backwards to keep them in because they want to extract as much money as possible out of them. They're also doing things like, for instance, wiping out all their old dorms and replacing them with luxury apartments with individual rooms. Paid for via tuition, originating as a federally backed student loan.

The real elephant in the room is that quite a lot of the degrees now aren't worth the cost the kids are paying for them, in terms of ROI. That market adjustment, when it happens, is going to be thunderous and very upsetting to the status quo.




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[graybeach]

I am also someone who tried hard to get through my education with minimal reliance of group homework completion and previous exams. I don't judge people who did so though. There are many career paths to take in engineering and not all of them require technical knowledge. For me, I just wanted to learn the material - at least this was the case in grad school. Now 30+ years into my career, I am still seem to challenge the system. For one, I have always forged technical leadership roles instead of jumping over to Project Management. OP - Have you ever watched any Dirty Harry movies? Sometimes I feel like Harry - or at least that narrative is comforting to me.