This is not about marital cheating, this question is about people who academically cheat their way through high school and college.
I’m curious. By nature I’m not a cheater (not by nurture, my parents were always trying to cheat someone and failing), but when I see cheaters as Valedictorian in my kids’ school, I wonder- is the successful cheating behavior sustainable once you get out of high school and college?
How do you take that degree and make it work in your day to day life?
Did not really learning the information impact you negatively in your career?
This is not a snarky post-I am straight up curious to know if that set of cheating behaviors allows one to function successfully through the rest of your life.
I’ve seen some behavior from acquaintances, where they stopped paying the mortgage, stopped paying the HOA and their taxes, and lived in the (very expensive) house until the sheriff came to evict them. They stripped the house down to the studs, and moved two doors down (rented a house).
Apparently, they’re breezily unconcerned about the fact that they screwed their neighbors over by not paying taxes or HOA fees, and wrecked the house inside and out. I’m also boggled by the people who rented the house to them (who also live in the neighborhood). I wonder if these people also have always been cheaters, and this is an expression of that mindset…
A lot of high school classes consist of memorizing and repeating facts on a test that are soon forgotten after the test is over. I could see someone cheating in HS and not having it affect them much later on, assuming they were never caught.
I am dealing with a cheating problem that is being perpetrated by some visiting international students in an online class sequence taught by an adjunct and myself. For this group, it is culturally appropriate to pay someone else to do all the unproctored work. It is so frustrating to have to take on more work to develop strategies to circumvent them, but I can’t let it go without trying to do everything on my part to minimize what is going on. Discussed this with an associate dean at our regional university the other day and she said she is the academic integrity contact for the college and this is a constant problem, largely with international students. Ethics have gone missing in so many cultures in so many ways.
On the positive side, I know of a story where a young lady was recently caught misrepresenting herself and karma stepped in to have multiple people report her behind the scenes. Just can’t tell that whole story.
Motherofdragons - it would be helpful to know how you suspect the valedictorians cheated. If they looked over at someone else’s test to get a better grade that is probably easy to recover from.
If they plagiarized, and are going into a field where they will write, it is likely to catch them in the end. Remember that woman in the new administration who was caught that way? Her PhD is in doubt now too.
If they hacked into the school’s computer system they will likely be caught one day doing the same thing.
If they hired someone else to do their work, they better pay well! That is always a security risk when you involve someone else in your cheating. Otherwise, they may just be “good managers” in the making.
Did they cheat somehow on their standardized tests? Arghghgh, so many people are caught doing this but I suspect many, many more get away with it. It probably won’t have much impact on their lives (except for that “nice” test score). Even if they face the LSAT or NCLEX later I doubt they could cheat the same way on those tests.
I have seen students cheat constantly all the time, and what somebody said earlier is true about it being more common for international students. I was once in my calc class and the student next to me offered me $20 to take his quiz for him, the proffesor was in front of us and we were in the first row. The first thing I thought was “no wonder he is failing this class” and two “how did he get into this school”.
Honestly, it was worse in high school, proff were less strict, as a student who actually values the honor system it sucks. I could easily cheat and get a better grade, but in the end I say why? It’s not my grade and its not the grade that I earned/deserved and why risk it and is the reward worth the possibility of being caught. My morals always win, but other students notice it all around the states in high school and colleges. I will never snitch on someone because it’s not my life, but it does bother me. I have also had students pay for essays from online websites to get A’s… I mean the technology in this world has made it worst. Smartwatches are a new thing now, you can easily send a text message to yourself and open it up via your smart watch and that could be your nots problems and more.
This is more of a rant because it happens, the solution and why they do it. Idk I guess the answer depends on the school/class/proffesor.
There is a thread now on the College Life sub forum where the student cheated on an exam. The student has a previous plagiarism charge. To me he seems totally unrepentant and is still looking for how to get out of it.
Doubtful. People will continue to cheat and lie in academics, business, and politics. Outwardly, they may seem to do well, but their comeuppance is that they have to look in the mirror and live with themselves.
Seriously I am old enough to have been to my 30th high school reunion. I left after 11th grade and went to a New England prep school. I was still invited because I was in first grade with some of them.
The girl who was going to be a doctor and was nasty and cheated on French tests is a real estate agent.
One guy who was in my first grade class and I really liked him. He flagrantly cheated in Chemistry. It angered me because it affected a possible grade curve for everyone. He was always going to be a veterinarian. He is an airport security guard.
While the individual concerned didn’t cheat, he basically went through his entire undergrad and professional training in his industry by memorizing and doing just well enough to pass satisfactorily before forgetting everything once the exams/undergrad/training ended.
This ended up causing him serious issues in his industry as despite getting hired by more high profile firms than a younger mutual friend of ours who made a good effort to learn and integrate his education/professional training in his life.* It’s not very good sign when one has to constantly call up the younger friend working for a lower-profile firm to answer basic questions on topics he should have known cold from the introductory-level classes from undergrad/professional training.
Things came to a head when he somehow ended up getting hired by another high profile firm for a position well above his already struggling level of bare competence. The issues/problems he was facing were such that even his younger friend whom he relied on for years as his “reference guide” couldn’t help him.
Said younger friend ended up asking me for help because I’ve had some law firm working experience despite the fact I had no real legal experience and knew nothing about their industry. I did know enough upon examining the documents he was having trouble completing as his duties that:
The company which hired him misclassified his position as the level of complexity and amount of legal content involved meant they should have hired an experienced licensed attorney with relevant industry experience to handle this job.
Later found out they probably did this so they can pay whomever they hired for that position much less than what an attorney with the minimal amount of requisite experience actually needed for that job would have commanded(before the 2008 crash).
One could say the firm is reaping its merited consequences for trying to “cheat” by trying to “cheap out” by setting hiring parameters such that anyone hired for that position based on listed criteria were set up to fail from day one.
The basic duties/tasks of that job were well above all of our paygrades.
As a result, the older friend who found himself in a job well above his paygrade even assuming he had been more diligent in retaining the information learned from undergrad/professional training in his field found his situation became so untenable he ended up quitting just a few weeks before his likely termination notice from his employer considering he wasn’t able to complete the basic duties of that job. He hasn’t worked in the industry he was educated/professionally trained since.
Most of the professionals and attorneys I know who are good, honest caring people have had pretty good lives so far and ended up in positions where they can and are doing a lot of good. Those who aren’t mostly do seem to get their karma as well.
Some cheaters become CEOs or other executives of major companies. Occasionally, they may be caught (e.g. CEOs found out as not having earned a claimed college degree – and note that they were not caught at previous times when hired or promoted), but there are probably others who have not been caught.
Then you have businesspeople who fail to honor their deals (e.g. not paying subcontractors and the like, sometimes leaving a trail of lawsuits in their wake), but their reputation for such does not spread fast enough to cause others to be suspicious when dealing with them (and not everyone searches for lawsuit records every time s/he deals with someone else).
Basically, these types of cheaters often get away with it because many people are not suspicious enough to do extensive secondary verification before trusting someone. But such verification can be costly, and does not always give accurate results.
Several years ago a tenured faculty member on my campus was fired because it was discovered he had digitally altered data in a publication (photos of a DNA gel). Similar cases have surfaced at other institutions and there is growing concern about the integrity and reproducibility of published results. One cheater in a research group can derail a whole program and waste hundreds of thousands of dollars in funding. Efforts are underway to address the growing problem. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/04/170412180554.htm
Not always, ha! The kid who was one of the biggest jerks in my high school class went on to earn multi millions as a baseball player and was even on a World Series championship team. Sigh.
D18 talks about the cheating all the time (I don’t know how much is first-hand or rumor). Apparently, the val-to-be next year is a known cheater. All I can tell is that the person will eventually screw up enough that they’ll get busted. Probably the most surprising one was that some kids “shop” the locations where SAT and ACT tests are taken and compile a dossier on the ones where the officials are lax (which allows kids to get away with cheating on the tests).
I make it clear to her that I would be more proud of her for making an honest C than a dishonest A.
