Stanford Breaks 105-Year Tradition, Ditches Honor Code for Proctored Exams

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For the first time since 1921, Stanford is moving away from its unproctored past, where students were fully trusted to deliver on academic honesty. The Faculty Senate (FacSen), Undergraduate Senate (UGS) and Graduate Student Council (GSC) have voted to allow exam proctoring in all Stanford classes following the results of a pilot program from the Academic Integrity Working Group (AIWG), a group formed to combat academic dishonesty.

The University has historically drawn on the Honor Code, written by students in 1921, to maintain academic integrity. The code established that students were expected to hold themselves and each other accountable. Instructors, in turn, would “not take unusual or unreasonable precautions to prevent academic dishonesty,” which previously included proctoring exams.

The 2020-21 academic year saw 393 honor code violations, none of which were student-reported. This marked an uptick from the 2018-19 academic year, in which there were 136 honor code violations, two of them reported by students.

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This comes a few weeks after Princeton did the same: Princeton Breaks 133-Year Tradition; Votes to Require Proctored Exams

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As we discussed a bit before, in my mind it was always anomalous to expect the fellow students to effectively police cheating. Nice if it works, but not in my view a requirement for an institution to be a success.

So while I understand it is a bit sad if something like this which used to work somewhere stops working, I don’t see it as a huge issue in the greater scheme.

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Exams are also the worst place for students to police cheating. Students in the exam room looking around to check if other students may be cheating could very well come under suspicion of cheating if anyone else notices them looking around.

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Very true.

And you need to focus your time and attention on completing your own exam.

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Just for clarity - an honor code, as applied by a school like Haverford, doesn’t just suggest that students should police each other, although that is part of the community element of the honor code (sort of “see something, say something”). Instead, the honor code would let students take almost all of their exams in their own dorm rooms or really anywhere they want so that they are trusted to do what they’ve agreed to. So, a student could actually take a closed book exam in their own dorm room with their book within reach and be trusted to not use that book.

The Stanford and Princeton honor codes already presume, in my view, LESS than a Haverford in that they’re requiring students to take exams at set times in set locations. So this is a weakening of what might be considered an already somewhat more weak honor code.

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Washington & Lee’s honor code is like this too.

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The part of this story that surprises me the most is that Stanford has officially not allowed proctored exams in past. This certainly was not my experience as a student. Proctoring was quite common. By “proctoring”, I mean professor and/or TAs are in the room while exam is occurring, often watching what is occurring. I don’t recall anyone being explicitly called out for cheating, but I also don’t recall seeing anyone obviously cheating on exams.