Cheaters Never Win, and Neither Should Enablers

Cheating at a competitive place like Middlebury will never go away, but it is possible to change the incentives that currently allow its tolerance. Beyond being lazy and counter-productive to education, cheating is a collective action problem. The best way to prevent cheating — in addition to investing in steps like plagiarism detection software and proctoring all tests at Middlebury — is to make sure we each have skin in the game.

The story of cheating at Middlebury is not only about “Billy,” the anonymous Middlebury student in Jessica Cheung’s exposé of Middlebury’s academic dishonesty; it is also about how Middlebury’s policies enable cheating. Roughly one in three students anonymously self-report cheating, while the true number is likely higher. The undeniable truth is cheating is rampant at Middlebury.

You and I may have never cheated, but the burden of responsibility to proactively prevent cheating falls on all of us, including the student body, student governance, staff (including Old Chapel) and faculty. Our academic system is failing, in the language of the honor code, to provide the “ethical, and social qualities essential for leadership.”

When students cheat in introductory Econ courses, it does not significantly affect the rest of the Middlebury student body or even those in the same classes in which the cheating occurs, because the vast majority of people we are in competition with for jobs are at other colleges and universities. That some under-qualified, over-stressed Middlebury students get better GPAs by cheating seems morally ambiguous: at least it is a fellow MiddKid and, hey, nobody wants to be a tattletale. Our imagined communion with “Billy” personalizes his actions, making them relatively more palatable. The truth is cheating undermines our education no matter what — it creates a perverse incentive structure that devalues hard work, and rewards willingness to break community values.

Regularly running student work through plagiarism detection software is a no-brainer so long as the burden on professors is not egregious.  Regularly proctoring exams, even if not by professors, is similarly necessary, because trust-based proctoring has been a failure. Any peace of mind gained by not having a professor in the room is overshadowed by the cheating it enables.

But making lasting changes require a more radical step: final grades for courses should be determined by a normal distribution curve within each course, especially in larger, lecture courses with less variability in the “average student”. This idea is based on the belief that Middlebury students would not acquiesce to rampant cheating in their class if it directly hurt their own grades, and that students would be deterred from cheating if it directly affected their (honest) friend’s grades. In addition, a curve would prevent departments, professors and individual courses from having widely different GPAs that are totally unrelated to the difficulty of the course (cue Chinese, Physics and Murray Dry’s students nodding their heads vigorously).

Mean grades for all courses should be set at the average grade for the entire student body, roughly just worse than a B+. Exceptions could be made for seminars and small courses, while the rules could be flexible enough to allow professors discretion in evaluating students. On the whole, however, we would have a more meritocratic system, an incentive to crack down on cheating, and more consistent grading between majors and professors, all without changing the average grade.

Would such a change create more competition, and fuel more cheating? Would it lead to a less collaborative atmosphere in and out of the classroom? Perhaps, but that is exactly where there is need for a new honor code, based on fostering solidarity and collaboration within a competitive space.

Academic life is, by its very nature, competitive — creating a grade-based curve would only explicitly acknowledge that fact. As currently constructed, our academic honor code is redundant, cheating is equally prohibited with or without it. In contrast, an honor code based on actively encouraging positive community values, such as collaboration, critical thinking, accountability and empathy — the qualities that define great leaders — could be a step towards a better Middlebury.

The job environment we are entering is extremely competitive, but collaboration — even when there is no obvious self-interest involved — is how problems are solved, industries are advanced and disruptive technologies are invented. How we train the next generation of leaders should reflect this reality.

Learning to behave morally within a competitive atmosphere is one of the most important lessons Middlebury should aspire to impart to its students. The liberal arts are not about a prohibition of pre-professional course offerings, but rather a holistic education in lieu of skill-based training. Ethical self-awareness is central to what “learning how to think” really means.

Reform is not only necessary; it is possible. The willingness of our administration and our student body to constantly and critically reevaluate our values and policies is one of Middlebury’s greatest institutional strengths, and it is time that we took advantage of it.

Here is how we do it: public, transparent discourse. Looking to the the exceptional journalism conducted at middbeat and The Campus this year, student-run media at Middlebury is of a higher caliber now that it ever has been during my tenure at Middlebury. A curve may not be the way to go, but we need to construct an alternative academic model, because the status quo is failing us.