The 2001-2 UVa cheating scandal made headlines nationwide. One hundred and fifty eight students were accused of cheating on a paper for Professor Louis Bloomfield’s How Things work class, having been caught by his Copyfind software. When all was said and done, 48 students were found guilty and consequently expelled under UVa’s single-sanction honor code.
Well, hold on, here it comes again. Inside Higher Ed reports that there’s a new cheating scandal unfolding at the university:
An “alarmingly large fraction” of the first-year class of economics graduate students at the University of Virginia were involved in a cheating incident that came to light this month, according to the department chair.
Department officials said that some problem sets from textbooks used in introductory graduate economics courses have answer keys online. At least one student found answers for a course taken by all first-year students, and apparently shared the information with classmates. Though the solutions were apparently available, David Mills, chair of the economics department, said students should have “known it was off-limits,” but that they instead “used it without the professor being aware.”
As many as 30 students may be involved. The economics department has assembled a panel to investigate, since the honor committee doesn’t open investigations in the summer, and, alarmingly, isn’t even sure that they’ll turn the cases over to the honor committee.
How do they know who used the answer sets? Because they got all the problems correct? Maybe some economics wiz-kids got lumped in with the cheaters?
Or does UVA spy on their students? I doubt they all turned themselves in.