Sociology Prof. Charles Moskos is a cheater.
As an undergraduate at Princeton University, Moskos cheated in a final examination following his mother’s death.
“It was God’s will,” he said. “I had been at the funeral and hadn’t had time to study.”
Moskos, who took the exam 48 hours after the rest of the class did, found a copy of the final and used it to prepare for that same test.
“I cannot give strict advice (on the subject of cheating),” he said.
According to Northwestern administrators, neither can about 130 NU students per year.
Although cheating is not a new practice, the latest generation has taken it to new heights. Technologically savvy students have discovered new ways, with the help of cell phones and the Internet, to outsmart professors who have not advanced with the times.
In the 2004-05 school year, 90 violations were reported in Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, Associate Dean Ronald Braeutigam estimated. He said such violations are on the rise at NU.
“The trend is increasing,” Braeutigam said. “Over the last five years (in Weinberg), the number has doubled.”
Steve Carr, associate dean for the McCormick School of Engineering, said about 24 students are caught cheating in the school.
And although the Medill School of Journalism requires students to sign an honor code upon acceptance of admission, it has also seen an increase in cheating. In the 1999-00 school year, there were no reported cases of cheating. But in the 2001-02 school year, the number rose to six.
Since then, the number of cases has remained approximately the same, according to Roger Boye, assistant dean of Medill.
“We think it (the topic of cheating) is important,” Medill Dean Loren Ghiglione said. “That’s why we devote the first dean’s convocation to the subject.”
According to Braeutigam, freshmen make up approximately 30 percent of Weinberg’s cheating cases in a typical year. Two-thirds of those reported are plagiarism.
“We need to respond to technology,” Ghiglione said. “While technology provides the opportunity for cheating, it also provides the opportunity to catch students cheating.”
Professors have access to a program on Blackboard called Safe Assignment, which checks citations in electronic versions of students’ papers against a database of sources on the Internet.
But preventing students from cheating on tests requires different methods.
Moskos, not a stranger to large class sizes, has monitors prowl the testing area during his exams and insists on adequate spacing between test-takers.
“I have not caught more than a handful (of students cheating) in my 40 years of teaching,” Moskos said. “If others have cheated, they have been covert about it.”
Braeutigam suggests that no electronic devices be allowed inside the testing area.
Amy Taylor, a first-year graduate student in the School of Music, said she does not mind professors’ precaution methods to prevent cheating.
“The teachers should be there (watching us),” she said. “Even though we should be trusted and have morals and ethics, in some cases we don’t.”
Reach Jasett Chatham at [email protected].
