Texas Can Revoke Degrees for Cheating
Plus, an audio interview on cheating in Canada. Plus, Daily Dot 2.0.
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Texas Can Yank Degrees for Cheating
Big news this week from Texas - the state Supreme Court has ruled that universities can revoke awarded degrees when academic misconduct is uncovered.
For background, see Issue 156.
The case itself was about research misconduct in a graduate degree program but it seems clear that the precedent applies to more run-of-the-mill misconduct such as plagiarism, using Chegg or submitting AI-created work. The ruling says the “principal issue” is:
whether state university officials have the statutory authority to revoke a former student’s degree upon concluding that the former student engaged in academic misconduct in pursuit of that degree.
Seems pretty clear.
Significantly, the Texas Supreme Court overturned lower courts which had said that degrees could not be revoked. It’s further noteworthy that in this case, the degree revocations occurred after a hearing was held by the university. Also in this case, the Board of Trustees of the Texas university system had, it appears, a clear policy - see pages 15-16 in the ruling.
It’s a policy that every state ought to copy and ratify immediately, if they don’t have something similar already.
At the heart of the issue is this passage, in which the universities:
argue that they may rescind a degree upon determining that it was not earned— and thus should not have been awarded—in the first place. We thus consider only whether the University officials may revoke the degrees of former students who are found to have engaged in academic misconduct while enrolled at the Universities. We hold that they have authority to do so.
The Court ruled further:
the only difference between expelling a current student for academic misconduct and revoking the degree of a former student for the exact same academic misconduct is one of timing.
And:
A degree is not merely a piece of paper; it is a “university’s certification to the world at large of the recipient’s educational achievement and fulfillment of the institution’s standards.”
They quoted a 2015 case:
“When a school confers credentials, the school places its imprimatur on a student; degrees and credits are a school’s implicit endorsement of someone’s academic qualifications and personal character, whether they be a current or former student.”
And:
the Texas State University officials concluded that [a student] engaged in academic misconduct in pursuit of her degree, such that she did not in fact meet the necessary conditions to be awarded that degree and thus is not entitled to a certification that she did.
And there it is.
The Court cited other rulings reaching similar conclusions - that the ability to give a degree also carried with it the ability to recall it.
Frankly, I am thrilled.
Students clearly see that academic shortcuts are rewarding and are willing to take risks to use them, wagering that they either won’t be caught or that punishment will be light. Both are usually the case. But if the timeline for detection increases along with the weight of consequences - it’s a compelling deterrent.
If degrees are at risk, to prosper, academic fraud will have to not just sneak past a lax or non-existent detection system, it will have to lie undiscovered for years, even a lifetime. With the rapid advancement of technology, that seems like an unwise wager. In fact, considering things such as the advent of AI watermarks and fingerprints, and massive data breaches at cheating companies (see Issue 161), keeping cheating dark for years seems like a fool’s bet.
If they have not already, states and schools should clarify these revocation policies and share them with students. Avoiding cheating is everyone’s preferred outcome; deterrence works.
Audio: Contract Cheating in Canada
Issue 191 summarized a story from The Globe and Mail about contract cheating in Canada.
The article is quite good and worth a read and review. But it also has a quite solid audio companion, available on YouTube. It’s not a reading of the story but an interview with the writer, Joe Friesen - NPR podcast style.
And since the original story may have been behind a paywall for many, the audio track is well worth a listen.
Like the print story, it starts with a Canadian student who hired someone to take an online exam for him and was caught - but only because the ringer turned the student in. Busted, the student apologized and begged for leniency, only to cheat again in another class just days later.
From the audio interview with Friesen:
Especially during the pandemic there seems to have been a real increase in cases of academic misconduct
A little louder for the folks in back.
He continues:
What we’ve seen across a whole bunch of universities is a doubling, in many cases, of the number of incidents of academic misconduct that are getting reported to Deans, that are going to university tribunals to be tried - so something fundamental seems to have changed in the last couple of years that has seen an explosion in these kinds of cases.
A little louder.
He continues that a return to in-person classes may bring these case numbers down. I’m much less sure, for a host of reasons.
Friesen goes through the major jumps that many Canadian schools have seen in these cases in the past few years, school by school. It’s worth hearing, especially if you missed the article originally.
He says some things I disagree with - exploring the possibility that an increase in cases may be linked to educators being more willing to “crack down” recently, for example. He thinks that most of the time professors want to engage students when cheating happens, for another.
Asked whether contract cheating services were difficult to find, he said:
They are not difficult to find. In fact, you can Google ‘academic help’ or ‘tutoring’ or ‘paid to do my exam’ and you will be inundated with results.
Near the end, the host asks:
What happens if universities don’t fix this and this trend keeps going up and up and we keep seeing more cheating?
Friesen way undersells, answering, in part:
Well, I think that could be a problem.
Adding:
If Canada doesn’t maintain a reputation as a high quality system with degrees that mean something, with academic integrity imbedded in every student who comes out of that system, it could cause some difficulties
He’s talking mostly about the marketing and selling of Canada education to foreign students, but the point is the point. I also think not maintaining a high quality system with degrees that mean something could cause difficulties.
The questions aren’t great but the topics are - including AI, blackmail by essay mills, laws against cheating and how cheating impacts the academic reputations of schools. It’s well worth the 20 minutes.
Daily Dot - 2.0
In Issue 197, I wrote about an article at The Daily Dot which contained several errors related to online exam proctoring.
I mentioned that I’d e-mailed an editor to point out the errors, which I often do, and that an editor replied. She said she’d look into it, which it seems she did.
The article is fixed, a quote was deleted along with another fact error. The revised article is still not great because it leaves the impression that “room scans” are not allowed when they absolutely are (see Special Edition 2 or Issue 188).
Even so, good for The Dot for being responsive and taking some action. You don’t see that every day. At least I don’t.
Teaser - there’s an even worse problem at an even bigger outlet. An inquiry is underway. I’ll bring you that as soon as it concludes.