Texas Universities Ask for Right to Revoke Degrees for Cheating
Texas Universities Ask for Right to Revoke Degrees for Cheating
Plus, UAE says schools be closed for cheating. Plus, did someone admit to cheating the Illinois Bar Exam? Plus, quick bites.
Issue 156
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Two Texas Schools Ask Court for the Power to Revoke Degrees for Academic Misconduct
This could be big.
According to news coverage from Texas, the University of Texas at Austin and Texas State University have asked the state’s Supreme Court for permission to revoke awarded degrees when academic misconduct is discovered after graduation.
If the schools win, this could be big news as it would further tilt the risk/reward calculations deployed during academic misconduct and could incentivize other schools and other states to engage cheating more strenuously.
According to the reporting:
The two cases feature former Ph.D. students who were accused of academic misconduct following the awarding of their degree.
In the UT Austin case, the student received the degree in organic chemistry, while the Texas State student received a degree in biology. Issues were found in their dissertations after they spent years as private citizens working in their careers.
The lawyers for the schools pinpointed the biggest issue with not addressing misconduct, even when it is discovered after a degree is conferred. Their position is, according the article:
Ultimately, the universities argued that disregarding this authority would weaken their “reputations and the value of degrees conferred upon their students.”
No doubt about it. If people know or suspect that students can cheat their way to a PhD at the University of Texas, Austin, people will rightly wonder what a degree from there actually means.
Lawyers for the former students said:
“You can't get a job as a scientist without your Ph.D. doing what my client does,” [an attorney] said. “Whereas we as attorneys, we get our degrees and then we get licensed by the state bar. There's no licensing authority (in science), so effectively, their license is their degree.”
I’m not sure that equating a degree earned by suspected fraud with a license is the best argument. If you did not actually do the work to get your degree, you probably should not be doing the work that degree affords.
If you cheated, schools have every right - in my view - to say that you did not earn your degree. Parsing who did or did not earn a degree is the a big reason they exist.
Moreover, schools cannot be expected to stand by a certification when they know that certification is not accurate. In other words, a student lying to the school should not obligate the school to lie for the student in perpetuity. Again, my opinion.
Maybe, it could be argued, if schools cannot revoke degrees for misconduct they will invest more in spotting it and stopping it before they award their credentials. But on balance, I think giving schools the power to say when degrees are actually earned as opposed to when they’re stolen, is a better policy.
Either way, this case merits watching.
An Illinois Bar Examinee Supposedly Admitted to Cheating the Test
Law.com and other outlets have the story of someone who confessed to cheating on the Illinois Bar Exam. Maybe the Reddit confession is real, maybe not.
Supposedly the cheater secured a medical diagnosis allowing for extra test time and snuck off to the bathroom to review photos of test notes on their cell phone. The alleged confessor also said they attended University of Illinois Chicago, John Marshall and had failed the exam twice before, though they passed this time.
There is skepticism about the confession and I don’t feel strongly one way or another regarding its veracity. I do think that what the person described as a cheating method is possible since tests with accommodations are not always done at the same time and in the same place and with the same test proctors and safeguards as the “regular” tests. This was part of the issue in the over-hyped “Varsity Blues” cases.
I am also sure, however, that if the posted confession is real, the test providers have more than enough information to track down the examinee. How many people in Illinois do you think went to that school, took the exam three times, passed this time, and had ADHD accommodations? Not many. Although the trackable details add to the skepticism of the entire thing.
For their part, the Illinois Bar is investigating - citing the usual language about how seriously they take exam integrity. We will see. They should speak up one way or the other.
I will also note that, if this happened, it would not be unprecedented. The Bar Exam in Toronto has been mired in a cheating scandal since March (see Issue 100).
The UAE Says Rampant Cheating Could Lead to College Closures
According to a recent announcement and news coverage, the United Arab Emirates can revoke the license of a college if the school struggles with cheating.
Specifically, according to a “senior official at the Ministry of Education” schools could be closed if they experience:
Increased cheating among students and awarding of academic certificates to those without attendance
An official also said that, though no school is going through closure, “some universities are under close observation” for cheating and other quality issues.
Personally, good for UAE for including cheating as an education quality issue and linking it to accreditation. In the United States, that remains a foreign concept.
Quick Bites
A law student in Spain has been caught trying to cheat by etching tiny notes on his pens. This story has photos. It’s pretty impressive, honestly.
Twenty-eight examinees were caught trying to cheat an army entrance exam in India. They were arrested.
I’ve written in the past about cheating outside of academics, in arenas such as chess and video games. So, here’s a story about cheating in Irish step dancing competitions.
And, two fishermen who won a fishing competition were stripped of their accolades after a judge discovered the duo had stuffed their catch with weights.
A school district in Mississippi is still under a state inquiry over allowing proxy test takers in credit recovery courses and other issues, leading a high school to boost its graduate rates. The state found “evidence of cheating to help students graduate.”