I will agree with you. I'm not familiar with these test banks, but if they are publicly accessible, what's the point in banning them? Here in Greece, all our university teachers encourage us studying any material we can find, even past exam papers, and most provide the papers themselves. We are also allowed to take the exam paper with us when we finish the examination.

If you're a teacher, it's part of your job to write novel test questions. If you can't be bothered to do that, you can't tell people "this is what I'm going to ask in the exam, but don't read it". This isn't even the minimum amount of effort to keep honest students honest.

As another poster said, studying an entire test bank is studying the material.

We both agree that the professor should have made his own questions. However, this does not get the students off the hook. They used a resource where the publisher clearly says: students, do not use this to study. So, this is clearly, without a doubt cheating. I'm sure that many students knew the professor would use the questions verbatim, making it even moreso questionable.

What if someone came up to you and said "here's a test bank man, the prof pulls the questions right off it!" Clearly it is unethical to study from these materials. Similarly, if the test bank merely says "STUDENTS: Do not use this to study" then it is also unethical to study from.

Nothing in what you say suggests that the students did not cheat. You say the professor was lazy. That statement in no way contradicts the statement "the students cheated."