I get what you are getting at, but I'd rephrase it as "cheaters should remain a minority". When we phrase it like that, a number of other solutions might pop up to discourage cheaters from enrolling in the first place (eg. lots of custom projects through which students learn anyway, potentially invalidating the need for a final exam too).

And suddenly, privacy invasion gets off the table quickly (as soon as you are not aiming for 100% non-cheaters, the cost becomes obviously too high for everybody else).

As far as reputation, I'd rather see schools focus on the successful students, which is somewhat done with all those research-paper-grading systems (not a perfect system by any means because of gamification, but at least idea in the right direction), but mostly done with bragging about scientific break-throughts to come out of their students and staff.

Still, what is the purpose of a reputation or "well-respected degree"? The goal should be knowledge and applicability of that knowledge to actual problems in life (known as "jobs"): it's not like anyone accepts any graduate without interviewing them first, which is to say that nobody trusts any school to have done a proper job of evaluating them. Most of those schools don't trust themselves, so they hold interviews for post-graduate studies too! :D

Nobody looks at the "lemons" coming out of a school to consider it a bad school (I am sure you can find plenty from "top" universities too), but on the successful ones. Do the successful ones change with more cheaters at all? (Sure, there is a turning point, but catching all of them is meaningless)

Well, people aren't born cheaters or not, they choose to cheat as a result of circumstances [1]. Opportunity is one factor. Another is perceived unfairness about what they're asked to do. Our institution becomes better as our students do, when they don't feel the need to cheat. Avoiding opportunities to cheat and unfairness incentives is key to doing that. Invigilation software, the same test for online students as local students, and plenty of online tutor help are three approaches we're using for remote assessments. A small, brief reduction in privacy comparable to their online tutorials is proving perfectly acceptable to students. Unfortunately custom projects and the like won't work for teaching fundamental maths skills.

[1] There's quite a bit of research on this. Bretag is a key author.

Thanks for the references! I am simplifying a bit to get my point across: I am well aware that nobody is a born cheater, and that the fear of getting caught stops many from cheating too.

> Unfortunately custom projects and the like won't work for teaching fundamental maths skills.

I am not sure I agree. One of the projects I did for my projective geometry class was to do an inverse of a projected drawing (in AutoCAD) and save a 3D .obj file. In differential equations course, I was given a project to prove a theorem that is generally missing from the school books (or usually given as an exercise). You can also let people devise proofs in a closed system of axioms and a few theorems.

It is a hard and different type of work, but I am certain you can both teach and get to know students with theoretical math projects. If they get someone else to do it for them, yet they are able to present it in front of the class (online) convincingly, they have likely understood the concepts, which is what teaching is all about.

In many courses, the grades are curved, so cheaters might really make the grades of honest students worse.

While I am against these surveillance software, making sure that tests are fair is very hard, especially since everything is online now thanks to COVID.

Not in my experience. I don't think there are enough cheaters to shift the curve (the noise from year to year is much more significant), and despite what you'd expect, the people hired to do others' assessments aren't necessarily very good at it!

A top 10 MBA program my partner went through had several people cheating in the program. I'll give you some anecdotal notes. Some cheaters get discovered and "outed" (esp those the group didn't like) when they brag during parties, some never gave up enough evidence to make an accusation official, others would talk about hiring CPAs for accounting exams/projects. Many in the class were concerned on whether normal study groups counted as cheating, as defined by the honor code!

A sibling program at the university exposed a cheating ring of ~15-20 people, and I think many were surprised that the result was to simply zero their grades for that class instead of more severe action.

/e I mention incidents and sizes since these programs are not thousands of students but tens or hundreds.

What kind of an MBA program is it where students worry if normal study groups are ok?

It sounds like the definition of cheating was very broad there.

Depends on you, the professor, the college, and the rules as to how you might interpret "individual" homework assignments and study "groups", particularly if you're led to believe you'll get removed from the program for transgressing. This particular issue was fleshed out quickly (and sanely, imo) but it did contribute to why the group didn't like one particular individual. Not everyone in the program is there to network and build trust!

I switched to online exams this year, no zoom, no special software, no checks at all. Grades were as usual. A couple of students cheated and were detected, all the others were very honest to the point that I wouldn't be myself if I were in their place. It can work, but you need to expect people to look up things.

One of my colleagues had an online exam. The exam was uploaded to chegg within minutes, by multiple people. Unfortunately, the tests were personalized, so the people could be identified.

I think cheating is quite common in the undergrad years, but gets less later.

How did you get access to Chegg? I thought of buying a subscription to check for cheaters, but there were complaints on the net about Chegg charging credit cards on canceled accounts.

I didn't, my colleague did. Not sure how. He asked them to took down the tests, and they did. Withing a couple of days though. Answers to questions are up within minutes!

That's what I meant with "normalized grades": I wasn't familiar with the term "curved grades", but I covered that point with why I don't think that's a problem.

> I.e. the problem is being solved for the honest students, the ones I want to spend my time on.

As the original commenter notes, here the problem is being solved for "well-behaved" students, in a way which is easy enough for dishonest students to bypass and present themselves as well-behaved.