> They all thought they were getting away with something and had an edge over actually studying.

My point is that these people didn't (necessarily) do something wrong. The only reason they had to think they were doing something wrong is that the rules say they're doing something wrong.

If a professor provided the questions and answers for flash cards to be made, is that functionally different from the students getting such information from a third-party? It's "cheating" from a rules-based definition but I don't see how a person is necessarily not learning from that.

>It's "cheating" from a rules-based definition

Is there any other kind of cheating?

Assuming there's a reason for a rule, an action might not go against that reason even if it goes against a literal interpretation of the rule. In such a case, it should be determined that there's no reason to be against the action.

The ostensible reason to be against cheating is that it devalues the degrees the university gives out if it can't be trusted that a person earned said degree through merit. I'm saying that a person who found the exam and learned from that material isn't going against this reason to be against cheating; they did, in fact, pass the exam on their own merit. At least, I don't see why I should consider it differently.

It's clear from the story that no "learning" from the exam occurred. Students just copied the answers. Remember, this is a multiple choice exam, so this means question 42 - D, question 43 - A, etc -- nobody is looking up what this even means. According to the teacher, the answers should obviously wrong to anybody who knows the material.

Although it's very funny that this happened on an ethics course, the "is it ethical to cheat on an exam if you learned the material" question doesn't even apply here imo

> It's clear from the story that no "learning" from the exam occurred. Students just copied the answers.

I don't see this so clearly. It seems to me that this is assumed. Why do you think it is so clear that this is what the students did?

They did not, in fact, pass the exam on their own merit; they failed it miserably. Furthermore, in situations where they find the correct answers to the questions that will be asked, or even just the specific questions that will be asked, and then passed the exam, they would not have demonstrated that they could do so on their own merit, as an examination can only be a smallish sample of the knowledge they are expected to have in order to justify a passing grade.

In this case, they cannot even appeal to that perennial cheater's excuse: "what matters is being able to get the right answer, not how I got it." Here, they demonstrated utter incompetence at that task! Their knowledge was so impoverished that they could not even identify blatant errors.

The point of an exam is that it’s a crude instrument to determine a students mastery of the subject matter. If that is not discernible because some students were able to memorize answers vs. others that actually learned the content what’s, the value of the exam is diminished.