I'm very jaded. I see students who are experts in cramming a set of material, vomiting out the answers, and doing this repeatedly for every exam. I see other students who are experts in cheating without getting caught. It's hard for me to see a distinction between these two groups in practice since they're both committed to passing the exam rather than learning anything, but one is apparently imbued with honour since they're gamifying the exam within the written rules instead of breaking the rules.
It's not that I like or respect cheaters, it's that I'm just entirely unbothered by them. They're just students taking a high risk strategy and they'll sink or swim and I'm not angry about them or shedding any tears for them. Students who actually focus on trying to learn instead of trying to pass tests are screwed even if there wasn't a single cheater in the classroom. They won't go to the best schools or get the best jobs because they aren't cramming flash cards of likely test answers.
I think we need to stop looking at the students and start looking at the system.
The students are responding to incentives set out by their faculty. If you really want change, you must evaluate alternative incentives.
Personally, I was an honors student until college, and I was often the one in my group of friends to figure out how to solve an exercise, yet I would often get average (or lower) results compared to some of my friends, because some of them were just great at drilling themselves until they could repeat every single style of solution quickly.
I admit - that made me a little frustrated at the time, but 10 years later some of those folks that did really well in the exams are not doing as well in their careers because real life requires innovation and deep understanding, not just rapid application of past solutions.
> 10 years later some of those folks that did really well in the exams are not doing as well in their careers because real life requires innovation and deep understanding, not just rapid application of past solutions.
I know many highly successful people didn’t go to university and this why is doesn’t matter.
There are two ways to look at this. One is that those that cram for tests are doing "what the employer requires" and do will make good employees, so the system is working. Those that go this approach probably learn stuff along the way as well.
The group that focuses on pure learning, and engaging with the material, may not end up with the best marks, but they have a deep understanding, and delight in the subject that will serve them very well over their working career.
Equally though, not all courses are equally useful (to one person). I enjoyed oceanography, I went to class, did the work (mostly) and learned something. But I don't like boats (get seasick) so I've never "used" any of that knowledge. Ditto astronomy.
Comp Sci on the other hand consumed all my spare time. We gave ourselves extra tasks, read far beyond the textbook, and pushed the envelope. This would be our career and we were all in. Sometimes test scores suffered (I didn't actually study for tests) but I got a job (one I still have and love) and 30 years later I'm still applying those fundamentals I learned.
Maybe I don't have the highest paying job, but I'm where I was made to fit, and money can't tempt me away.
Those that cheat, well, you can fool some people some of the time, but it's a lot of work. And a career spans a long time.
I remember it being common at my university for fraternities to maintain banks of old tests/quizzes so next year's pledges could cram and vomit more than the permitted amount.
This is like your ML model loading your test set into training without your consent.
Yeah if you're an ML model trying to get the high score on the test set why would you explore the deeper features of the data when you can just overfit and get 100%?
At least in my experience, my professors didn't make the old material available to other students, and neither did the fraternities/sororities.
Some stuff you just have to drill until it makes sense. Ordinary differential equations was a bit notorious when I studied. Most people took 50-100 hours of drill before they could solve them reasonably competently (enough to get an A). For me it was that and some of the control theory stuff that to this day still seems like a dark art.
Other stuff once you understand it the exams are straightforward, if tedious. Antenna design was like that for me, I'd solve it geometrically in my head then work out which transforms and equations matched my solution. Other people just ground that stuff out along with all the rest. I hope no-one was twisted enough that ODE's made sense...
> They won't go to the best schools or get the best jobs because they aren't cramming flash cards of likely test answers.
Can you clarify what you meant by this? As it stands it sort of reads like you claiming actually smart people don't get into the best schools - which is absurd.
I always tried to understand things. Craming was a last resort, when that didn't work. I find learning things I don't understand or have a mental representation for extremely boring and an utter waste of time and energy.
Are you labouring under the illusion that the learning was singsong to do with enhancing rather than retarding the individual? Did you believe the purported reasons for the education systems being as they are?
No, educating people is about the governance structure de-individualising people making them all think its a similar way that both fosters uncritical love on the system as well as dependence.
It's not that I like or respect cheaters, it's that I'm just entirely unbothered by them. They're just students taking a high risk strategy and they'll sink or swim and I'm not angry about them or shedding any tears for them. Students who actually focus on trying to learn instead of trying to pass tests are screwed even if there wasn't a single cheater in the classroom. They won't go to the best schools or get the best jobs because they aren't cramming flash cards of likely test answers.