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  busyant
  I was a grad student @ Princeton a handful of decades ago.I was a TA for a few classes and, given the honor code, we did not proctor the exams for undergrads. We just handed them out (left the room) and returned to collect them at the end.- One of the exams in a course that I TAed had 5 free-response questions.- There were also 5 TAs in that class, so we un-stapled the exams and each TA graded one question (for consistency).- We re-assembled the exams and returned them to the students.- A few days after the exam, one of "my" students (she attended my recitation) came to me with her exam and explained that I had incorrectly graded question 2.- I told her that I didn't grade question 2, so she had to go take it up with "TA # 2"- A few hours later, "TA #2" pays me a visit and she (TA#2) is annoyed. She tells me, "Your student is trying to pull a fast one. She answered Q2 incorrectly. She erased her answer and put in the correct answer and she wants it re-graded"- I briefly defended the student and said something like, "Why would she do that... and how could you even know?"- "TA#2" responded with "... because I photocopied all of the student responses after I graded them."- Then I felt like a piece of shit for doubting my fellow TA. And felt even worse being naive enough to not be suspicious.- "TA#2" and I brought all of this info up with the prof. who was running the course.- We were told that the situation would be handled by an Honor Committee or something like that. We forwarded the information to the committee, but no one spoke to us and we were not allowed to participate in the deliberations.- After about a week, all we were told was that the student was able to explain the "discrepancy" between her exam and the photocopy.To this day, I have no idea what that student could have possibly said to explain her actions.After that, I started photocopying every damned scrap of paper that I graded.edits for clarity. The student did not get a zero on the exam, nor was she booted from the course. I don't remember if she was given credit for Question 2, but the TA and I were both expecting her to be tossed, which obviously didn't happen.
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  CSMastermind
  People blame AI but in reality it's more about America transitioning from a high-trust society to a low-trust one.
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  wps
  I've sat in classes where people at my table genuinely took pictures of the exam while the professor's back was turned (being kind to us and giving us useful information on the board) and uploaded the entire exam to the Gemini app.Cheating is all around disheartening and is now incredibly easy with all the free multi-modal models around. Real active proctoring is needed and devices need to be confiscated during exams. This is common practice in many other countries.
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  hcurtiss
  Princeton is a strange place. What on earth could be the objection to proctoring? I'd much rather have a proctor than have to narc on a classmate. And even then, the proctor just reports the matter to a student-run body? Wild.
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  john_strinlai
  huh, i had no idea princeton specifically disallowed proctors, and instead relied on an honor system. seems... like a poorly thought out system, especially given:"29.9 percent of respondents reported that they had cheated on an assignment or exam during their time at Princeton. 44.6 percent of senior respondents reported knowledge of Honor Code violations that they chose not to report."crazier is the people protesting by saying: “students should behave honorably, and that faculty and students should trust each other given the 1893 Honor Code compact.”. obviously that isnt happening if 1/3rd of the student body has admitted to cheating (meaning that the real percent of cheating is even higher).
• travelalberta
  I’ve never heard of a non-proctored exam. Every exam I took in university was proctored. If you got caught (happened every once in a while and made everything very awkward) you failed the exam immediately, got kicked out, and had a department hearing. I have a vivid memory of two girls almost killing each other as a result of one such failed scheme during a CS Logic exam of all things.I had the Naruto Chunnin Exam episodes where they write the written test on dvd as a kid and watched it all the time so it might have altered my philosophy but I’ve always viewed proctored tests as a mini game. The ability to gather information under stress, maintain composure, and evaluate the likelihood the person you were borrowing answers from knew what they were doing was always fun to me. Even on tests where I was going to get 90% guaranteed I liked seeing how much information I could parse from other people. I remember one exam I could make out another girls scantron and knew she was going to fail. She was the first person to hand in her answers and the proctor joked “wow that was quick, we’ll have to make the next one harder”.When I was a proctor I loved trying to catch people cheating. Lots of wandering eyes but never a phone. I’d have thrown someone out so quick if the pulled out a phone and that’s before ChatGPT. I can’t imagine not having proctors. Honour systems sound great and all but not in an evaluation. Tribe mentality prevents most people from ratting on others (except for those with limited social status to lose from the jump), especially when you are 19.I saw someone mention that having proctors “punished” students who followed the honour code which is insane. If you know what you are doing in an exam you’ll forget all about the proctors being there. The only people who will notice them are those trying to cheat…
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  rosstex
  I was a TA at Princeton ~5 years ago, and I had forgotten about the honor code until reading this. Yes it's true, we did not proctor exams, and students seemed to take pride in it. On every test, you got the names/signatures of those sitting next to you. But also, I had a student who was accused of not putting his pencil down when the test had concluded, and the bureaucratic process to fight the accusation was so crippling that they had to take a semester of leave anyway. So I don't see harm in tearing it down.
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  pcrh
  With reference to the "cultural" allusions of many posts in this thread, I can assure you that in the WASP UK universities of Oxford and Cambridge, all exams are "proctored".It is assumed that students will attempt to cheat, so exams are designed so that cheating is not a viable strategy to obtain high grades. So-called invigilators also patrol the exam room and will report any violations.
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  recroad
  You mean currently exams aren't proctored?! I went to the University of Toronto and can't recall a single exam which wasn't.
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  i_am_proteus
  The technical ability for the student to cheat in the present day is unprecedented.For exams in most subjects, the cellular phone is held in the lap. The student needs only briefly expose the exam page to the camera of the phone: immediate photograph of the page, ingestion of the page by an artificial intelligence, and then: the student flips the page to view the side exposed to the camera, and glances down to see the answer on the telephone.
• nottorp
  > with students pledging both to refrain from academic dishonesty and to report those they witness in violationSounds more like an 1893 cost reduction to me... have the students supervise themselves for free.
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  dbvn
  Crazy it took them 133 years to do the obvious. Assuming your *entire* student-base is morally superior to the general population
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  bawolff
  I wonder to what extent this is due to the changing roles of university. I would guess 133 years ago university was mostly upper class folks trying to better their minds, and less people wanting a degree to open up a job. Much more incentive to cheat if you just care about the piece of paper at the end.
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  fegu
  Could it be non-proctoring has served Princeton by inflating grades due to some cheating, but only now have cheating become rampant enough that it must be curtailed to destroy the reputation entirely?
• contubernio
  As professor I see little evidence of an increase in cheating. Microscopic earpieces and remote assistance we're problems already ten-fifteen years ago and copying has always been an issue (I teach mostly engineers who tend to be ahead of the curve at cheating).What has perhaps changed is that now it is easier to detect cheating because AI assisted cheating is much higher quality. As such it stands out as obvious. The mere fact that a student writes a coherent sentence and a well structured argument normally puts one on alert.That Princeton has never proctored exams strikes me as farcical. Those honor codes don't work except to support the myth that we are above all that.
• isaisabella
  Wait, Princeton NEVER have faculty proctoring exams??? Really shocks me but is reasonable for the ivy league. Nowadays, academic integrity is indeed a problem. Almost all students are using AI in their assignments, though it violates the honor code.
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  energy123
  This is good. Everyone is a cheater if they think they can get away with it. I don't mean 50% I mean more like 95-100%. Based on personal experience being in one of those classes where the opportunity existed and it was observable.
• ronburgandy28
  I would argue that the student behavior - ~30% admitting to cheating on academic work - reflects the value system shown by those holding positions/stature the students aspire to.It is a combination of FOMO (everyone else is doing it, I must also to not fall behind) similar to that which drives hype adoption, combined with a perception that moral behavior grows optional in proportion with wealth or power. The latter is empirically evident in how American society has addressed moral failures of wealthy/powerful leaders (i.e. crimes without punishment)
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  Al-Khwarizmi
  So now I finally understand why Americans use the expression "proctored exams". Because not all exams are proctored.Here in Spain, we don't have an equivalent expression because there is no such thing as an unproctored exam. The idea of being proctored is already included in the word "exam".
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  godsinhisheaven
  Maybe I haven't scrolled down far enough, but gut feeling is telling me that a lot of the rise in cheating is coming from international (read: chinese) students. Plenty of stories and personal experience of cheating rings. I tried to get into one just to see what was going on, but even though I looked the part I couldn't talk the talk.
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  londons_explore
  > 29.9 percent of respondents reported that they had cheated on an assignment or exam during their time at PrincetonWow
• nashashmi
  Difficult to imagine that people were not using phones to search for stuff while taking an exam. I can understand this being the case 18 years ago. But since the iPhone, how was honor still a thing?
• regintelapi
  Its a clear shift back to traditional assessment. It’ll be interesting to see how students adapt and whether this improves exam integrity or just adds new pressure.
• 8bitsrule
  I guess the days of advising that 'You're only cheating yourself' have come to fall on deaf ears.
• anon
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• te_chris
  Let me get this straight, they just didn’t supervise exams? For over 100 years. Lol.
• dzonga
  my wish maybe some liberal colleges already do this.eliminate exams all together - have in person discussions.if you gonna write something - to answer questions - let it be done in person then marked on the spot by your peers.better yet to test understanding - answer questions with better questions i.e critical thinking.since easily machines can do calculations, fact finding faster than us. but machines can't ask better questions
• andai
  Off topic but but why does Princeton need to sell my data to 1326 of their "partners"?
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  analogpixel
  > If a suspected Honor Code violation occurs, proctors will document their observations and submit a report to the student-run Honor Committee, where they may later testify under the same standards used for other witnesses.is this so the rich kids that have parents who pay for parts of the school can still get a pass?
• jwilber
  Well, the average grade at Princeton is an A. Not sure how much this will change anything.
• moralestapia
  Very curious to see if/how the admissions distribution changes after this.
• symlinkk
  You’ll face unfairness with DEI / diversity quotas to get in to the college, and then if you graduate you’ll face unfairness by having your job outsourced to AI or H1B, but yeah cheating in school is totally where we draw the line.
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  mmooss
  Comments express surprise that this honor code has been in place. Many schools have similar honor codes.Despite HN trendiness, SV and business world advocacy of 'animal instincts', and current cultural trends, humans are generally honest and honorable - obviously people in many places have thought that. It's good news, though many will resist it because, I think, it violates the anarcho-libertarian norms that are fundamental to these cultural trends (i.e., arguing that corruption is inevitable, human nature, etc.).
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  JumpCrisscross
  Combined with the increasing acceptance of shoplifting [1] and unprecedented corruption and criminality among our national leaders, it's hard not to read this as a moral page turning on American culture.[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/04/hasan-piker-jia-to...
• anonpolls
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• redsocksfan45
  [dead]
• huflungdung
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  avazhi
  [flagged]
• ngruhn
  So after 133 they learned to not leave dogs alone with sausages.
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  poplarsol
  A WASP ethical framework cannot survive either the extirpation of WASPs from the student body or the transformation of the education system into a high stakes mandarin style death struggle.