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There was only one subject where I encountered widespread cheating and that was programming/computer science.
It was easy to cheat and a lot of people hated programming and didn't imagine that they would work doing actual programming when they started working. Only, this was the worst subject to cheat in because like 70% ended up doing some kind of programming work after school and this was one of the subjects that actually had real world use, unlike multivariate calculus or smth.
Fascinating. I'm curious how the classes were structured in terms of how homework, projects and exams were weighted. Also exactly how these people were cheating. Cheating on projects was common, and people would regularly copy each others work wholesale, making only minor tweaks to defeat the "cheating detection" programs. Exams were far harder to cheat at, as they were not multiple choice, were rarely rote memorization, and frequently required you to write out pseudocode to solve slightly more novel problems than you'd already encountered. I can imagine someone cheating getting up to a passing grade in these classes. I cannot imagine them outperforming me.
There was a fad (?) in the 90s (and presumably going forward from there) to weight projects in general CS/SE very highly because "we need to train people to work in a team so they are ready for the workplace environment".
Even when there wasn't outright cheating this resulted in the one or two competent people involved in any group project essentially doing all the work because everyone else was actively harmful -- so, pretty much like the workplace environment I guess.
"Individual" assignments were often treated similarly -- this wasn't such a problem for competent people because the assignments were pretty easy, but sometimes the sheer volume could be a bit much for those not in the cheating ring.
Yeah, now that you mention, I had 2 or 3 classes in my bachelors program that would fit that bill. I hit on them by accident because of a frustrating series of events. I have no idea what the total proportion of classes were like that, but I suppose someone forewarned could maximize the number of "group work" classes they had.
Here's a funny story. During one of my group work, do all the actual work sessions, my lazy good for nothing group mate showed up to "help", even though all that was left to do was a single task which could not be broken up and which he said he didn't know how to do. He's sitting around making mouth sounds about "I wish there was something I could do" and I tell him "Get me a beer". He laughs. "No, I'm serious, get me a beer from the fridge."
"Can I have one too?" And like the little bitch I was at 20 I said "Yes".
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