Academic Dishonesty

If you missed it, there's been a big story in the news about a former Harvard student who essentially lied about his entire academic record in order to gain admission to Harvard, win awards there, and receive scholarship money.

When these stories come out, I always wonder: When people lie on this type of scale, are they almost always caught? Is there really no way for someone to succeed by doing this? Or is this case just the tip of the iceberg because there are plenty of others who have gotten away with it?

What makes this story more intriguing, of course, is that it involves Harvard, that bastion of academic excellence. Hockey fans may remember that Crimson goalie Kyle Richter sat out his sophomore season because of an academic integrity violation, which we assume to be cheating. (Richter returned this season and did not play nearly as well as he did as a freshman.)

The only student from my high school class to matriculate to Harvard was also a bit of a trickster. She routinely lied (to us at least, hopefully not to colleges) about her academic record, saying she got a perfect score on her SAT. She continued to brag about her perfect score even as she went to take the test a second time. She also lied about which colleges she was applying to and which ones had accepted her.

Lest I be accused of being overly negative about Harvard, I should also mention the recent case of the woman who falsely inflated her Cornell GPA from a 2.5 to a 4.0 to win dental school scholarships.

And cheating, of course, does occur at Cornell. The Sun ran a feature on this last fall. I've heard of multiple cases involving students plagiarizing on papers, including on some honors theses last year. And smaller forms of cheating - copying homework, collaborating on take-home exams, writing things on hands/arms - are quite common. For one of the Organic Chemistry prelims this spring, students cheated by writing answers on the soles of their shoes. (All footwear was inspected for the next exam.)

Put people in a high-stress setting in which grades are important, and some are bound to cheat. Administrators and professors can warn students not to cheat, but in the end, there will always be a few who choose to break the rules. I was amused to hear about an engineering professor who informed students that he would not report them if they cheated, but would instead "personally beat the shit out of them."

Of course, dishonesty isn't limited to academia. Recall the case of the former Notre Dame coach who lied on his resume. Just last night, the Times broke a story about my attorney general, Richard Blumenthal, who stated falsely that he served in Vietnam.

I worry that this Harvard story is like the movie Catch Me If You Can. On the one hand, it's a terrible thing and the criminal will be punished. On the other hand, it's cool that he got away with it for so long.