Half of Cambridge students cheat. Still a Top 10 university?

[Hippo]

Half of Cambridge students cheat
Published: Oct. 31, 2008 at 10:48 PM

CAMBRIDGE, England, Oct. 31 (UPI) -- A poll of students at Britain's Cambridge University found nearly half of respondents admitted cheating or submitting an essay they found on the Internet.

...
The survey found 82 percent of those polled admitted using the open-source Internet encyclopedia Wikipedia instead of approved research sources.

http://www.upi.com/Top_News/2008/10/31/Poll_Half_of_Cambridge_students_cheat/UPI-74291225507701/

 

[misgfool]

I thought the ranking system is based on citations in scientific journals or something like that. Even if students are shooting themselves in the foot doesn't make university bad.

 

[Moonbear]

I thought the ranking system is based on citations in scientific journals or something like that.

I don't know about the UK, but in the US it's based on research funding, an indirect indicator of research quality, not academic performance of the students.

 

[mgb_phys]

There is no official raning system - the top lists are published by various newspapers, admissions guides etc.
There used to be the Research Assesment Exercise where the department stops all research for 3months every year and submits a huge amount of documentation and is then assessed by another university you then get a mark out of 5.

My old dept at Cambridge once got a 4.9 and since anything less than a 5 naturally means that the dept is shut down and all the staff shot - there was an investigation.
What happened was that a course we didn't teach was on the list. Half the reviewers automatically put a 5 because it was Cambridge, the rest noted this and left the answer blank which scored a zero. Naturally the committee in charge simply averaged the results! A case was made that in fact dividing the score by the courses we did teach we actaully scored more than 100%.

 

[Moonbear]

My old dept at Cambridge once got a 4.9 and since anything less than a 5 naturally means that the dept is shut down and all the staff shot - there was an investigation.
What happened was that a course we didn't teach was on the list. Half the reviewers automatically put a 5 because it was Cambridge, the rest noted this and left the answer blank which scored a zero. Naturally the committee in charge simply averaged the results! A case was made that in fact dividing the score by the courses we did teach we actaully scored more than 100%.

That sounds like my teaching evaluations from last year. I didn't lecture last year, I was only a lab instructor, yet, instead of skipping over the question on the quality of my lectures on my teaching evaluations, the students seemed to all just pick an average score for some reason. I think it would be hilarious if I got a better evaluation for not lecturing than some people do for giving lectures though. But, I've been tempted to present that to the administration as evidence of the flaws of teaching evaluations.

 

[elterrible]

That sounds like my teaching evaluations from last year. I didn't lecture last year, I was only a lab instructor, yet, instead of skipping over the question on the quality of my lectures on my teaching evaluations, the students seemed to all just pick an average score for some reason. I think it would be hilarious if I got a better evaluation for not lecturing than some people do for giving lectures though. But, I've been tempted to present that to the administration as evidence of the flaws of teaching evaluations.

The evaluations are a bit of a joke here. The instructor is not allowed to be in the room when we do them, so a student has to volunteer to collect them and turn them in the office. The instructor passes them out at the end of class (usually end the class a few minutes early) but then people rush to finish them so they can leave and you feel pressured to finish it fast so the volunteer can get it and leave and turn it in. I like to write a paragraph or so in addition to the scantron part but most people don't write anything and I always feel rushed trying to fill it out.

 

[rcgldr]

If Cambridge's goal is to produce future politicians, then they're only getting it half right, or perhaps the other half isn't majoring in political science?