Hi there. In this education post, I would to highlight some weird ways of student cheating.
The motivation behind this post was based on this post. It is from The Varsity, the University of Toronto's student newspaper.
University of Toronto's Crazy Cheating Cases
Elbowing the Invigilator
An invigilator or proctor is someone who monitors students during tests at universities. Invilgilators make sure that students don't cheat. I used to do a couple of these as a part of my graduate school stipend pay.
The one invigilator in this story noticed something shiny under a student's seat. It was a cell phone. As the phone was about to be seized, the student elbowed the invigilator in the chest and ran away.
The test taker was actually someone who was hired by the student to take the test.
Teaching Assistant Helping Students Cheat
An acturial science teaching assistant (TA) charged 3 students 1500 CAD each for answers to two tests. The teaching assistant was there for the first test. The TA gave answers to the students in the washroom. For test two, the answers were given directly as this teaching assistant was the only invigilator in the room for most of the exam.
For me personally, this case makes me sick. The existence of a cheating industry is messed up. Anything for money I guess.
Paying People To Help Cheat
For this one. I quote part of it from the source.
Craigslist is great for used bikes and relatively cheap rentals, but one calculus student found another good use for it, posting:
Looking for a asian (Chinese, Korean) guy who graduated from or currently
attending to U of T who is good at math.
3 midterms + 1 final
I will pay you $1000 + bonus
Caontact me at 647-300-8478
(text preferred)
The university was suspicious of the post. Faculty members identified the student through his phone number and called him into a meeting.
Cheating Boyfriend
Some boyfriend in university managed to manipulate two students into doing 21 assignments for him across 9 courses. Then these students became his girlfriends. These girlfriends went the extra mile in attending his course lectures and preparing a presentation for him.
It is not known if these girls were paid to do his course work. Also, what the heck are these girlfriends doing? Don't they have courses of their own to do? How lazy is this guy? This case is really weird.
Closing Thoughts
There are a few people out there who really don't want to put in the work in improving their own skills and knowledge. They will hire someone else to do their work or find shortcuts.
Academic dishonesty and cheating do have negative impacts on the learning institutions themselves and potentially in workplaces. A person would claim they know subject X and have degree Y but they don't know anything about topic Z related to subject X.
These kind of things make you think. What if an incompetent worker at your workplace actually cheated his/her way to the degree and job? With competition for academic degrees and credentials gets intense, there will be people who will cheat their way to success.
I used to kind of look down on athletes, fitness trainers and dancers. Me looking down on pro dancers was kind of dumb of me as I used to dance for a school production. With anything movement related like athletics and dancing, you cannot really cheat here. It is either you can move, dance or play that sport or not. If too many people are in academics, then the alternative careers like pro dance, singing, athletics, baking, cooking could be okay in making money.