Re: Honor Systems
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There is a relatively famous Honor Code at Princeton University for all papers and exams. There is no policing: no proctors or teachers in the room while taking exams, many exams are take-home (even if they are timed exams and/or closed book - you are on your honor not to take more than the allotted time and not to use prohibited materials).
Once, instead of turning in a final exam, I accidentally put it in my backpack and took it home. The next day, I opened my backpack and, to my surprise, saw the exam there. I immediately wrote to my professor saying what had happened. He told me to bring the exam to his office. I went and he asked me if I had completed it on time without using any books, completely in the manner that was appropriate. I said I had. He made me sign the honor code again in his presence and then took the exam and graded it.
Of course there is cheating at Princeton, but I don't think it's any worse than anywhere else. And the fact that you can take your exams in such freedom and people can assign takehomes and stuff makes everything so much nicer. It's not like a police state and you're not like a prisoner. It's a place to learn and you're a valued student. I think that 99% of the people really value the honor code (even those who might cheat it once or twice) and therefore people don't rampantly cheat because they know that would cause it to go away.
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To be fair though to get into Princeton you have to go through a fairly rigorous selection process. You already have a much higher percentage of intelligent hard working kids who take pride in what they do by the time they get into that school.
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FWIW, many of my friends there could not have cared less about grades and were experts in gaming the system to graduate while doing as little as possible (or in some cases, not graduate while doing as little as possible...), and none of them would have ever dreamt of cheating to get by - aside from the stigma attached to it, the consequences of getting caught are just awful.
The only person I know who ever had to go in front of the honor committee had turned in a paper where a section set apart from the text as a block quote had a blank footnote - he missed it in proofreading, but it was pretty clear from the formatting that he wasn't claiming the text of the quote as his own. For not having a citation, he was forced to leave school for a year - this was the least severe punishment the honor committee gave out.
Its pretty hard to actually fail a class, and I just can't imagine cheating being worth it when the probable consequence of getting caught is expulsion, and merely having a minor screw-up make you go in front of the honor committee, even if you're eventually found innocent, is a huge social stigma. There's just no way it makes sense.
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