Honor Systems

[Kimbell175113]

Remember the beginning of Freakonomics, with the day care center? They start out by saying 'pick the kids up at X:00' and there was a certain amount of lateness from the parents. So the day care changed it to 'pick the kids up at X:00, and pay $Y for every 5 minutes you are late.' The quantity and severity of lateness went up. It was like the penalty was just a price, and the offense was still bad, but more acceptable, whereas before, lateness was tolerated but more taboo. You used to want to avoid it for social reasons, but now it was a legitimized option.

Maybe the honors system is similar. At Princeton (or wherever, this is all in my head, anyway) cheating is basically unspeakable, and is less likely to come up in the mind of a possible offender than if the price were clearer.

Sure, getting caught and punished somewhere is bad, but getting caught and punished when you are under the honors system (though much less likely) is infinitely bad (psychically, I mean.)

[Adebisi]

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The honor code is very important to Caltech culture. Although there is still cheating, it's pretty rare. The fact that there is so much trust among members of the caltech community is nice cuz you can do things like take home tests,

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I don't understand how people can reach conclusions like this. Of course cheating is "rare" on take home exams because it is almost impossible to get caught, and those that do it won't talk about it in an atmosphere where the honor code is taken very seriously.

[spyderracing]

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The honor code is very important to Caltech culture. Although there is still cheating, it's pretty rare. The fact that there is so much trust among members of the caltech community is nice cuz you can do things like take home tests,

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I don't understand how people can reach conclusions like this. Of course cheating is "rare" on take home exams because it is almost impossible to get caught, and those that do it won't talk about it in an atmosphere where the honor code is taken very seriously.

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No kidding. There has recently been a pretty huge problem with cheating at the University of Michigan's engineering school. It's the only school on campus that follows an honor code about taking exams. I would have to imagine it's the same in any other highly competitive field (like, I don't know.... maybe an Ivey League school?)

[Los Feliz Slim]

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Ivey League school

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[spyderracing]

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Ivey League school

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I have a Freudian man crush.

[TheWorstPlayer]

One thing I didn't mention is that the Honor Code at Princeton is a two-part code. You have to swear not to cheat and also to REPORT anyone you see/know of who cheats. So there IS a policing mechanism. In theory, someone could get expelled for not reporting someone cheating. I don't know of any cases where anyone reported cheating (but I'm guessing it's happened) but it's just another reason not to cheat. If your friends find out, they may very well rat you out to save your own asses. This is also why people take their tests with their heads down and don't look around the room. You don't WANT to see anyone else cheating, if it's happening. But in any case, obviously we can't say for sure that cheating is not prevalent. But I know of other schools where people ROUTINELY get tests in advance, cheat together, etc. and that type of thing I am pretty sure is not going on at Princeton.

[dukemagic]

There's an honor code system like that at Stanford too. I'm not going to make any claims about how common cheating is cause I have no idea, but I have never heard of anybody blatantly cheating.

There have been like two times where I've loaned someone my homework so they could copy one problem of it, but other than that, I really don't hear about much of anything.

It's a nice system. We get access to a ridiculous amount of stuff that we probably shouldn't - for example, in the Main Quad on campus, where there are lots of auditoriums with projectors/movie style seats/projection screens, they leave those buildings unlocked (even late Saturday nights) so people can go in and watch the movies on a nice setup. It's just assumed you won't trash anything or mess up the computer equipment. Obviously, the school isn't encouraging this, but they know about it and haven't done much to stop it.

[mattak]

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Remember the beginning of Freakonomics, with the day care center? They start out by saying 'pick the kids up at X:00' and there was a certain amount of lateness from the parents. So the day care changed it to 'pick the kids up at X:00, and pay $Y for every 5 minutes you are late.' The quantity and severity of lateness went up. It was like the penalty was just a price, and the offense was still bad, but more acceptable, whereas before, lateness was tolerated but more taboo. You used to want to avoid it for social reasons, but now it was a legitimized option.

Maybe the honors system is similar. At Princeton (or wherever, this is all in my head, anyway) cheating is basically unspeakable, and is less likely to come up in the mind of a possible offender than if the price were clearer.

Sure, getting caught and punished somewhere is bad, but getting caught and punished when you are under the honors system (though much less likely) is infinitely bad (psychically, I mean.)

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There was also a cool section in that book about a bagel salesman who ran his business by the honor system. Buy a bagel and put a buck in the basket. He kept meticulous records and found that %78 (ball park figure, can't remember exactly) of people are honest. He also said that people were less honest around the holiday's, and that higher income people were less honest than lower wage earners.

[Teh1337zor]

cool story TWP

[garcia1000]

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There was also a cool section in that book about a bagel salesman who ran his business by the honor system. Buy a bagel and put a buck in the basket. He kept meticulous records and found that %78 (ball park figure, can't remember exactly) of people are honest. He also said that people were less honest around the holiday's, and that higher income people were less honest than lower wage earners.

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Link for you friend!
http://www.freakonomicsbook.com/articles/bagelman.html