Report: Cheating not uncommon at Yale; getting caught is rare

Students walk into Yale University’s Old Campus in New Haven last October. Students walk into Yale University’s Old Campus in New Haven last October. Photo: Arnold Gold / Hearst Connecticut Media File Photo Buy photo Photo: Arnold Gold / Hearst Connecticut Media File Photo Image 1 of / 8 Caption Close Report: Cheating not uncommon at Yale; getting caught is rare 1 / 8 Back to Gallery

NEW HAVEN — About 14 percent of Yale University undergraduates admitted they cheated while at Yale but few of them were caught, according to a Yale Daily News survey of more than 1,400 students published Thursday.

Two percent admitted cheating on an exam during their time at Yale, and fewer than one percent reported cheating on an essay or paper last fall, the Daily News reported.

The Daily News also reported that 24 percent of those surveyed said they had copied answers from another student’s “problem set” during the fall 2018 semester.

Of 191 students surveyed who said they had cheated at Yale, 8 percent said they had been caught and 82 percent said they had not been. Ten percent did not answer the question.

Also, according to the Yale Daily News survey, 26 percent of undergrads said they had caught someone cheating. Four percent did not respond to the question.

Freshman Ernestina Hsieh, who studies architecture at Yale, said that coming from a high school where cheating was common practice, she actually was impressed by the 14 percent figure, though she acknowledged that incidents could be underreported.

Hsieh also questioned the nature of “problem set” copying reported in the study, noting that many students might use other problem sets either for guidance when they are struggling or to correct their own answers. That doesn’t mean they’re not doing work, and many classes actually provide answer keys as a guide to students, she added.

A sophomore studying economics, who would not give her name, said many professors encourage collaboration, and if that’s the kind of copying students were reporting, the idea that 24 percent said they did so last fall is unremarkable.

If the rate of students who copied problem sets without doing any work was even as high as 12 percent, however, she would be surprised, the student said. Hsieh expressed a similar sentiment, saying she thought it would be unusual for someone with that “attitude to learning” to make it to Yale.

But, she acknowledged, everyone has bad weeks, which may lead to sporadic problem set copying among students.

Professor Yair Minsky, chairman of the Mathematics Department, said problem sets can be a “grey area,” the Yale Daily News reported, especially for nonmath majors, but said students should do their own work.

Kari, a sophomore at Yale, said she was not surprised by the survey results, and suspected that if applied only to science, technology, engineering and math majors, the number would be higher. In fact, the survey did show higher rates of cheating reported among math and science majors but not engineering, the humanities or social sciences, the Daily News reported.

Kari said she frequently has seen students who copy problem sets in order to meet a deadline and go back later to learn the material.

“People get stressed. I think there’s a lot of pressure on campus to do well,” said the sophomore economics major, when asked why she thought students might resort to cheating.

Survey respondents who admitted cheating on tests said they “‘[looked] stuff up in bathroom on phone,’ ‘opened up [their] book in the middle of a test’ or ‘[looked] at other people’s papers,’” the Daily News reported. The responses were anonymous.

The Daily News also asked 117 athletes recruited by Yale and 22 percent reported cheating while at Yale, 31 percent reported copying problem set answers last fall and 18 percent reported using “study drugs.”

University consequences

In addressing academic dishonesty, Kari said a more flexible deadline policy could help, adding that hard deadlines are not always conducive to learning. She acknowledged that implementing a flexible policy can be difficult in large lectures, however.

Kari pointed out that Yale recently implemented a policy making it easier for student athletes to receive extensions.

When asked whether the policy was fair, Kari said that that was hard to judge — plenty of students, herself included, are heavily involved in extracurricular activities. Still, she was not opposed to the policy, and suggested that greater understanding toward students with extracurricular commitments would help the situation.

Kari also said academic pressure is a nationwide cultural problem, and a shift to a more holistic educational approach could help improve problems such as study-drug use.

In the meantime, students who have engaged in academic dishonesty face consequences dictated by university policy

According to the university website, “Yale regards cheating as a serious offense, for which the standard penalty is two semesters of suspension.” However, penalties can range from a reprimand to expulsion.

According to the Handbook for Instructors of Undergraduates in Yale College, “Any form of academic dishonesty, whether it be cheating on a test or an examination, plagiarism, improper collaborating on assignments, or the submission of the same essay to two instructors without the explicit consent of both, must be reported to the secretary of the Yale College Executive Committee, either directly or through the student’s residential college dean.”

The Executive Committee is made up of eight faculty members and 12 undergrads and is responsible for enforcing Yale College regulations and determining disciplinary action.

The handbook discourages informal sanctions by teachers. “For the sake of consistency, impartiality, fairness, and due process in treating cases of academic dishonesty, it is essential that all such cases be referred to the Executive Committee rather than being settled privately between instructor and student,” it states.

In the committee’s fall 2017 report, the most recent available, 46 students were reported for academic dishonesty, including 13 for plagiarism, 15 who shared problem sets or copied others’ and three who cheated on exams. Penalties included eight suspensions, 13 students put on probation, five reprimands and four charges withdrawn and 16 carried over to the spring semester.

According to the Daily News article, “Some of those who were caught had to meet with their professors, their director of undergraduate studies, the dean of their residential college or the Executive Committee before facing the possibility of punishment — such as a zero on the assignment, a citation or being put on academic probation.”

Yale College Dean Marvin Chun said, “I’m shocked, and I’m very sorry to hear that,” according to the Daily News. “When students cheat, they’re also cheating themselves out of an education. We have many people working on Executive Committee very diligently to ensure academic integrity of all the work that happens at Yale, but it sounds like a lot of cases are going undetected.”

According to the Daily News story, 8 percent of respondents have used “a non-prescribed ‘study drug’ — a prescription drug such as Adderall, Ritalin, etc. — to enhance their studying.” The story did not say how the students obtained the medications. A 2005 study in the journal Addiction found that of 10,904 students at 119 four-year colleges and universities surveyed in 2001, 6.9 percent had reported nonmedical use of prescription stimulants, such as Adderall, Dexedrine and Ritalin, which are prescribed to treat attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder.

Another small survey reported in the May 2018 issue of the journal Pharmacy found that the drugs may not improve students’ ability to concentrate. “Contrary to common belief, Adderall had little impact on neurocognitive performance in healthy college students,” the study reported. While the researchers hypothesized that student performance would be “enhanced,” “findings indicated that Adderall lead to mixed effects including both impairment in cognitive functioning (working memory) and improvement in attention performance.”

Reporters and editors at the Yale Daily News were asked to comment on the survey and their methodology and Chun and Minsky were asked to comment on the story. The Yale communications office also was asked for comment. None had responded as of midday Thursday.

Yale University has 5,453 undergraduate students, according to its website.

edward.stannard@hearstmediact.com, 203-680-9382; meghan.friedmann@hearstmediact.com