Ethical Obligations and Decision Making in Accounting, 5/e 1
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Chapter 1 Cases
Case 1-1 Harvard Cheating Scandal
Yes. Cheating occurs at the prestigious Harvard University. In 2012, Harvard forced dozens of
students to leave in its largest cheating scandal in memory, but the institution would not address
assertions that the blame rested partly with a professor and his teaching assistants. The issue is
whether cheating is truly cheating when students collaborate with each other to find the right
answer—in a take-home final exam.
Harvard released the results of its investigation into the controversy, in which 125
undergraduates were alleged to have cheated on an exam in May 2012. The university said that
more than half of the students were forced to withdraw, a penalty that typically lasts from two to
four semesters. Many returned by 2015. Of the remaining cases, about half were put on
disciplinary probation—a strong warning that becomes part of a student’s official record. The
rest of the students avoided punishment.
In previous years, students thought of Government 1310 as an easy class with optional
attendance and frequent collaboration. But students who took it in spring 2012 said that it had
suddenly become quite difficult, with tests that were hard to comprehend, so they sought help
from the graduate teaching assistants who ran the class discussion groups, graded assignments,
and advised them on interpreting exam questions.
Administrators said that on final-exam questions, some students supplied identical answers (right
down to typographical errors in some cases), indicating that they had written them together or
plagiarized them. But some students claimed that the similarities in their answers were due to
sharing notes or sitting in on sessions with the same teaching assistants. The instructions on the
take-home exam explicitly prohibited collaboration, but many students said they did not think
that included talking with teaching assistants.
The first page of the exam contained these instructions: “The exam is completely open book,
open note, open Internet, etc. However, in all other regards, this should fall under similar
guidelines that apply to in-class exams. More specifically, students may not discuss the exam
with others—this includes resident tutors, writing centers, etc.”
Students complained about confusing questions on the final exam. Due to “some good questions”
from students, the instructor clarified three exam questions by email before the due date of the
exams.
Students claim to have believed that collaboration was allowed in the course. The course’s
instructor and the teaching assistants sometimes encouraged collaboration, in fact. The teaching
assistants—graduate students who graded the exams and ran weekly discussion sessions—varied
widely in how they prepared students for the exams, so it was common for students in different
sections to share lecture notes and reading materials. During the final exam, some teaching
assistants even worked with students to define unfamiliar terms and help them figure out exactly
what certain test questions were asking.
Some have questioned whether it is the test’s design, rather than the students’ conduct, that
should be criticized. Others place the blame on the teaching assistants who opened the door to
collaboration outside of class by their own behavior in helping students to understand the
questions better.
Harvard adopted an honor code on May 6, 2014. In May 2017, Harvard announced that more
than 60 students enrolled in Computer Science 50 (CS50): Introduction to Computer Science I
appeared before the College’s Honor Council investigating cases of academic dishonesty. While
the facts have been kept confidential so far, a statement on the course website establishes
standards for behavior: “The course recognizes that interactions with classmates and others can
facilitate mastery of the course’s material, [but] there remains a line between enlisting the help of
another and submitting the work of another.” The site provides some guidance: Acts of
collaboration that are reasonable include sharing a few lines of code. Acts not reasonable include
soliciting solutions to homework problems online. CS50 introduced a “regret clause,” allowing
students who commit “unreasonable” acts to face only course-specific penalties [not institutional]
if they report the violation within 72 hours.
Answer the following questions about the Harvard cheating scandal.
1. Using Josephson’s Six Pillars of Character, which of the character traits (virtues)