Harvard University announced Thursday that it would be conducting an investigation on some of its undergraduate students regarding an alleged cheating or 'inappropriate collaboration' suspicion on a take-home final exam, USAToday reports.
About half of the class of 250 are suspected of jointly collaborating to come up with answers or sharing the answers through emails or other means of communication. The take-home test had a bunch of short questions and an essay assignment and had the no-collaboration policy clearly printed on the exam.
"These allegations, if proven, represent totally unacceptable behavior that betrays the trust upon which intellectual inquiry at Harvard depends," Harvard President Drew Faust said in a statement.
The suspected students will be appearing before a subcommittee of the administrative board which reviews such issues of academic integrity, said Jay M. Harris, dean of undergraduate Education, reported AP. He also stressed on the fact that none of the allegations have proven and mentioned that there is no evidence for widespread cheating at Harvard.
The future actions of the board as well as the identities of the students and the class will be kept confidential. The punishment may range from first offence warning to forceful withdrawal from the university for a year, reports AP.
The suspicions of cheating rose when a teaching fellow noticed similarities among a number of exams in mid-May and brought it to the attention of the professor in charge of the course, Harris told Bloomberg. That apparently led to the Administrative Board to begin a review of every exam.
The course includes students from all the four years and there is a possibility that some of the accused in the cheating might have already graduated. But, Harris refused to comment on the punishments that could be imposed on them in these circumstances.
In the wake of such serious allegations, the Ivy League university is planning to institute an academic code of honor and the administrators are also reportedly exploring new strategies for educating students about academic norms, reports Boston Globe. Apparently, the increasing instances of plagiarism through easily-available online information have compelled the administrators to intensify their effort of enlightening the students about academic integrity.
