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A "high powered job flying around the world" doesn't sound much like engineering work... it sounds like the kind of job that requires precisely the kind of charisma necessary to effectively pull off "cheated his way through his engineering degree".
I worked with a guy a few years ago like that. I can't swear that he cheated, but his engineering knowledge was somewhere around zero. What he was good at however was BSing management and what we call "PowerPoint Engineering." That is pictures and diagrams that describe great and wonderful things and impress management, but have absolutely no technical depth behind them. How he got his degree, I don't know, but he as slick as can be and moved up into management quickly.
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Originally Posted by BusinessManIT
... Not only was he smart but he had a good outgoing personality and an "honest" look about him. People found it impossible not to like him. I'm sure that helped him during his college days.
What I find particularly appalling is that there are services out on the Internet that will do writing assignments for students for a modest fee. Assignments range from one page high school papers to complete doctoral dissertations. It is like ordering a pizza. You specify the parameters - the subject, the length, the deadline for completion. Of course, the more aggressive the deadline the more you pay. But this is all completely legal. You "supposed to" use the service legally. Say someone works for a company and needs some research done. They pay for this service for the research and the work is delivered to the employee. The employee presents this report to their management. They can indicate on the report where they got the information from or not. Management only cares that the work was done. Also, if a person wants something for themselves, some researched information. Completely legal. But if that person is a student and decides to submit that work as their own, putting their name on it, then that is cheating.
...!
I've caught employees doing that at work. My response is if that's where they're getting their information, then I don't need to be paying them. They get the message.
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Originally Posted by Vision67
If your friend was actually doing engineering, cheating wouldn't help.
I do technical interviews for my company. In fact, they've scheduled me to do one on Monday. I ask a series of technical questions for which there is only one answer. I can tell quickly if the candidate knows his stuff. I've flunked quite a few from big Universities and I always wondered how the heck they got that degree.
It sounds to me like your friend must be a master of BS. Those guys usually end up in marketing and flying all over the world selling the stuff.
Personally, I prefer to design and build the stuff.
Agree. These types can fool the managers pretty easily, but most of their coworkers pick up on it quickly.
A "high powered job flying around the world" doesn't sound much like engineering work... it sounds like the kind of job that requires precisely the kind of charisma necessary to effectively pull off "cheated his way through his engineering degree".
So true...exactly how MBAs (or anyone else I guess) justify cheating. How when all their projects are group efforts where one person does all the work - that's just effective "delegating" - certainly an important skill for any exec-to-be.
Typical and true - doesn't mean it is right or I have to like it. Feels very Gordon Gekko-ish and we've seen a lot of people in the news recently with the same philosophy - I suppose it's always in fashion among certain folks who already feel entitled.
Quite a few ways. Can get a lot of help from the Internet. The Internet is a student's friend in getting help for both good and cheating information. Coding assignments can be looked up there. Students that have been through a previous class can sell their projects to other students. My friend bragged that he had a ready made assignment that just needed to be turned in to the professor. But the professor could tell if the code within the program was the same, and worse, had the same date/timestamp of the original submission and was on his guard for this. But my friend made minor changes to the code which changed the timestamp and fooled the professor into thinking that my friend did the assignment on his own. Other cheating students were stupid enough to submit the bought code as is and were caught...
maybe for comp-sci but i cant see how copy-pasta would work for bsee, bsme, bsce ?
Many of the international students would "cheat" by collaborating on assignments and projects, but I never saw a problem with this and I personally don't think it's true cheating. I feel like you can learn a lot by seeing how others approach and tackle problems. In industry, you always have to work together with teammates to complete projects; you never truly work alone. So why is there so much emphasis on doing everything solo in school? Always seemed silly to me.
People cheat in every aspect of life: in school, on their marriage, by declaring bankruptcy, plagiarizing, copy/paste, stolen ideas, lying about being sick so the professor can give them extra time, etc.
Cheating like above defeats the purpose of education.
Education, yes. But a degree, especially an engineering degree has quite a dear market value. So cheating is perhaps the rational thing to do (instead of flunking out). If you get caught cheating, maybe they ask you to leave. But you lose out on perhaps millions if you don't get your degree.
No I'm not, but actually I can see why it came off as that way. What I want people to realize is there is more going under the surface than people realize often. Indeed there are cheats in every field.
are they cheat or do they get the result any way they can, which is engineering, you do what ever it takes to get results and then make sure they are correct
maybe for comp-sci but i cant see how copy-pasta would work for bsee, bsme, bsce ?
I can't speak for traditional engineers like electrical, mechanical, or civil, since I never was one. I know that newly graduated Bachelor's degree engineers still have to pass an examination in order to be licensed engineers. So if you manage to cheat in your degree program, you may not be well prepared to pass the certification test.
But for software "engineers" there are no licensing requirements or even a degree required to be hired as a so-called software engineer. There are no real standards here. There are certifications inside and outside of degree programs but many companies don't require them.
That's why there are many professionals who have a problem with referring to software developers as engineers of any kind since there are no real licensure requirements. There is a warning in one of my software engineering texts about the dangers of calling yourself an engineer if you are a software developer.
But getting back to cheating, I think it would be easier to cheat in computer science/information systems since the type of classwork required is more adaptable for cheating and there is no certification exam to go through like for certified engineers and accountants. You get your degree and are ready to go.
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