Just Making Sure...

I was dismayed to read the other day that university authorities in the UK are considering fitting CCTV cameras in examination halls to prevent cheating. My goodness, what is this world coming to? Whatever next - security scanners at the entrance to the exam hall to stop students smuggling in exploding pencil cases?

But seriously, folks, exam cheating is serious business. And, if current experience is anything to go by, it seems to be increasingly big business. Of course, it's easy to say "in my day, we never had exam cheating", but from where I'm standing, this would be true. When I started my academic career in British universities in the 1980s and 1990s, cheating was very rare, and made the news when it did happen.

As a result, exam room security was fairly lax - lecturers who acted as invigilators would carry out a desultory tour of the exam hall once or twice, then go back to their desk at the front and carry on marking their papers or reading one.

There was a general feeling that the students could be trusted, and if they did cheat, they would be dealt with extremely seriously anyway. So we never needed CCTVs or any Nazi-style checking or monitoring.

But the world changed for me when I went to work in a university in Poland in the late 1990s. That was when I found out that the Poles are world experts in exam cheating. I was told many war stories by my Polish colleagues, including the famous tale of the student who received the answers to a test via a ham radio link with a friend outside.

In my Polish university, I saw for myself how girl students would wear very short skirts to exams, with a little piece of paper containing the answers stuck in the hem. If you don't look, you would miss the young lady take the piece of paper out from her skirt to see the answers. If you look too closely, you might be accused of sexual harassment. Neat trick.

Then one day, during a final exam, my fellow invigilator caught a student with one such piece of paper hidden up her sleeve. When we ejected her from the exam room, I never forget her explanation for her misdeed. She said she was "just making sure" that she knew the right answers!!

Here in Malaysia, they tell me that Malaysian students, too, are world champion exam cheaters, though I personally have had no first-hand experience. In any case, over here, a lot more care is taken to make sure students don't cheat. For instance, invigilators in my university are not allowed to bring their marking or other reading matter with them into the exam room. So they have to spend the whole exam patrolling around looking for cheats.

Also, students have to fill in a form if they want to go to the toilet - a common place where notes can be hidden for later retrieval. This 'borang tandas' (toilet form) as I call it, allows the administration to pinpoint exactly who goes to the toilet and when, just in case someone does go into the toilet to 'make sure' they know the answers!

Finally, our students have to place their mobile phones on the floor next to them, and programmable calculators are often carefully checked by the invigilators. But so far, here in Malaysia, they haven't installed CCTV cameras!

But, no matter how many precautions you take against exam cheating, the phenomenon still happens. Personally, I cannot understand it. I mean, call me old fashioned if you like, but I cannot see why students can't do what they are supposed to do and STUDY? Why is it that so many students think that education can be obtained the easy way by either cheating in the exams or by other forms of academic dishonesty such as plagiarism?

Are students that stupid? Obviously they are not. Have the stakes got that high? Obviously, yes they have.

Otherwise, students wouldn't cheat, wouldn't expect to get A for every course despite not having the ability, and wouldn't write essays and term papers that are copied word for word from someone else's work.

I happen to believe that the only things worth having in this world are gained through hard work and determination. If you want a higher education, fine, you have to work for it, otherwise it has no value, either to yourself, or to a potential employer.

So why not use your brains, which presumably got you into university in the first place? Don't complain bitterly to the university authorities if you don't get that A you believe you so richly deserve. Don't criticise the lecturer just because you didn't make the grade. Don't write essays in which you pass off other people's hard work as your own. And don't take the easy path to exam success by cheating.

When you cheat in exams, or commit any other academic crime mentioned here, you are showing great disrespect to those who have worked hard and succeeded before you. Also, don't forget that you are spitting on the graves of those who fought and died in the past so that you can have a chance at an education. You are effectively abusing your rights to an education, rights which other people, many long dead, have obtained for you through their struggles.

Perhaps exam cheats and plagiarists would like to step aside to make room for those who really would like to have an education, such as children in some African countries, or in war-torn Afghanistan.

No, of course not, I didn't think so....