Cheating is BIG business! <sigh>

[khwaja1924]

Also, there is a big issue of professors, especially at the community college level, that are poor at teaching complex subjects.

This is completely off the subject; but you are completely wrong.  I've had courses at 2 4yr state universities, a 4yr private university, and 2 CC's.  I found that there are good and bad teachers at all of them.  But, I must say, for the price, I've been FAR happier with my CC instructors.  They have been far better at explaining things, are much more accessible, have longer office hours, actually are in their office when they say they are, etc.  You just get more bang for your buck at a CC.

Obviously YMMV, but I just want to point out that I don't think it matters what school you're at - there will be good and bad instructors everywhere.

I'm also going to guess that there are younger teachers at CC's, and they may have been at an advantage to make the switch to Zoom or online when it was not expected.  But even then, some schools were better than others, and some teachers were better than others.

Now that I think about it more, you are correct. I've had really bad teachers at the 4-year institutions, as well.

[ReyMysterioso]

Maybr its time to reassess how we teach , so students will be more interested in learning for the sake of knowledge and not the grade?

I completely agree with you. If you're trying to achieve target grades or scores, I think that sometimes gets in the way of actually learning anything useful. Put a system in place and students spend energy figuring out how to 'work' or 'game' the system, distracting from the actual curriculum. I personally tend to retain more from casual learning that's not part of a class and testing situation. But everyone's different.

[Supermind]

Wow! What the heck!  I used them for books, not for cheating!  12 Billion, that's outrageous!  I do not believe it...

I still don't get what people are doing, if you cheat, you won't learn.  How would you perform well in any academic setting if you do that?

Link: https://www.forbes.com/sites/susanadams/...f88f61363f

Oh wow! Shocking! However, this news article is helpful to dismiss negative stereotypes about online degree holders like us. Whenever I have mentioned about my online degrees, some friends/employers immediately bring up the question about what steps are taken to ensure academic integrity during exams. While some of them were genuinely interested to know how this is done, others were actually a bit cynical & dismissive. I should probably forward them this news article and let them know that even some of the top universities like Duke, Columbia etc are not invulnerable to fraud. Also, online universities like TESU & Walden are somehow not ‘cheating hot spots.’ Ultimately, I guess it all boils down to the individual moral fiber of the students, regardless of which university they get their degrees from.

[Alpha]

Here's another article about cheating at colleges during the pandemic
Reports Of Cheating At Colleges Soar During COVID-19 : NPR

[ReyMysterioso]

They were always cheating. Its just easier to catch digitally.