Recommendation for IT Certificate.

[Thorne]

they are used to cheat on the exams.

At the risk of being pedantic, is this actually cheating? It might be missing the spirit of an exam, but using this resource would be, I think, in line with the rule of an exam.

One could argue from an employer perspective that these brain-dumps are awful in that you end up with a technically qualified but practically useless employee. Or from a ethical perspective that these suck and potentially diminish the value of education and certifications.

One could also posit, however, that it is the certifications themselves that are cheating employers and employees, because it's not testing true ability, but rather memorisation talents. When a rote-memorisation test is required for employment in an industry, it can leave out those who are intelligent problem-solvers, and include instead those who lack critical-thinking but can talk the talk.
And then for those who have been in an industry a while but suddenly need to have the right bit of paper to continue their livelihood, a brain-dump study resource like this might offer the avenue to continue to have employment, without having to devote hours of study to relearning the theory and take overpriced 'bootcamp' courses for a practical application they already know how to perform.

If a college's Cisco programme is grumpy about brain-dumps, the real anger should be towards certifications and outfits that are so lazy in their testing that mere memorisation is sufficient to pass.

Ah! An interesting question, and I shall join you in pedantic revelry. Whether it is cheating or not, that very important distinction depends on the certifying organization. For roughly one half of the cert exams I've investigated or taken, braindumps are explicitly mentioned in the bylaws of the agreement (which you sign prior to taking the exams) as being considered "cheating" and thus leading to a nullification of exam results if discovered. For the other half, that distinction probably does mean it isn't cheating to use dumps.

I actually don't really care if someone braindumps, what I care about is whether someone knows how to apply the knowledge in real-world situations. People like dfrecore's husband, with years of experience and a great deal of knowledge, skill, and ability in their field, should not be held back by an exam that only requires rote memorization.