61.9% of Undergraduates Cybercheat 484
RichDiesal writes "A recent study of 1222 undergraduates found that 61.9% of them 'cybercheat,' which involves using the Internet illicitly to get higher grades. Some of the quotes from students are a bit troubling. As one 19-year-old engineering student put it, 'As more and more people are using the Internet illegally (i.e. limewire etc.), I feel that the chances of being caught or the consequences of my actions are almost insignificant. So I feel no pressure in doing what ever everybody else is doing/using the Internet for.'"
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:What Classes Are They Cheating In? (Score:3, Informative)
As compared to the "education" you'll pick up over 4 years of pumping gas for the local 7-11?
The education you get at most colleges is entirely based on how much you put into it. You can slack through your classes, plagiarize, do minimal efforts, etc... and get a degree in 4 years with out learning a whole lot. Or you can engross yourself in your studies, push not just to meet the prof's requirements, but to exceed your own limitations.
The biggest educational lesson you can learn in undergrad studies, IMO, is learning how you learn. Some people pick it up on themselves. Some folks (like myself) get that one prof that makes their life a living hell before we finally figure it out.
I have three degrees in the CS/IT/Management fields. And of all of that schooling, Mr. Phillip Anderson's Speech class is, IMO, the most educational class I've ever taken, and for reasons that have nothing to do with speech.
-Rick
Re:Cybercheat? (Score:4, Informative)
I don't think that humanities are necessary, useful, or horizon-expanding, for that matter: hard sciences are a study of all Nature, with results that often are very widely applicable, whereas humanities are a specialized study of mostly artistic output of homo sapiens. Knowing literature won't help you in understanding what makes our world work, but knowing biochemistry may well help you understand what made your favorite author "tick" ;)
Nonsense! I'm a senior graphics programmer in the games industry mainly doing low level simd/gpu optimisations for, well, graphics! My education is as follows: I did an Art foundation, followed by an animation degree, and then a masters in animation (And in my spare time quite enjoyed playing about with C++ and OpenGL). I actually started in the games industry as an animator, and accidentally ended up as a programmer (Started somewhere new, the dev team said something was impossible. I proved them wrong with a bit of code, and was immediately re-assigned as their graphics programmer).
Very soon I found I could communicate all technical information from the programming team to the art team in a way that made sense. I could also communicate problems from the art team (which tended to be along the lines of "leg is squelching too much"), into technical jargon ("looks like you're accumulating the wrong matrix into the skin deformation"). Then we have the small matter that developing aesthetically pleasing graphical effects is significantly easier if you've got a well trained aesthetic eye. Understanding how light, shadows, and colour interact is absolutely invaluable in my field - one of those things you get taught in art classes!
FWIW, I'd say about 35% of the programmers I've worked with in the games industry (that figure is MUCH higher in filmFX), have tended to come from an art background. Almost all of the programmers I currently work with, actually attend life drawing classes in their spare time (Even if they can't draw for sh*t!), and spend countless hours honing their art skills. The reason is pretty simple: It's one of the most useful skills you can have in this field!