There are many general truths about UF that students should know.
The most important: The higher the floor, the cleaner the bathroom.
The next most important: You ever notice how books in required classes — either general education or critical tracking, but more often the former — are plentiful, expensive and (more often than not) written, compiled or edited by your professor? In those classes, a significant portion of your grade comes from some assessment or other to make sure you “read” — purchased — the book and went to class. And these assessments are usually with some sort of online companion that comes along with the book that you have to pay for?
That’s pretty standard.
The worst offender at UF is the Age of Dinosaurs class, taught halfheartedly by some aloof archaeologist who authored an overly expensive book and companion CD.
The class is of such obviously little academic merit it’s hard to imagine why it’s a staple of the course offerings. But imagine the reason I did:
Textbook companies are always in a tizzy to make money because they’re selling a product people usually buy begrudgingly. Once books are reprinted, students resell them to each other, and the company sees none of that money. Worse yet, students don’t want to read the books at all. But then computers came along and allowed the textbook companies to sell licenses to online companions, which the professors always seem to use.
Well, the Age of Dinosaurs professor realized if he wrote up a textbook and put all the tests on a CD that comes with the book, students would assemble a test bank of all the questions and distribute it, making the class an easy A for anyone willing to pay the toll. The students need a science credit, and Hera forbid they take a class where the professor requires thinking (or even reading) and gives you a C if you don’t.
There’s no way the professor is oblivious to this.
Textbook companies take great pains to ensure kids in premed classes can’t cheat the system like those in Age of Dinosaurs can.
Hell, the chemistry department even scans all the lab reports in CHM2045L into a database and cross-references them to find any cheaters.
(I know this because I included the word “skanky” in one of my lab reports and the scanner has an obscenity filter. Horvath was not pleased.)
The textbook company doesn’t care if you read the book; they only care that you buy it — and so does the professor, so he can get his royalties.
So they’ve offered a way for students to satisfy their general education requirement and boost their GPA without ever opening a book. That’s an offer a student would be hard-pressed to refuse.
Both the students and the professor know they’re doing something unethical that benefits the both of them, so no one says anything about it.
This is why the standard talk most professors give about plagiarism and cheating drives me nuts.
They act as if it’s because the members of my generation innately have worse ethics than those prior — and therefore we need to receive thorough lectures on copyright law and “academic integrity.” But I think students are receiving mixed messages from professors about the subject.
That’s why that unfortunate student who got caught cheating in a computer science class last Spring for having old test data had the gall to say, “I’m really angry at the fact that students got away with this in earlier semesters. We are taking the hit, and I believe that is unfair.”
Students know this behavior isn’t right, but some professors make it more OK than others.
Chip Skambis is a telecommunication senior. His column appears on Mondays. You can contact at opinions@alligator.org.
