You don’t even need to go that far. If they just expelled cheaters instead of trying to sweep it under the rug and ignore it that would go a long way.

> measuring worth by degree or grades stopped measuring learning or ability.

It still does if the test is in person

It is. I think the professor here was being naive, but I appreciate his optimism. When I was in college (in the 90s), take home exams allowed a knowledgeable student to really shine. I’m not saying that they weren’t eminently cheatable back then—they were—but they also had the odd side-effect that, if it was a class you cared about, the test itself could be a learning experience.

For context, I am also a faculty member at a highly selective college. I had a similar shocking realization last year that it was likely that there was widespread cheating on homework assignments, which I used to favor heavily toward their grades. To verify my suspicions, I generated custom tests for every student in the class: the exam included code from students’ own programming assignment submissions. All I asked them to do was explain what they wrote.

The class performed badly on this exam, and the results were strongly bimodal. Roughly half the class aced the exam. The other half could make neither heads nor tails out of the code. For the students who wrote things like “lol, i have no idea” (real response) I opened honor cases.

I think many faculty right now are going through the stages of grief. We all knew that even at selective institutions, cheating existed, that many students were in it for the credentials. But as long as the numbers of known cases was low, we could convince ourselves that the few doing it were outliers. When a class does it en masse, it’s more than a slap in the face; it makes you feel like a chump. Have we been fooling ourselves this entire time? Was all the time I spent becoming a subject-matter expert a waste? Are the students just rolling their eyes when I turn my back? Those thoughts hurt. I personally chose to become a faculty member because it seemed like research and teaching were the best ways to maximize my impact.

I still have some hope. After all, I still spend my days working and socializing with like-minded thinkers, some of whom are truly brilliant. And every year, a handful of students come out of the woodwork and surprise me. But it’s hard not to think that the group of people who find joy in learning and creating is shrinking.

That would be good.

https://www.baneproctoring.com/

Just wait a few decades until brain-machine interfaces will become a mass-market thing.

> I’m not sure why that’s controversial

Do you know what "by definition" means?

> I have met many Ivy League students and grads; they are all intelligent, at least in an academic way.

You probably wouldn't meet the dumb ones, because they're probaly not in your social class:

> rich parents

If you have privilege, don’t be ashamed. USE IT TO YOUR ADVANTAGE!

It’s yours anyway. You don’t owe society anything just because you have privilege.

Everyone else, put on a helmet! Welcome to life.

> just don't know about the "definition" part

Yes, that's the point.

> A typical Ivy Leaguer isn't a dumbass.

But that's not what the quoted sentence said.

> Try visiting a Walmart and interacting with literally anyone. That's the average.

I've been to Walmart. Does that make me average? (You say literally anyone.) Do you think that Ivy Leaguers never go to Walmart?

> Let's not allow our egos to gatekeep who we consider intelligent, fellow HNians.

You say this in the same paragraph where you rip on Walmart customers.

I think the article used a different colloquial meaning of “intelligent”, more akin to “intellectual” (the noun), as in “well educated”.

Either way, an odd statement shouldn’t normally instantly invalidate the whole article.

I didn't attend an Ivy League, but I think I went to a good school. I was very nervous before I left for school - a little intimidated, so I talked to an academic mentor. He told me something I'll never forget: "You're gonna be around a lot of really smart kids. No doubt about it. But, mostly, what you're gonna find is you're surrounded by a lot of rich kids." He was 100% correct. Lots of smart kids, and lots of kids from well-to-do families. I think I met, maybe, 2 other kids that were as broke as my family.