I was a TA for a few classes and, given the honor code, we did not proctor the exams for undergrads. We just handed them out (left the room) and returned to collect them at the end.

- One of the exams in a course that I TAed had 5 free-response questions.

- There were also 5 TAs in that class, so we un-stapled the exams and each TA graded one question (for consistency).

- We re-assembled the exams and returned them to the students.

- A few days after the exam, one of "my" students (she attended my recitation) came to me with her exam and explained that I had incorrectly graded question 2.

- I told her that I didn't grade question 2, so she had to go take it up with "TA # 2"

- A few hours later, "TA #2" pays me a visit and she (TA#2) is annoyed. She tells me, "Your student is trying to pull a fast one. She answered Q2 incorrectly. She erased her answer and put in the correct answer and she wants it re-graded"

- I briefly defended the student and said something like, "Why would she do that... and how could you even know?"

- "TA#2" responded with "... because I photocopied all of the student responses after I graded them."

- Then I felt like a piece of shit for doubting my fellow TA. And felt even worse being naive enough to not be suspicious.

- "TA#2" and I brought all of this info up with the prof. who was running the course.

- We were told that the situation would be handled by an Honor Committee or something like that. We forwarded the information to the committee, but no one spoke to us and we were not allowed to participate in the deliberations.

- After about a week, all we were told was that the student was able to explain the "discrepancy" between her exam and the photocopy.

To this day, I have no idea what that student could have possibly said to explain her actions.

After that, I started photocopying every damned scrap of paper that I graded.

edits for clarity. The student did not get a zero on the exam, nor was she booted from the course. I don't remember if she was given credit for Question 2, but the TA and I were both expecting her to be tossed, which obviously didn't happen.

Cheating is all around disheartening and is now incredibly easy with all the free multi-modal models around. Real active proctoring is needed and devices need to be confiscated during exams. This is common practice in many other countries.

I had the Naruto Chunnin Exam episodes where they write the written test on dvd as a kid and watched it all the time so it might have altered my philosophy but I’ve always viewed proctored tests as a mini game. The ability to gather information under stress, maintain composure, and evaluate the likelihood the person you were borrowing answers from knew what they were doing was always fun to me. Even on tests where I was going to get 90% guaranteed I liked seeing how much information I could parse from other people. I remember one exam I could make out another girls scantron and knew she was going to fail. She was the first person to hand in her answers and the proctor joked “wow that was quick, we’ll have to make the next one harder”.

When I was a proctor I loved trying to catch people cheating. Lots of wandering eyes but never a phone. I’d have thrown someone out so quick if the pulled out a phone and that’s before ChatGPT. I can’t imagine not having proctors. Honour systems sound great and all but not in an evaluation. Tribe mentality prevents most people from ratting on others (except for those with limited social status to lose from the jump), especially when you are 19.

I saw someone mention that having proctors “punished” students who followed the honour code which is insane. If you know what you are doing in an exam you’ll forget all about the proctors being there. The only people who will notice them are those trying to cheat…

"29.9 percent of respondents reported that they had cheated on an assignment or exam during their time at Princeton. 44.6 percent of senior respondents reported knowledge of Honor Code violations that they chose not to report."

crazier is the people protesting by saying: “students should behave honorably, and that faculty and students should trust each other given the 1893 Honor Code compact.”. obviously that isnt happening if 1/3rd of the student body has admitted to cheating (meaning that the real percent of cheating is even higher).

It is assumed that students will attempt to cheat, so exams are designed so that cheating is not a viable strategy to obtain high grades. So-called invigilators also patrol the exam room and will report any violations.

For exams in most subjects, the cellular phone is held in the lap. The student needs only briefly expose the exam page to the camera of the phone: immediate photograph of the page, ingestion of the page by an artificial intelligence, and then: the student flips the page to view the side exposed to the camera, and glances down to see the answer on the telephone.

Teachers increasingly must assume that students will not learn on their own outside of the time spent in class. This is difficult because we only see students for a handful of contact hours every week, and there is not enough time to both lecture AND ensure that a student has attained thorough understanding of the material. Teachers have adapted to this in various ways, but another stressor is that students are coming into college much less prepared. When I teach precalc I essentially have to assume that I will need to teach students how fractions work. The current system is not built to support this kind of learning. In order to make sure students are really learning, I now have to cut out major portions of the curriculum to make sure I have time to do active learning during class. It's obvious through students' performance that their understanding of things we work on in class is much more internalized and sophisticated than things I lecture about but assume they will learn on homework problems.

A novel I really love is Anathem by Neal Stephenson. While Anathem is an admittedly goofy work of fiction, I do think Stephenson's vision of the future is compelling: the purity of mathematics education and research must be protected from the hyper-technological outside world. In reality I'm not anti-technology of course, I feel like access to a non-internet-connected computer is fine. But, I wonder if such a model would work for an educational institution?

It is a combination of FOMO (everyone else is doing it, I must also to not fall behind) similar to that which drives hype adoption, combined with a perception that moral behavior grows optional in proportion with wealth or power. The latter is empirically evident in how American society has addressed moral failures of wealthy/powerful leaders (i.e. crimes without punishment)

What has perhaps changed is that now it is easier to detect cheating because AI assisted cheating is much higher quality. As such it stands out as obvious. The mere fact that a student writes a coherent sentence and a well structured argument normally puts one on alert.

That Princeton has never proctored exams strikes me as farcical. Those honor codes don't work except to support the myth that we are above all that.

https://www.dailyprincetonian.com/article/2025/12/princeton-...

Here in Spain, we don't have an equivalent expression because there is no such thing as an unproctored exam. The idea of being proctored is already included in the word "exam".

Wow

Sounds more like an 1893 cost reduction to me... have the students supervise themselves for free.

eliminate exams all together - have in person discussions.

if you gonna write something - to answer questions - let it be done in person then marked on the spot by your peers.

better yet to test understanding - answer questions with better questions i.e critical thinking.

since easily machines can do calculations, fact finding faster than us. but machines can't ask better questions

is this so the rich kids that have parents who pay for parts of the school can still get a pass?

Despite HN trendiness, SV and business world advocacy of 'animal instincts', and current cultural trends, humans are generally honest and honorable - obviously people in many places have thought that. It's good news, though many will resist it because, I think, it violates the anarcho-libertarian norms that are fundamental to these cultural trends (i.e., arguing that corruption is inevitable, human nature, etc.).

[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/04/hasan-piker-jia-to...