Newsgroups: comp.edu
Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!neat.ai.toronto.edu!gh
From: gh@ai.toronto.edu (Graeme Hirst)
Subject: Victims of Cheating
Message-ID: <88Jul26.135123edt.776@neat.ai.toronto.edu>
Keywords: Cheating isn't victimless
Organization: Dept Computer Science, University of Toronto
Date: Tue, 26 Jul 88 12:31:10 EDT

In article <2935@utastro.UUCP> nather@utastro.UUCP (Ed Nather) writes:
>But who is cheated?  Who is the "victim" of this "crime?"  Only the
>students who come to a university, pay to get an "education," and
>leave as ignorant as when they arrived.  I think this is stupid, but
>I can't find it heinous.

If a student graduates with an undeserved A, and uses this grade to get a
job, then the following people are victims:

(1)  The student with a genuine but lower grade, who might otherwise have
     got the job.

(2)  The employer, who will pay this person a year's salary or more before
     finally firing him or her.

(3)  Future applicants from the same university, whom the employer will
     now presume to be badly educated.

As long as college grades are used by others as a measure of competence,
then students who cheat to raise their grades are defrauding anyone, such
as a future employer, to whom they show those grades, and this is the
main reason why they cheat in the first place.