I teach programming at a public university in my country. It is a leading university in the country in my field.
I have been teaching for many years, and one issue has bothered me in the COVID period.
During online exams, I once had a class of around 150 students. When I reviewed their programming submissions afterward, I found that close to 100 students had submitted code that was identical in groups.
As I discovered this only after the exam, I gave zero scores for answers that I believed were copied. My faculty has a policy that the average GPA awarded in a course should generally not fall below 2.00. By the way, the resulting grade distribution fell below that threshold due to the cheating.
The vice dean for academic affairs told me that although I could deduct scores of students who I believe they did cheating as the instructor, I could not allow the class average GPA to fall below 2.00 on the grounds that students had cheated. He explained that, in order to formally establish examination misconduct, I would have to catch the students in the act during the exam and have them sign a document acknowledging the misconduct.
I disagreed with the logic, but I accepted the procedure.
This year, I finally had exactly such a case.
During an in-person programming exam, I caught a student with the exam questions and solutions already saved in his cloud storage. Based on the circumstances, it appeared that the material had come from someone who had taken the exam earlier.
This time there was no procedural ambiguity.
I caught him during the exam. I documented the incident. The student signed the university's misconduct form and acknowledged what he had done. I then removed him from the examination room according to procedure.
The faculty formed a committee to investigate. It included the same vice dean for academic affairs who had handled the earlier case, my department head, and several other faculty members.
Today I was called in to give my account.
When I left the room, I met the student waiting outside. He told me directly that he knew he had done something wrong. He also said he was prepared to tell the committee who had given him the exam material and which other students had received it.
Later I called my department head to ask what had happened.
I was told that the committee had decided that the student was not guilty of misconduct.
Apparently, even though the student himself admitted what he had done, the committee regarded his willingness to admit it as showing good character.
More surprisingly, when the student offered to show evidence identifying the source of the leaked exam and other students who had received it, the committee told him that they did not need to see it.
That is the part I find very difficult to understand.
Our written regulations actually prescribe a very serious penalty for examination cheating: a student can be suspended, and no grades are issued for any of their courses for an entire academic year.
I am not even insisting that the maximum penalty should always be imposed. In fact, I would be perfectly comfortable with a more proportionate or educational sanction.
But no consequence at all is not acceptable for me.
As an instructor, I consider teaching academic integrity part of teacher's role. A student should understand that cheating is unacceptable and will bring unfavorable consequences .
I also understand the pressures universities face today. The number of college-age students is declining in my country, and universities increasingly have to compete for students rather than students competing for university places as they once did. Administrators therefore understandably have incentives to avoid losing students.
However, my university is still the leading university in the country in my field. We still have far more students wanting to enter than places available. That makes it even harder for me to understand why we should be so reluctant to enforce academic integrity in a clear-cut case.
But I am struggling to see where the line should be.
If a student can be caught during an exam, possess leaked questions and solutions, sign the official misconduct form, admit to the committee that he did it, offer evidence showing where the exam leak came from and still be declared innocent then I genuinely do not understand what the university's misconduct procedure is for.
I talked with some colleagues and we concluded that next time we will not report it to the faculty but will just quietly deduct points from students we know cheated. It is easier and we can make some consequences to cheaters by that way.
But even secretly deducting points is easy, students may never know that their cheating was detected. They learn nothing about academic integrity.
At the same time, following the official process now seems pointless if the faculty refuses to act even when the evidence and admission are unusually clear.
So I would genuinely like to hear from academics, instructors, university administrators, in other countries:
What would you do in my position?
Would you continue formally reporting every case of cheating, even if the faculty repeatedly refuses to enforce its own rules?
Would you just secretly deduct points of cheaters?
Or, at some point, do you simply redesign your assessments under the assumption that the institution will not support instructors on academic integrity?
I am particularly interested in how universities in the US, Europe, Australia, Japan, or elsewhere would normally handle a case where a student is caught during an exam and explicitly admits to obtaining leaked exam material.
The vice dean I mentioned graduated PhD from the US where I believe provide quality education. But I do not understand why he still disappointedly managed the incident in that way.