Academia is broken as a mechanism for education and learning. And MOOCs, despite their advantages, really can't reclaim what has been lost.
Nowadays many--most, I'd suspect--universities aren't really distinguishing themselves as the places for the building of men and women into better people and citizens of the world. Instead, they serve at the lower end as a credentialing mechanism to corporate society that someone has acceptable impulse control and willingness to embrace the system, and at the higher end as a finishing school for the finance and government elite.
Certainly at both ends some people interested in intellectually appreciating the natural and social worlds come out, but that's despite, not because of, its actual current social function. I remember the second lecture in my quantum class the professor literally reading straight out, word-for-word, from the Griffiths textbook and ran out of the classroom as soon as it was scheduled to be over. Which is an extreme example, but certainly the majority of my major classes got their value from the problem sets and textbook they forced us to work through and the people I worked with on them, not through the value-add the professor or university provides.
Why shouldn't people cheat? Our society is fine with it outside the academy (maybe not explicitly, but you can tell by how it values and punishes who do cheat). If universities exist to serve it commercially, might as well inculcate its values while it's at it.
I think cheating should go the same path has the hacking/cracking argument. There are good and bad ways of cheating both in school as well as in real life.
In my opinion someone who develops a sophisticated cheating system that allows to pass a typical brain-dump test has learned more than someone who plays by the rules.
I always believe that the one hacking the system should be rewarded at least by the same amount than the one just following instructions.
Nowadays many--most, I'd suspect--universities aren't really distinguishing themselves as the places for the building of men and women into better people and citizens of the world. Instead, they serve at the lower end as a credentialing mechanism to corporate society that someone has acceptable impulse control and willingness to embrace the system, and at the higher end as a finishing school for the finance and government elite.
Certainly at both ends some people interested in intellectually appreciating the natural and social worlds come out, but that's despite, not because of, its actual current social function. I remember the second lecture in my quantum class the professor literally reading straight out, word-for-word, from the Griffiths textbook and ran out of the classroom as soon as it was scheduled to be over. Which is an extreme example, but certainly the majority of my major classes got their value from the problem sets and textbook they forced us to work through and the people I worked with on them, not through the value-add the professor or university provides.
Why shouldn't people cheat? Our society is fine with it outside the academy (maybe not explicitly, but you can tell by how it values and punishes who do cheat). If universities exist to serve it commercially, might as well inculcate its values while it's at it.