Combined with the increasing acceptance of shoplifting [1] and unprecedented corruption and criminality among our national leaders, it's hard not to read this as a moral page turning on American culture.
The fish rots from the head. It's a sucker's game to aspire to selflessly serve the greater good when the most powerful people in the land are brazenly corrupt pedophiles. In other words: monkey see, monkey do.
Hard to say for certain. Though I do think it goes both ways. People at the bottom influence culture from bottom up, folks at the top from the top down.
It really doesn’t. Trump wouldn’t survive election if the electorate didn’t seek, or at least tolerate whatever the hell you can call that. Americans will conveniently point fingers at him (as is their political tradition) but he’s a consequence of a much deeper disease.
Yes, and: the rot started long ago, this is just what it looks like when it goes unchecked. To quote Mencius:
Mencius went to see King Hui of Liang.
The king said, “Venerable sir, since you have not counted it far to come here, may I presume that you are provided with counsels to profit my kingdom?”
Mencius replied, “Why must Your Majesty use that word ‘profit’? What I am provided with are counsels to benevolence and righteousness, and these are my only topics.
If Your Majesty say, ‘What is to be done to profit my kingdom?’ the great officers will say, ‘What is to be done to profit our families?’ and the inferior officers and common people will say, ‘What is to be done to profit our persons?’ Superiors and inferiors will try to snatch this profit one from another, and the kingdom will be endangered.”
The old adage that the people elect the governance they deserve; comes to mind. The concepts of Virtue, Honour, Duty, and Justice have been declining in the West over a very long period (this is not a US specific thing). The rotting head reflects the rotting society.
> It's a sucker's game to aspire to selflessly serve the greater good when the most powerful people in the land are brazenly corrupt
You don’t act honourably because that will “get you ahead”. You act honourably because it is right.
It's a nice saying, but the "head" changes every 4-8 years and this is a problem that has gotten worse over decades. Sometimes the rot doesn't start from the head.
It's the K-shaped economy. Those not participating in the upsides are electing to either not participate in the system at all or to destroy it. Most people think Luigi Mangione is a hero.
We had a good post-WWII run. We had factories, then globalization, massive growth. But the world caught up. Now the average worker has to compete against their increasingly competent and economically enabled peers around the globe. Costs for everything are rising.
We used to have a super sized Big Mac economy propped up by the fact that America was (relatively) peerless. The worker saw so much upside. Now they don't even get free refills, so to speak.
I'm hoping the AI boom helps bring down the cost of goods without putting people out of work. If it goes the other way, I think we might be heading for 1790's France.
Are they being honest? Did Princeton students not need proctoring in the past because the had no means to cheat, or they both maintained some honor, and fear of the institution.
> in some left-wing corners of the commentariat, is out; flagrant disregard of the social contract is in.
Interesting that this is posed as the American left disregarding the social contract. I think you could make a pretty good case that the American right disregarded the social contract first in electing an extremely destructive pedophile who starts wars for reasons that can't even be articulated, pardons war criminals, engages in blatant nepotism enriching his family to the tune of billions at taxpayer's expense, large-scale fraud including being convicted of felony, adjudicated rapist, and a list of social contract violations going on for about 300 more pages that I'd be here all day typing out. And once the social contract is gone, it would be pretty weird to expect the other side to continue abiding by the terms. I don't personally make a habit of binding myself to one-sided contracts that impose no obligations on the other party.
Moral acceptance of petty theft always increases with inequality. When the poor take from the rich, people don't care as much. The poorer the thief and the richer the victim, the less people care. Go far enough, and people view the thief as a Robin Hood-style hero.
Given that we're at a point in American history where inequality is quite extreme, I don't think it's fair to compare shoplifting to the corruption of the ruling class that is largely responsible for the current levels of inequality in the first place.
To be quite frank, under current conditions, it is a moral failure to see fault with impoverished people for stealing what they need to survive, not the other way around.
Moral code is downstream from culture and not every culture sees cheating as a moral failing.
As Princeton's demo skewed hard into a more international student body, the underlying cultural assumptions have shifted.
The Christian extension of the Ninth Commandment from not bearing false witness to a blanket ban on lying is unique. Islam has explicit exceptions through Taqiyya, Hinduism gets nuanced with dharma and adharma, Buddhism sees it as one of the ten unwholesome actions, ...
WASPs built and defined Princeton, but that is long over.
huh, i had no idea princeton specifically disallowed proctors, and instead relied on an honor system. seems... like a poorly thought out system, especially given:
"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).
are feelings more strongly felt more valid? the same things are happening at caltech - that is, just as much cheating - and they have an honor code. but they feel much stronger about their honor code, so it is more valid.
AIUI, these schools see their mission as training the next generation of leaders and elites. They aim for people with strong abilities, and moral character.
And, the way you guide youth to act in a certain way is by treating them that way. If you want them to be trustworthy, you trust them. This is not a totally fringe idea.
Most of us have done something stupid once in our lives. That does not mean we do stupid things all the time, nor does it mean that we didn't learn from the experience. The goal of school is to help immature young adults grow into mature ones.
> 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
What is it at other universities? I went to a big public school, and remember cheating being halfway rampant. The penalty, moreover, was never expulsion.
i mean, i have no idea. all i can say is that when i went to school, it certainly didnt feel like 30-40% of the student body cheated at some point.
but it was a different time (no pocket computers), different system (we had proctors), and different place (i didnt have the privilege of attending a fancy school).
the only other data point i have is where i teach. but, again, we proctor exams. the incidence of caught cheating in the programs i am familiar with is less than 10% throughout the entire program. probably less than 5%, but i dont have numbers in front of me. i have no insight into anonymous self-reported cheating.
The interesting thing is that cheating is much easier when done online. When I was a TA and we were in the process of moving quite a bit of the classes to online, we still mandated in person testing.
It was eye opening to find cheat sheets and other cheating materials obviously left behind by students. The majority of the stuff we'd find we either inaccurate and completely wrong. Like a half awake student copied something they thought was the right equation or solution, when in fact, it was for something completely different that wasn't on the test.
So I agree with your notion, but its one thing to try and cheat. Its a completely different one to do so successfully.
As someone who went there (albeit many decades ago) I can tell you FWIW when I was there folks took it seriously. I literally knew of no one who ever cheated on an exam. And I'm pretty sure that anyone I knew who observed cheating would have taken it seriously enough to bring it to the process. It was pretty much a fixture of how students thought about things. So it worked (near as I could tell) back then.
But institutions take awhile to adjust to new realities, and it while looks like Princeton may have been a bit behind the curve on this one, I can understand why they were reluctant to abandon this practice. Living in an honest community cuts a lot of extra effort out - crap that you don't even have to think about. Princeton will be a less productive place to learn going forward.
I've heard that it's the same at <other elite private university I don't want to name>, and people cheat, to the point where non-cheaters are suspicious that it's just a method of grade inflation
Exames were previously proctored, and it led to a "us vs them" mentality that meant students banded together to
The Honor Code system, and removing proctors was a way to route around that—it made all of the students responsible for catching cheaters and turned the "Students vs Faculty" mentality into a "Honor vs Cheaters" mentality among the students.
Unfortunately, it seems like the "Students vs Faculty" mentality has seen too much of a resurgence due to outside factors, and the Honor Code is no longer a match for the current climate. That's what the article is about
To people who have not grown up in extremely honor-bound societies and communities the idea sounds strange, yes. To those of us who did, however, events like this remind us of how fragile those systems are and that entry should be severely restricted.
Princeton is a strange place. What on earth could be the objection to proctoring? I'd much rather have a proctor than have to narc on a classmate. And even then, the proctor just reports the matter to a student-run body? Wild.
As someone who has attended this kind of program, it's because some students will cheat and view proctoring as an annoyance.
Imo it's both on the students (plenty of students are optimizing just to get a class out of the way to do more interesting stuff) and the programs (some classes just aren't up-to-date or are viewed as busywork).
Personally, I found courses that were output heavy and regurgitation light tended to be the most successful from an honor code perspective - you can't cheat your way out of "learning by doing" when you are held accountable for the output (eg. A research grade paper or implementing a fully functional Linux kernel).
Sadly, even at Ivies most lower div classes are just rote memorization because class sizes would be massive for summary classes (100-500 students for some classes).
> What on earth could be the objection to proctoring?
There is a unique pride in being part of a community built around honor. You see this on the Swiss metro and in small-town vegetable stalls. Unproctored exams force every student to weigh the value of their honor against a better grade. That's a personal moral reckoning that might be worth the entire degree.
I specifically called out two non-Ivy examples. Humans are humans. And one of those capacities is for behaving with honor. The enemy of honor, it turns out, isn't dishonor, but cynicism. (It isn't surprising that the dominant emotion on a Silicon Valley board towards an honor system is scorn.)
No argument there. Tbf given my professional and personal background, I automatically assume the worst in all people so even though I never abused honor codes (and honestly never had the need to anyhow because I liked the classes I took with one as they tend to be the kinds of classes where professors and teacher staff are the most engaged) I think it is almost impossible to enforce one in classes beyond 30 students, because anonymity does beget some amount of bad behavior.
Princeton was that way in my lifetime (and I'm not that old : ) - corruption is not inevitable nor should honor be considered some sort of utopian dream.
I'm not sure. Most HNers appear to be in their late 30s to early 40s, which is a massive generation gap.
Classes and incentive structures have changed for people who graduated in the early 2010s compared to the late 1990s or early 2000s and neither would understand students who graduate in the mid-late 2020s.
I assume they are referring to systems like TPG in Geneva. Basically you buy a pass and when you get on an off a bus or street car there is no checking of payment it is just assumed everyone is "honoring" the agreement to pay. Every once and a while transit cops will board and check that everyone has a pass/has paid somehow and if you get caught not paying it can affect your ability to rent housing etc.
That’s just the propaganda they sell during college visits. When I was at Caltech the honor code didn’t inspire any pride, because the only way anyone got through that course load (especially ChemE) was by “cheating”*. No one had any time for pride (GO BEAVERS!)
An honor code is an admission that your curriculum is so sadistic, not even cheating will help. Princeton just isn’t prestigious enough to keep up that charade.
* At Caltech the line between collaboration and cheating was whether you listed your collaborators or not. Unless the professor explicitly indicated that it was a solo exam, group work was implied. Proctoring explicitly forbidden so every exam was take home except a few where we needed lab access (professors and TAs were forbidden from attending).
The article says that according to a survey of Princeton seniors from 2025, 29.9% admitted to cheating on an assignment and 44.6% admitted to knowing of cheating that they chose not to report. I guess they could continue acting as if they were a community built around honor, but when they have been empirically proven to not be honorable I think acknowledging this reality is the more practical solution.
Right, but there’s really only two directions you can go.
1. Install a culture of honour/virtue/accountability. Rely on duty and moral justice to keep the majority in-line.
2. An arms race to prevent ever more sophisticated methods of cheating, and the reduction in human dignity this implies. (E.g. the proctor must follow you into the toilet).
We all want the systems to be fair and just; but we also all want to be treated with dignity. No easy answers.
> If a suspected Honor Code violation occurs, proctors will document their observations and submit a report to the student-run Honor Committee, where they may later testify under the same standards used for other witnesses.
is this so the rich kids that have parents who pay for parts of the school can still get a pass?
> so the rich kids that have parents who pay for parts of the school can still get a pass?
It's Princeton. They're given due process, not administrative fiat. Also, on what planet does having "parents who pay for parts of the school" swing a student (versus administrator) run process?
Seems unlikely the student-run honor committee decision would be immune to being 'reviewed' or 'considered' by faculty. Why would they cede that power?
I've sat in classes where people at my table genuinely took pictures of the exam while the professor's back was turned (being kind to us and giving us useful information on the board) and uploaded the entire exam to the Gemini app.
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.
That’s pretty sad. Even sadder is that those people will hardly even feel it to be cheating because they’re now using AI for absolutely everything and so suddenly contented with a situation where it can’t be used they still can’t help but use it. Not a good sign.
Could it be non-proctoring has served Princeton by inflating grades due to some cheating, but only now have cheating become rampant enough that it must be curtailed to destroy the reputation entirely?
I would argue that the student behavior - ~30% admitting to cheating on academic work - reflects the value system shown by those holding positions/stature the students aspire to.
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)
The technical ability for the student to cheat in the present day is unprecedented.
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.
A WASP ethical framework cannot survive either the extirpation of WASPs from the student body or the transformation of the education system into a high stakes mandarin style death struggle.
Comments express surprise that this honor code has been in place. Many schools have similar honor codes.
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.).
Nah dude, it's just that I went to college and saw this. When an assignment was take-home, people were forming cheating rings, but because they wanted an upper hand but because they were afraid others were doing the same. I saw even some top-notch students cheat a little bit.
As a non-cheater, I didn't want draconian measures to catch cheating, just wanted there to be real consequences when someone was caught.
Combined with the increasing acceptance of shoplifting [1] and unprecedented corruption and criminality among our national leaders, it's hard not to read this as a moral page turning on American culture.
[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/04/hasan-piker-jia-to...
The fish rots from the head. It's a sucker's game to aspire to selflessly serve the greater good when the most powerful people in the land are brazenly corrupt pedophiles. In other words: monkey see, monkey do.
> fish rots from the head
Does it? Did it? We elected the "brazenly corrupt pedophiles."
This question seems complex and important enough to not be resolved with a truism.
Trump was not the beginning of the decline, only the terminal symptom.
Hard to say for certain. Though I do think it goes both ways. People at the bottom influence culture from bottom up, folks at the top from the top down.
It really doesn’t. Trump wouldn’t survive election if the electorate didn’t seek, or at least tolerate whatever the hell you can call that. Americans will conveniently point fingers at him (as is their political tradition) but he’s a consequence of a much deeper disease.
Yes, and: the rot started long ago, this is just what it looks like when it goes unchecked. To quote Mencius:
Mencius went to see King Hui of Liang. The king said, “Venerable sir, since you have not counted it far to come here, may I presume that you are provided with counsels to profit my kingdom?”
Mencius replied, “Why must Your Majesty use that word ‘profit’? What I am provided with are counsels to benevolence and righteousness, and these are my only topics.
If Your Majesty say, ‘What is to be done to profit my kingdom?’ the great officers will say, ‘What is to be done to profit our families?’ and the inferior officers and common people will say, ‘What is to be done to profit our persons?’ Superiors and inferiors will try to snatch this profit one from another, and the kingdom will be endangered.”
Or it is a dilution of the culture through mass media, social media, and immigration from countries with different values.
None of those corrupt leaders is from elsewhere. And native born americans have higher criminality then immigrants.
All of that corrupt leadership is celebrated by american americans who see themselves as true americans.
> The fish rots from the head.
The old adage that the people elect the governance they deserve; comes to mind. The concepts of Virtue, Honour, Duty, and Justice have been declining in the West over a very long period (this is not a US specific thing). The rotting head reflects the rotting society.
> It's a sucker's game to aspire to selflessly serve the greater good when the most powerful people in the land are brazenly corrupt
You don’t act honourably because that will “get you ahead”. You act honourably because it is right.
It's a nice saying, but the "head" changes every 4-8 years and this is a problem that has gotten worse over decades. Sometimes the rot doesn't start from the head.
It's the K-shaped economy. Those not participating in the upsides are electing to either not participate in the system at all or to destroy it. Most people think Luigi Mangione is a hero.
We had a good post-WWII run. We had factories, then globalization, massive growth. But the world caught up. Now the average worker has to compete against their increasingly competent and economically enabled peers around the globe. Costs for everything are rising.
We used to have a super sized Big Mac economy propped up by the fact that America was (relatively) peerless. The worker saw so much upside. Now they don't even get free refills, so to speak.
I'm hoping the AI boom helps bring down the cost of goods without putting people out of work. If it goes the other way, I think we might be heading for 1790's France.
> It's the K-shaped economy
Which side of the K-shaped economy do you think Princeton alumni are predominantly on?
??? This entire thread is unrelated. Princeton realized AI makes cheating too easy.
Are they being honest? Did Princeton students not need proctoring in the past because the had no means to cheat, or they both maintained some honor, and fear of the institution.
This doesn't seem particularly related?
> in some left-wing corners of the commentariat, is out; flagrant disregard of the social contract is in.
Interesting that this is posed as the American left disregarding the social contract. I think you could make a pretty good case that the American right disregarded the social contract first in electing an extremely destructive pedophile who starts wars for reasons that can't even be articulated, pardons war criminals, engages in blatant nepotism enriching his family to the tune of billions at taxpayer's expense, large-scale fraud including being convicted of felony, adjudicated rapist, and a list of social contract violations going on for about 300 more pages that I'd be here all day typing out. And once the social contract is gone, it would be pretty weird to expect the other side to continue abiding by the terms. I don't personally make a habit of binding myself to one-sided contracts that impose no obligations on the other party.
I can assure you with 100% certainty that the American Right did not elect Bill Clinton.
Moral acceptance of petty theft always increases with inequality. When the poor take from the rich, people don't care as much. The poorer the thief and the richer the victim, the less people care. Go far enough, and people view the thief as a Robin Hood-style hero.
Given that we're at a point in American history where inequality is quite extreme, I don't think it's fair to compare shoplifting to the corruption of the ruling class that is largely responsible for the current levels of inequality in the first place.
To be quite frank, under current conditions, it is a moral failure to see fault with impoverished people for stealing what they need to survive, not the other way around.
Moral code is downstream from culture and not every culture sees cheating as a moral failing.
As Princeton's demo skewed hard into a more international student body, the underlying cultural assumptions have shifted.
The Christian extension of the Ninth Commandment from not bearing false witness to a blanket ban on lying is unique. Islam has explicit exceptions through Taqiyya, Hinduism gets nuanced with dharma and adharma, Buddhism sees it as one of the ten unwholesome actions, ...
WASPs built and defined Princeton, but that is long over.
huh, i had no idea princeton specifically disallowed proctors, and instead relied on an honor system. seems... like a poorly thought out system, especially given:
"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).
are feelings more strongly felt more valid? the same things are happening at caltech - that is, just as much cheating - and they have an honor code. but they feel much stronger about their honor code, so it is more valid.
AIUI, these schools see their mission as training the next generation of leaders and elites. They aim for people with strong abilities, and moral character.
And, the way you guide youth to act in a certain way is by treating them that way. If you want them to be trustworthy, you trust them. This is not a totally fringe idea.
>If you want them to be trustworthy, you trust them.
sure, but it seems exceptionally silly to continue to blindly trust them when a sizeable portion of them admit to not being trustworthy
Most of us have done something stupid once in our lives. That does not mean we do stupid things all the time, nor does it mean that we didn't learn from the experience. The goal of school is to help immature young adults grow into mature ones.
>The goal of school is to help immature young adults grow into mature ones.
agreed!
however, having a proctor that stands in the classroom for your exam does not hinder the growth process, in my experience.
No, they frame their mission that way.
Clearly the actions were helpful for maintaining that illusion,
while also maintaining the illusion of academic excellence,
despite rigorous courses.
Seems like it's had the opposite effect.
> 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
What is it at other universities? I went to a big public school, and remember cheating being halfway rampant. The penalty, moreover, was never expulsion.
Anyone caught cheating at my university, especially if they lied about it was expelled more or less immediately.
i mean, i have no idea. all i can say is that when i went to school, it certainly didnt feel like 30-40% of the student body cheated at some point.
but it was a different time (no pocket computers), different system (we had proctors), and different place (i didnt have the privilege of attending a fancy school).
the only other data point i have is where i teach. but, again, we proctor exams. the incidence of caught cheating in the programs i am familiar with is less than 10% throughout the entire program. probably less than 5%, but i dont have numbers in front of me. i have no insight into anonymous self-reported cheating.
The interesting thing is that cheating is much easier when done online. When I was a TA and we were in the process of moving quite a bit of the classes to online, we still mandated in person testing.
It was eye opening to find cheat sheets and other cheating materials obviously left behind by students. The majority of the stuff we'd find we either inaccurate and completely wrong. Like a half awake student copied something they thought was the right equation or solution, when in fact, it was for something completely different that wasn't on the test.
So I agree with your notion, but its one thing to try and cheat. Its a completely different one to do so successfully.
When I was at Rice a quarter century ago, I can honestly say everyone I knew took the honor system seriously.
As someone who went there (albeit many decades ago) I can tell you FWIW when I was there folks took it seriously. I literally knew of no one who ever cheated on an exam. And I'm pretty sure that anyone I knew who observed cheating would have taken it seriously enough to bring it to the process. It was pretty much a fixture of how students thought about things. So it worked (near as I could tell) back then.
But institutions take awhile to adjust to new realities, and it while looks like Princeton may have been a bit behind the curve on this one, I can understand why they were reluctant to abandon this practice. Living in an honest community cuts a lot of extra effort out - crap that you don't even have to think about. Princeton will be a less productive place to learn going forward.
The stats beg to differ. ⅓ admitted to cheating. Cheating was rampant at my uni and we also had an “honor code”
I've heard that it's the same at <other elite private university I don't want to name>, and people cheat, to the point where non-cheaters are suspicious that it's just a method of grade inflation
The history of the Honor Code system might be instructive: https://universityarchives.princeton.edu/2015/01/i-pledge-my...
Exames were previously proctored, and it led to a "us vs them" mentality that meant students banded together to
The Honor Code system, and removing proctors was a way to route around that—it made all of the students responsible for catching cheaters and turned the "Students vs Faculty" mentality into a "Honor vs Cheaters" mentality among the students.
Unfortunately, it seems like the "Students vs Faculty" mentality has seen too much of a resurgence due to outside factors, and the Honor Code is no longer a match for the current climate. That's what the article is about
To people who have not grown up in extremely honor-bound societies and communities the idea sounds strange, yes. To those of us who did, however, events like this remind us of how fragile those systems are and that entry should be severely restricted.
Princeton is a strange place. What on earth could be the objection to proctoring? I'd much rather have a proctor than have to narc on a classmate. And even then, the proctor just reports the matter to a student-run body? Wild.
As someone who has attended this kind of program, it's because some students will cheat and view proctoring as an annoyance.
Imo it's both on the students (plenty of students are optimizing just to get a class out of the way to do more interesting stuff) and the programs (some classes just aren't up-to-date or are viewed as busywork).
Personally, I found courses that were output heavy and regurgitation light tended to be the most successful from an honor code perspective - you can't cheat your way out of "learning by doing" when you are held accountable for the output (eg. A research grade paper or implementing a fully functional Linux kernel).
Sadly, even at Ivies most lower div classes are just rote memorization because class sizes would be massive for summary classes (100-500 students for some classes).
> What on earth could be the objection to proctoring?
There is a unique pride in being part of a community built around honor. You see this on the Swiss metro and in small-town vegetable stalls. Unproctored exams force every student to weigh the value of their honor against a better grade. That's a personal moral reckoning that might be worth the entire degree.
You'd hope, but humans are humans - even if they attend an Ivy.
Some individuals have heady thoughts and morals like you mentioned. Others are using it as a checkbox.
> humans are humans - even if they attend an Ivy
I specifically called out two non-Ivy examples. Humans are humans. And one of those capacities is for behaving with honor. The enemy of honor, it turns out, isn't dishonor, but cynicism. (It isn't surprising that the dominant emotion on a Silicon Valley board towards an honor system is scorn.)
No argument there. Tbf given my professional and personal background, I automatically assume the worst in all people so even though I never abused honor codes (and honestly never had the need to anyhow because I liked the classes I took with one as they tend to be the kinds of classes where professors and teacher staff are the most engaged) I think it is almost impossible to enforce one in classes beyond 30 students, because anonymity does beget some amount of bad behavior.
> There is a unique pride in being part of a community built around honor.
It has been 100(s) of years since community like this existed, now this is utopia
Princeton was that way in my lifetime (and I'm not that old : ) - corruption is not inevitable nor should honor be considered some sort of utopian dream.
> I'm not that old
I'm not sure. Most HNers appear to be in their late 30s to early 40s, which is a massive generation gap.
Classes and incentive structures have changed for people who graduated in the early 2010s compared to the late 1990s or early 2000s and neither would understand students who graduate in the mid-late 2020s.
I definitely still see honor system pay boxes in the USA. Maybe not in big cities, but outside of them.
Disc golf courses, fire wood piles, that day’s chicken eggs in a wooden box on the side of the road.
All of that is sophistry in defense of fucking over those who choose not to cheat.
What is "Swiss metro"? Curious now.
I assume they are referring to systems like TPG in Geneva. Basically you buy a pass and when you get on an off a bus or street car there is no checking of payment it is just assumed everyone is "honoring" the agreement to pay. Every once and a while transit cops will board and check that everyone has a pass/has paid somehow and if you get caught not paying it can affect your ability to rent housing etc.
Could be https://www.myswitzerland.com/en-ch/experiences/metro-lausan...
That’s just the propaganda they sell during college visits. When I was at Caltech the honor code didn’t inspire any pride, because the only way anyone got through that course load (especially ChemE) was by “cheating”*. No one had any time for pride (GO BEAVERS!)
An honor code is an admission that your curriculum is so sadistic, not even cheating will help. Princeton just isn’t prestigious enough to keep up that charade.
* At Caltech the line between collaboration and cheating was whether you listed your collaborators or not. Unless the professor explicitly indicated that it was a solo exam, group work was implied. Proctoring explicitly forbidden so every exam was take home except a few where we needed lab access (professors and TAs were forbidden from attending).
The article says that according to a survey of Princeton seniors from 2025, 29.9% admitted to cheating on an assignment and 44.6% admitted to knowing of cheating that they chose not to report. I guess they could continue acting as if they were a community built around honor, but when they have been empirically proven to not be honorable I think acknowledging this reality is the more practical solution.
Right, but there’s really only two directions you can go.
1. Install a culture of honour/virtue/accountability. Rely on duty and moral justice to keep the majority in-line.
2. An arms race to prevent ever more sophisticated methods of cheating, and the reduction in human dignity this implies. (E.g. the proctor must follow you into the toilet).
We all want the systems to be fair and just; but we also all want to be treated with dignity. No easy answers.
> If a suspected Honor Code violation occurs, proctors will document their observations and submit a report to the student-run Honor Committee, where they may later testify under the same standards used for other witnesses.
is this so the rich kids that have parents who pay for parts of the school can still get a pass?
> so the rich kids that have parents who pay for parts of the school can still get a pass?
It's Princeton. They're given due process, not administrative fiat. Also, on what planet does having "parents who pay for parts of the school" swing a student (versus administrator) run process?
Seems unlikely the student-run honor committee decision would be immune to being 'reviewed' or 'considered' by faculty. Why would they cede that power?
Princeton has so much money that they could make it free for all undergrads and literally never run out of money.
I've sat in classes where people at my table genuinely took pictures of the exam while the professor's back was turned (being kind to us and giving us useful information on the board) and uploaded the entire exam to the Gemini app.
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.
That’s pretty sad. Even sadder is that those people will hardly even feel it to be cheating because they’re now using AI for absolutely everything and so suddenly contented with a situation where it can’t be used they still can’t help but use it. Not a good sign.
Could it be non-proctoring has served Princeton by inflating grades due to some cheating, but only now have cheating become rampant enough that it must be curtailed to destroy the reputation entirely?
I honestly think it's that. I've seen it before at other private schools, where someone is caught cheating and let off with very minor consequences.
I would argue that the student behavior - ~30% admitting to cheating on academic work - reflects the value system shown by those holding positions/stature the students aspire to.
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)
The technical ability for the student to cheat in the present day is unprecedented.
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.
Yes, this is really depressing. I don't want to have to ban devices from exams, but it is something I might have to think about.
Crazy it took them 133 years to do the obvious. Assuming your *entire* student-base is morally superior to the general population
A WASP ethical framework cannot survive either the extirpation of WASPs from the student body or the transformation of the education system into a high stakes mandarin style death struggle.
Comments express surprise that this honor code has been in place. Many schools have similar honor codes.
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.).
Nah dude, it's just that I went to college and saw this. When an assignment was take-home, people were forming cheating rings, but because they wanted an upper hand but because they were afraid others were doing the same. I saw even some top-notch students cheat a little bit.
As a non-cheater, I didn't want draconian measures to catch cheating, just wanted there to be real consequences when someone was caught.
So after 133 they learned to not leave dogs alone with sausages.