| Duke University’s business school recently announced that 34 of its first-year M.B.A. students will be expelled, suspended or awarded failing grades for cheating on a take-home examination in a required class. |
| The incident was the largest ever reported in the history of the business school, currently tied for No. 12 in the nation, according to U.S. News. |
| Reaction to the scandal has tended to fall into two categories. |
| One might be called the Enron analysis: Business students, like business leaders in capitalist America, see themselves as living in a dog-eat-dog world where competition is cutthroat and any means of succeeding, no matter how unethical by conventional standards, is justified–if they don’t get caught. |
| The other reaction might be called “It’s Not Really Cheating.” |
| “If you found somebody to help you write an exam, in our view that’s a sign of an inventive person who gets stuff done.” |
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Honor codes, multiple versions of exams and turnitin.com are no “functional substitute” for the one missing ingredient: an internalized sense of honesty.
