There were historic breakthroughs, such as the selection of Harvard’s first woman president, and there was tragedy the horrific shooting spree at Virginia Tech.
But if the academic year now winding down had a theme, it was a more subtle one: dishonesty.
Consider:
Nine MBA students at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business faced expulsion, and 25 others lesser punishments, for their roles in an exam-cheating scandal, the most high-profile of several this year.
Nine students were dismissed and another 37 given lesser punishments for cheating on an exam at Indiana University’s dental school. At the U.S. Air Force Academy, 18 were expelled and 13 placed on probation. And Ohio University continued to deal with the fallout of a report that found “rampant and flagrant” plagiarism by graduate students in its mechanical engineering department.
Marilee Jones, a popular and admired dean of admissions at MIT, resigned after admitting she had fabricated her resume when she first applied to work at MIT in the 1970s and never corrected the record. Jones was a prominent campaigner to help students reduce their anxiety about impressing and applying to top colleges, and the revelations stunned the admissions community.
An investigation by New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo called into question whether students really get honest advice from college officials who are supposed to help them navigate the maze of financial aid. Cuomo’s investigation and The New America Foundation, a think-tank, have exposed conflicts of interest among a handful of financial aid officers and loan companies.
