More on Fuqua

While I'm no advocate for cheating, I'm starting to feel a little sorry for the b-school students who are getting expelled from Fuqua. I read another article about it this morning, and it sounds like the whole thing is getting blown out of proportion.

For starters, it was an open book take-home test. And the "cheating" was that the students collaborated while working on it. If it's open book, does it really matter that you talked about it with some other students? Really, an open book test is only testing your ability to read and apply what you read. Also, the only reason they know the students collaborated is because they openly admitted to it.

This is my favorite quote from the article:

"'I would say at many business schools it is a part of the culture,' Dr. McCabe said. 'You want to talk rationalizations? I could give you thousands of them: everybody else does it, it’s the teachers’ fault, you have to do it to get ahead.'"

Makes us sound like middle school students.

I've got another rationalization -- in b-school you don't do anything independently. Every single project we have is team-based or collaborative, because that's pretty much how it works in the real world. Your ability to work with people is what makes you succeed in the workplace. Collaborating with other students, studying with other students, and talking about everything is ingrained within the first month of your first year.