Life of a Lab Rat

The problem with not writing at work is that I do not get to be topical. So, this is a couple of days late.

The SMH reported a 'well-worn sting' that the Department is perpetrating. Apparently some of the papers in the undergraduate courses are multiple choice. In any one exam sitting there are four versions of the paper, in an effort to combat cheating. And it appears that the 'sting' is working well, as cheats are getting caught. Moreover, the cheats go on to display further evidence of their stupidity by challenging the (rather poor) marks they get. This is like . . . well, let's use this example:

My father works for a certain county police force in the UK. One of the favourite stings that this particular force carries out is to have someone drive a car and park it in an area where car thieves are known to operate, leave it and observe from a distance. Then when the scrote gets in to pinch it he gets nicked. But suppose a particularly dim scrote got into the car, then drove it to the nearest policeman and said "Oi, copper, me headlight's knackered, whaddya goin to do about it?". That would be pretty thick, no?

Quite. So if you're dumb enough to cheat and even dumber so that you get caught, don't give us all a laugh by complaining about it.

Anyway, the story should end there, a note in the margin of the University's business. But I bumped into Gareth at lunchtime on Friday, and asked him if he could say anything else (always thinking of my readership, me).

Oooh boy. Turns out that the Men in Black had summoned Gareth to the very bowels of the Admin block and Had Words about 'corporate image'. Something, somewhere, was not professional, apparently. All right, so maybe he should not have sounded as gleeful as he did —

"There's a wonderfully sweet feeling … It's evil of me, I know. But they're trying to get one over you and you end up getting one over them."

Think about it: Part of our business at the University is education. The product we sell is a degree. And if you are a client, you want some assurance that not only is the product you have bought from us is of high quality, but also that other people are not getting the same product for less, because then you feel cheated. It is a little more complicated than that because it's probable that cheats have also cheated themselves out of the education they are paying for (penultimate paragraph).

How do we guarantee the quality of the product? Put it another way, what is the University's Quality Assurance programme? Exams. So it is in the University's best interest to do everything it can to stamp out cheating, both for its own honour and for the peace of mind of its customer base, eh, students. So forbidding Prof Denyer from talking to the press and instructing him to turn down interview requests seems a little narrow-minded, from my point of view in the ivory tower. The Men in Black should be seizing this opportunity to show the world what a good job we are doing of making sure that a degree from the University of Sydney actually means something.

On the other hand, if certain rumours are to be believed and the University ends up turning into a money-making business, we'll need all the pass marks we can give out. Never mind the quality, feel the width!