[mccon104]

Wait, so are you claiming that upon receiving the study material these kids had to have known they were cheating? Or they knew they were cheating upon receiving the test?

Because the former is preposterous. It was a pre-fab "teachers" test from their textbook publisher. It sounds like the perfect thing to take the night before the real test to see what you may need to look over one more time.

The latter is less preposterous, but still in the wrong mind. Is it the student's job to disclose what they studied? Frankly as long as they didn't actively steal their professors test I don't see how they can be put at fault. They studied hard, studying extra material, and got lucky when their professor decided to forgo doing his job and mailed-in the creation of his test. So now it's their fault for not telling the professor "hey it seems you copied someone else's work"?

These sound like regular college students in a 600 person business class just trying to graduate. They're not the morally bankrupt scourge of the earth, and your damning evidence against their employability (or apparent lack thereof) is based on them not coming forth because of a study guide?

[ghshephard]

mccon104 - your thinking regarding what my response should have been when I "Got Lucky" and discovered I had seen the test ahead of time, is pretty much what mine was when I was in Grade 12. I was wrong. The ethically correct response is to let an instructor know if you've already seen an exam that has been just handed to you. At that point, the only person in the wrong is the instructor who was too lazy to create a test that would have been new for their students.

Note - it's one thing for a high-school student to screw up (as I did) - we can only hope that the teacher calls them on it, and they learn from their experience (as I like to believe I did). What's a little disconcerting here is that these were Senior Level college students, who one would hope would have at least a _few_ people who would have stood up and said "Hey - I've seen this before."

[anthuswilliams]

I wouldn't have stood up and said that, unless the tests were identical (i.e., questions were in the same order, with the same pagination, same ordering of the multiple choice answers, etc.). Even if some questions were identical, if I had not endured an experience like yours, there is nothing about the situation that would suggest to me that what was happening was ethically murky.