The menace of Cheating

I am really concerned about the state of affairs at IITs with special reference to IIT Kanpur. There is too much hype built around the number called CPI (or CGPA as the case may be) that it is actually hindering the actual goal of these institutes. People go to all ends to achieve good marks without giving second thoughts to whether this will help in long run or not. I am really disappointed to say this, but this kind of education is devastating. Students look for shortcuts to get marks rather than going through the syllabus and look for easier ways like converting their books to text searchable pdf’s so that they can quickly search relevant text during the exam. I myself have a friend who have done exceedingly well this semester thanks to their new and expensive smartphones and one of them actually did manage to get a batch max!! This is even worse than cramming the entire syllabus on the exam eve as at least then people were aware of their syllabi.

The attitude by the students is not at all justified but there are several reasons which is leading to such measures which I can think of. 

Firstly, the students who come to IITs are never sure of what they will be doing in future because most of them came here in a rat race since IIT is a big name and provides job security. There is a huge majority of people who say “what is the use of studying core subjects when I am pretty sure that I will never get a core job neither does it interest me” . Another related reason is the fact that there are people who don’t get the department they are interested in, because of the so called hierarchy of the departments (CSE-Electrical-Mech... and the list goes on). This leads to a derogation in the quality of students in the departments placed lower in the hierarchy. I would have also mentioned about reserved candidates filling up seats and not able to generate good results but that discussion is never fruitful since people have deaf ears to that. 

Another reason to such acts by students is the decreasing faculty student interaction as now most of the information students get is through their seniors who are as misinformed as the new comers and pass on misleading “fundas” to the subsequent batches This is not uncommon in an IIT that a second year student tells a new comer “ there is no use of studying, you have come to an IIT now you can enjoy and do different things, join clubs, organize a festival, play sports but never be a maggu(a studious student in IITK lingo) as they are the worst kind of people in the institute, stay away from them” Though I agree with the extra-curricular activities part, the rest is all baseless, the same student cries at the end of the year about why he never paid attention to academics. Also students tend to promote other students who achieve excellent marks without going to classes or who open their notes a day before the exams. Non-academically oriented students are often seen as role models. I will discuss more about this and solutions to the problems in my subsequent posts.