No publicity is bad publicity

So far the grades-for-pay scandal at DVC has been covered by AT LEAST the following media outlets: the New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, KTVU (Oakland), KGO-AM (San Francisco), the Contra Costa Times (front page!) and now the Chronicle of Higher Education. I like the added comment about DVC cheating: who knew it was "rampant"?

May 3, 2007

Diablo Valley College Students Paid to Have Grades Changed, Paper Says

As many as 84 students at California’s Diablo Valley College may have paid $600 per grade to have F’s changed to A’s by student employees of the two-year college, according to the Contra Costa Times.

The newspaper says that a 15-month investigation of grade changes at the college is winding down, and that the campus police are preparing to turn over evidence of falsified grades to local prosecutors. The college had authorized more than 100 people across its three campuses to change grades in its computer system, and officials believe a group of student employees took advantage of lax procedures to run the grade-changing business, sometimes altering transcripts by using the computers of regular employees who had stepped away from their desks.

Many of the students who paid to have grades changed have since transferred to four-year institutions, the paper said. It added that the college had known about the problem for more than a year but had refused to release details. —Lawrence Biemiller

Posted on Thursday May 3, 2007

Comments

What the students did was reprehensible, but
cheating at DVC is rampant. Students have copies of exams, they freely use the internet for material for papers. “Getting” an education is a lot more important these days than actually being educated.