A necessary evil?

The President of the Students Union at Oxford, who was sent down—expelled—last week for cheating in her finals, was doubtless under at least as much pressure as any other candidate. Claiming a wrist injury and other difficulties, she was allowed by the examiners to use a laptop to take an exam. But instead of writing an answer she downloaded an essay she had written earlier. At least she wrote this essay herself. She did not, as far as we know, stitch it together from a crib sheet. Other unscrupulous examinees have attempted to use ear-pieces and radio links, as well as time-honoured low-tech ploys, like writing notes on shirt cuffs or lower limbs to be consulted on a lavatory break. One of my contemporaries, I recollect, had such illegible handwriting that he was allowed to employ a typist to transcribe his answers, dictated by himself from his written papers. This was not cheating, of course, just buying time. Others embrace the radical valetudinarian strategy: fall ill and get an extra year.

It seems odd that Katherine Rainwood, the Oxford student involved, was allowed to use her own laptop. And she can’t have planned her deception very carefully, or she would have been able to make sure she left no evidence. It is tempting, but wrong, to say that her failure was getting caught. As President of the Union she was likely, after all, to be an aspirant politician, and it seems we do not expect much more of politicians. In public life there are many successful cheaters. Teddy Kennedy paid a friend to take an exam for him at Harvard. Jeffrey Archer, in discussing his academic bona fides has—as they say—been economical with the truth. In life politicians routinely break their promises, deceive their spouses, lie to the public and yet prosper—at least until they get caught. Anyone who has been to a university of the kind that Miss Rainwood attended knows that, by and large, it’s the creeps who go into politics. Like exams themselves, politicians may be considered a necessary evil.

But cheating has to be punished. The exam system may be erratic in its assessments, but its purpose is to subject all candidates to the same ordeal. It is primarily a test, not so much of brainpower as of moral resources. The results of exams are something to be overcome or forgotten, but the experience of taking them—the panic, the cold sweat, the relief that it is all over—helps make us grown-up. There are other ways of becoming an adult—better ways maybe—but higher education is the way most people choose now. We are all equal before the examination board. And we live with the limitations of the system. It is necessary to stick to the rules, in all their arbitrariness, at the same time as we understand their limitations. Because if one person cheats and gets away with it, everyone else is cheated. ★