Help is punished by law?

A school. Morning. An exam will start in some minutes. But intense preparation work is still going on. The students are sharing valuable information.

Almost all of them have cribs. It is the moment when their creativity is revealed! Someone has columns and columns of formulas on their hands like tattoos. Girls use the legs more often. When they sit it is much easier to raise a skirt a little, but not a shirt sleeve. The most responsible people have prepared pocket books filled with very small, hand-written text and with numbers on each page. Such cribs are worth their weight in gold. They are handed over in person and are kept carefully for several graduate classes. It doesn’t matter if you do not have an answer for any question. The more friendly the class you have, the more confident the students feel during exams. A friend will not leave you in need, and will always finds a way to provide necessary information. Those students who do not allow cheating are despised. To refuse to help is a kind of betrayal.

Are these memories familiar to you? The life of contemporary students is easier. Technical progress saves students from ruining their eyesight rewriting textbooks during the night. The medium has changed, but the mentality of the Russian student is still invariable. It is still not bad to cheat, and prompting is considered like that of a friend’s help. Russian teachers do not regard cheating as a serious offence. Severe cases will be punished by expelling the guilty candidates from examinees list, but the rest can only criticize and take away a crib.

Perhaps, just a common indulgent attitude to cheating, or to use another’s intellectual property (according to western standards) is the main particularity of the Russian educational system. All of us know that in western colleges, universities, and business schools cheating during exams or preparing homework is punished by expulsion from school. Such an extreme measure is essential. Universities maintain the quality standards of its diplomas this way. I.e. schools guarantee that a graduated student has all the necessary knowledge and skills within the course.

Western students do not cheat. Not because they do not want to, but because they cannot. The risk is too big. It is better to take an exam again. American students may be left without professors and observers in a classroom, and no one will turn his head towards a neighbor. Such a behavior is developed if not at a genetic level but from elementary school times. But when our Russian student enters a western school… From my own experience I know exactly how difficult it is to play by rules which contradict all previous experience (and which have been developed over a long time of studying). It is possible to do without cribs; it is even possible to keep silent during exams and not to ask anything from anybody. But what to do if your classmate, whom you have been studying, relaxing, traveling and drinking with, is looking at you with crazy eyes and asking in an anxious whisper “what the names of these damned “seven tools of management” are?! What should you do in this situation if you respect him and particularly admire how he manages a huge organization? And if you realize that of course it is possible to forget something during an exam, and that in real life situations there will always be time to open a book and see how to deal with these seven tools…

The answer is obvious. You should play by the rules. If the educational policy of a school prohibits cheating, by breaking the rules you risk your further education and the education of the person whom you are prompting. If a professor finds out your work is strangely similar to another (most often it is picked up as in the mistakes are the same), there is a probability that he will investigate who has prompted whom. You will be expelled from the school. You have to realize that in this situation you are outlawed by absolutely all foreign professors.

So, if you are going to study at Stockholm School of Economics or any other western business school, remember that it is an adventure and not for someone who has a weak will! But at the same time your diploma, which you get after all your ordeals, will confer on you recognition and the confirmation of your professionalism on the highest international level.