Ambroisa baini's post rekindle many of my memories.

I was one of the "cheaters." I had different innovative way of cheating and one of the best was writing formulae on a big eraser. If somebody sees the eraser and asks for it, the plan was to rub it in one swipe of the thumb as I hand the eraser over. Never came to that. Many would write it in the back/inside of a calculator, palm etc and some would stash a book in the toilet.

As I came to US, I realized this epidemic is not as prevalent. The community college I went to had some instances of similar cheating, but the universities, specially the higher ranked ones, had almost non existent cheating going on. One of the big reason could be our education system. We give too much value to the ability of memorizing. Here, most of my courses were open book so what's the need to cheat? Having open book exams require instructors to be creative and ask questions that measure the depth of understanding. I am hoping that schools in Nepal have started adapting to this change.

Now some might say even the higher ranked Unis have this problem. Just the other day there was a big news about cheating and grades adjustment in Harvard. Many grade schools here have been accused of inflating the grades to get states grants. I guess the issue is here as well, but I am specifically referring to students bringing a cheat as in this story to the exam hall. It's going to be hard to change student's behavior overnight. Why don't we "fix" the education system and encourage open book/note exam with better designed questions?