University Degrees are DEVALUED 🎓 STUDENT'S FAULT?

Due to students cheating on exams, university degrees are affected.
As a result of the High number of students cheating on online exams in Greek universities, their university degrees are quickly devalued.

Professors comment that it's complicated to manage online exams, as there're hundreds of students to keep an eye on. Students also admit that taking exams online is very different from being present, cheating is much easier. Because scholars cheated, university degrees are quickly devalued. The university degrees are now nicknamed "coronagrees."

A professor of environmental engineering and former rector of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki comments: "We now call university degrees as coronagrees but in jest." Also, AFP comments, "Online classes should be an alternative for students, but now it is presenting us with problems."

In addition to the AFP, other testimonials were presented such as Sofia's, who explains: "I took two exams last summer for two of my friends, and no one noticed. What I did was to connect to their computers with their credentials to submit their tests. At that time, it was not necessary to turn on the cameras. Thanks to me, they got good grades."

Cheating affects university degrees

Kostas Kosmatos is a professor of criminology at Democritus University in Thrace and relates: "It's amazing how the averages went up during the pandemic. People who had never entered classes before are now getting better grades. We as professors took measures to prevent cheating, for example, we asked students to turn on the cameras, we tried to create several groups to divide the number of students so that it would be easier to control the exams, and we reduced the time they had to take the exams. Unfortunately, these measures were not efficient because more than 500 students are taking the tests."

Another professor by the name of Alexandros Hatzigeorgiou from Information Technology at the University of Macedonia in Thessaloniki narrates: "There is no system that allows us to verify if it is a student or any other person who is taking the exam, also the cameras are not a guarantee, as they could show someone else taking the exam."

Students have already created their own methods to be able to copy themselves in the tests, to corroborate this information, we interviewed Costas, a 22-year-old student from Aristotle University, according to her words: "We already have Discord groups, WhatsApp, and other platforms, plus we activate screen sharing to see the answers in real-time. Best of all, no one notices." With all techniques employed by students, university degrees are devalued exponentially.

Wikipedia and Google help to cheat

"With the Internet, it is very easy to search Wikipedia and Google to copy the answers to the exam for themselves regardless of being watched by their computer cameras. Even if they can't find the answers on the Internet they hire a philosopher to help them. To the students' bad luck, this philosopher got it wrong, now I have to correct more than 50 tests with the same mistake." Explains Angela Kastrinaki, dean of the Literature department at the University of Crete. She also mentions that more than 100 students had copied during the tests she created.

Hiring an external person to take the exams is quite common. Here is the story of 20-year-old Natassa from the University of Ioannina. She told us that one of her friends paid at least 120 euros for a math teacher to conduct the exam for her.

Source: RPP.

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