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Inability to provide a course but still charging tuition - is this fraud?
My university has recently moved to a new location. Last semester, we were informed the new campus would be ready come start of this spring semester. The semester has just began, and we have been informed only half of the campus will be open. Upon visiting the campus, it is a mess. The entire campus is a construction site, windows are shattered, and elevators are breaking mid-use. The worst part of this situation is that today I was informed there will be a 2-week delay minimum for labs to start and that it will potentially be longer. There was no request for the students to agree to this, no tuition reimbursement or anything of this kind. I am wondering if this can be considered fraud? The course is officially listed to last the entire semester, and the full tuition is applied as such. Do I have any recourse? For context, this is a U.S. university, and the course I am mentioning is solely a lab course. This is also a mandated course this semester.

"There was no request for the students to agree to this," well of course there wasn't, what would they have done if the students didn't "agree"?

In the US universities I am familiar with, there is typically a "drop" deadline before which courses can be dropped/added without financial penalty. I'm not a lawyer, but it seems like it would be exceptionally difficult to accuse someone of fraud if you are able to see the condition of things and drop a course but decide not to. What are the terms for dropping this lab course?

Start with this question: What does a good outcome for you look like? Do you just want your money back? What other solution, short of "They promised me the course, they need to run it!" do you seek?

@BryanKrause the Q says it's a mandated course, as labs often are.  So there shoudln't be an option to drop it.

@ChrisH The student usually has the option to drop that course at that time. They just have to take a similar course at some time in order to graduate in that major, but not necessarily this semester. A complicating factor is that the course may be a prerequisite for some other required course, etc. Overall, dropping the course should be possible, but could have knock-on effects, which may include delaying when they graduate.

Indeed, a compounding factor is that I am a graduating senior, so in fact, it does need to be this semester. I have also had to wait over 2 years to take this course since COVID issues have made it impossible the last two springs, and it is only a spring course. That is why I am forced to take it this semester, which is definitely not the usual case. @Makyen

@BryanKrause Thank you for your response. Unfortunately due to reasons above (in my comment to makyen) I am not able to drop the course. It is allowed, but my circumstances prevent it if I would still like to graduate this semester. I have already tried to get an exemption from this course, but that was rejected.

@Makyen not where I've studied or taught.  The only way to defer 2nd year lab, for example, would be to suspend all studies for a year

You are asking a legal question for which we are not qualified to give a binding answer. However, I doubt that it would be considered fraud in the US if they have made a "good faith" effort to provide needed services. Fraud normally implies intent to defraud, which is unlikely here. Building programs are difficult to do on a strict schedule and often overrun due to things like weather and pandemics and supply chain issues.
A lawyer might also ask whether you, yourself, did due diligence before you signed up for a course under these conditions.
Instead of thinking of it as a legal question, try to find out what they are willing to do to keep you on track for your degree. That is the important thing. Go talk to the department head about your needs and how they can be met.

Thank you for your response. I should clarify the issue is not being granted the degree. Even if the labs are substantially delayed, the course will count for the degree. The issue I am having is that I want to actually learn, and I am not being provided what I am paying a large sum of money for. I am not sure if that changes anything.

As @Buffy says, this is probably a question that belongs on Law.SE and/or requires you to consult a lawyer. As he also says, this doesn't sound like it meets the legal definition for the crime of fraud - intentional mis-representation for financial gain. Instead, your case would likely fall under civil law, as a dispute over contracts: is the university providing a service that matches what you agreed to pay them for? The answer to this question is going to depend on the precise wording of your agreement with the university, hence the need for properly-qualified advice.

There are a few issues you should consider before going all the way to an allegation of fraud.  Firstly, most universities allow you to drop your courses without incurring the fees for the course; this is usually allowed for a limited period even after you have started the course.  Such an action would allow you to cancel one or all of your courses now that you know that the quality of service is below what you were expecting.  Secondly, even if your university does not have a mechanism for dropping courses without financial penalty, at worst this would constitute a breach of contract; unless there is some compelling evidence of an intention to defraud you, a mere failure to provide a service at an expected level of quality is unlikely to amount to fraud.
In regard to the legal situation here, this is a case where a vendor has sold a service but now cannot deliver the service at the expected quality.  They most likely have mechanisms available to give you a refund for individual courses if you don't wish to continue with those courses at this time.  An argument could be made for a broader breach of contract (and perhaps some non-criminal breaches of commercial law) in relation to your enrolment in the degree program, if they are now unable to supply courses for that program at an appropriate level of quality, to allow you to complete your degree.  If you wish to pursue this beyond merely cancelling your present enrolment in courses, you could speak to a lawyer to see what kind of case you would have for breach of contract.
Rather than jumping straight to an extremely serious legal allegation, I recommend you step back and ask yourself what outcome you want to achieve in this situation.  You could decide to pause your progression in your degree program and do something else for a year while they finish their construction work.  You could decide to cancel your enrolment and transfer to another university at the next intake.  You could decide to grin-and-bear the construction noise and other inconveniences and push through your program regardless.  Determine the outcome you want and then seek that outcome in the most co-operative way you can.


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Is there a reasonable explanation for why my professor submitted my recommendation letter months early?
I am a physics student applying to graduate school this fall for the 2024 fall cycle. This summer, I asked my recommenders in advance if they would write a recommendation for me. In particular, one professor said yes. This past week, I made profiles for all of the schools I am applying to. The next morning, I received emails from all of the schools that my professor had submitted a recommendation.
This is very strange to me, as the letter is not due for over 2 months, and I have never seen a professor do this. Should I be worried, or is there a reasonable explanation for this? I feel it is not tactful to ask the professor what happened.

As someone who had professors wait until the night of the deadline to submit, I think you should count this as a win.

The prof submitted a recommendation because you asked them to.  Life is just too short to spend time worrying about non-problems.

What exactly is the problem you're worried about here?

This is a win as others pointed out. You should thank your professor for their responsiveness and send them a nice postcard next time you travel somewhere (home or fun or conference).

As all the comments/answers suggest, in general you have nothing to worry about and you should be grateful that you won't be having to chase them up to get the letter submitted before the deadline. The only downside might be if you had some project work/classes with that professor coming up in the next semester that you wanted to be referred to in the recommendation letter.

The busy professor wants to get it off their plate ASAP, so they don't waste brain-cycles needing to remember it, see it on a to-do list, or potentially miss the deadline.
There's nothing to worry about. You should have one less anxiety that the recommendation is actually in and not going to slip past the due date.

It is hard to imagine asking the professor to delay until the last minute…

I also can't imagine being stressed about a professor doing something promptly, too, without being chased up. OP should buy a lottery ticket :P

This makes sense -- I think I was just confused because this is so out of the ordinary, and I was wondering if this means they did not put effort into the letter, but now I see it is more likely just how they process things. Thanks!

@Relativisticcucumber: I think their unusual mindfulness/punctuality is a signal that it's probably one of the better-written recommendations you'll get.

ChatGPT makes recommendation letters really easy to write ... no reason to procrastinate.

@CaffeineAddiction Please don't write recommendation letters with ChatGPT unless you're trying to torpedo your recommendees.

@BryanKrause was a joke that apparently didn't translate well ... maybe I should use ChatGPT to write the next one (joke).

@CaffeineAddiction I've seen it as an earnest suggestion on social media by ChatGPT fans. Poe's law, I suppose.

There are three types of professors. Those without todo lists and those with todo lists that they actually process systematically. The latter are very rare.
The former split into two groups. Those who do tasks immediately and those who do them in the last minute. The former are very rare.
You are very lucky that it is one of the former former. You got the task done, and immediately.
Unless there is a good reason to hold back, you should rejoice, not worry. If there is such a reason (to hold back; which in your case I do not really imagine), you should have told the prof at the time of your request.

The former is very rare because doing tasks immediately is ultimately inefficient. On the Internet, routers have buffers because packets tend to come in bursts. There are known self-synchronization effects. Buffering smooths out the outflow so that a link constantly utilized rather than switching between congested and idle. The exact same analogy applies to tasks. Things come in bursts (start of semester, upcoming conference, proposal due). Having a queue ensures you're not sitting idle or worked to death.

@user71659 humans aren't machines though. They have leaky memory, they may work more quickly when there is some pressure, they may enjoy when there's some idle time (or use it for research work that isn't time-critical and would never get done if there was always something in the teaching-duties queue).

@user71659  Actually, doing tasks (of any kind) immediately is MORE efficient than spending time putting them on a list, then spending time re-reading the list and coming back to them. It just isn't always possible, for various reasons.

@user71659: Always doing all tasks immediately is generally inefficient.  But doing tasks immediately if they arrive at a suitable moment is quite different, and often good.  If I see a reference-letter request come in while I’m preparing teaching, I certainly won’t suspend my teaching prep to handle it.  But if the request comes in while I’m trying to get a bunch of miscellaneous smaller tasks off my to-do list anyway, then I may well handle it immediately.

@PLL Agreed. Or if I'm stuck with a manuscript, I'll take writing a letter as an effective way to procrastinate.

Frankly, I almost never had problems with people that were too fast, but a lot with those who were late. The cases where there is a "too fast" is where circumstances can change and more and more timely information would have been better. That's my experience, not claiming it is everyone's.

I sometimes do that while my memory and impressions of the student are still fresh.  Students probably don't want to hear this,  but at large universities there are a lot of them and they are quite forgettable.  If I am going to write an effective letter for a student then it is best if I do it quite soon after they ask me. (And I will simply refuse politely to write a letter for a student that I cannot support enthusiastically).

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What is the value of a Coursera certificate?
I took up an introductory course to forensic science in Coursera, because it was actually the only forensics course I could find that was accessible, however I do wonder if it is worth anything in my CV, as a student it is obviously better than nothing, but is this something good enough to show?
How does it compare to courses completed directly through MIT open courses, or those from another famous university? And if these are assets to a CV, if I go ahead to complete enough for a degree, how does it fare in comparison to the proper degree from the corresponding institution?

What is the value to whom? Do you care about university admissions? Employers? Prospective spouses?

Well, the last was not exactly what I had in mind, but the rest were all within the question

Depends also on the topic. If you take a programming course being a CS it adds exactly nothing; but if you take a course on something parallel to your field, it can show you have at least the basis to some knowledge for your research. For example, AI can be used by a scientist to better process data, but it is usually not taught outside CS degrees (in undergrads, at least).

Related at Workplace.SE.com: Are verifiable MOOC programs of study recognised by employers?

Related: Can I include the completion of Udacity and Coursera classes I have attended in an academic CV?

@earthling +1 for "prospective spouses" :D

@Stephan, This is the correct link: http://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/32822/are-verifiable-mooc-programs-of-study-recognised-by-employers

Value in an academic environment: zero. Everything you learn at Coursera you'd simply learn from a textbook in a few days if you needed it for your academic research or teaching.
Value to a non-academic employer: marginal, mainly as a signaling device (this person will sacrifice his spare time over a non-trivial amount of time to improve himself), but certainly lower than a certification in a field or skill directly related to your job.
Value to a prospective spouse (as suggested by earthling): depends. I'd certainly look favorably on someone who took a Coursera course instead of watching TV.
Value to yourself: again depends, but could be highest of all. I certainly know that those courses I took were mainly for my own pleasure and benefit.

Coursera certificates are the new bar-bragging stories.

I disagree, they have some value in academia. I listed MOOCs on a scholarship application and was told that the MOOCs wen't to my benefit, as I was awarded the scholarship. But I do agree that the real value is personal gain/knowledge, etc.

While I was in high school, I took several MOOCs on Coursera related to a field, and listed them on a scholarship application. I ended up getting the highest scholarship available at my institution. I feel that it showed my genuine interest in the field. It's cute for a high school student to brag about - but I think it's inappropriate for an academic.

If "Everything you learn at Coursera you'd simply learn from a textbook" is true, shouldn't then the value in an academic environment be "same as reading/working through a textbook" (and "value on CV" same as listing textbook in reading interest?)

One of the commentators mentioned that MOOCs might be seen in a negative light in some fields, such as software engineering. Especially for this particular field, I would not at all be surprised: Many of the current professionals got their hands-on training through working on projects on the internet in their youth, and such projects would obviously go well beyond a simple introductory course. As such, MOOCs provide only introductory material to the field, and this material has been available in an easy to access format on the internet for a long time, anyway (YouTube tutorial videos predate contemporary MOOCs by years, and simple websites even more so).
I should point out that for other fields, often more specialized in scope, the sort of lectures offered by MOOCs have not been available unless you went to university to study the stuff. Sure, books have existed, but there is a difference in learning from books and listening to lectures (the latter being much more passive, and therefore often more enjoyable, while perhaps not as deep or efficient).
Having said this, I strongly feel that taking MOOCs on your spare time shows that you have motivation to deepen your knowledge, be it in your own profession or just enlarging your horizons and understanding other fields. While reviewing the basics of a field that you are supposed to be an expert in could be viewed in a negative light, a basic understanding of project management and economics would probably help your application even if you were a software engineer.
I have heard some recruiters say that they appreciate an internet presence, and joining in on all the new fun would certainly show that you are technologically capable and follow what is happening in the world. In the software engineering world, one could well put their StackOverflow alias on their CVs. I am sure that some recruiters disagree, though.
Finally, to address your point about how online courses compare with real live universities. Traditional courses usually have a higher workload, and more stringent control on passing a course. MOOCs being very new, it is nigh impossible to know just how difficult it is to pass a particular course or whether you even know the stuff now that you have. Granted, a traditional university degree does not guarantee these things either, but prospective employers better understand how much one can expect one to remember from the courses taken at a real institution. I think MOOCs will play a slightly bigger role in the future than they do now, but we are not quite there yet.

MOOCs like those taught on Coursera are a matter of differing opinions.  I think they are great for the students since they provide a great free tool for helping learn content that may be difficult to learn, interpret or even access alone.  Unfortunately, they have problems with verification: students do not have to do very much to confirm their identity, and there is much speculation of plagiarism within the classes (even The Guardian wrote a small piece on that recently http://www.theguardian.com/education/2014/mar/14/students-cheating-plagiarism-online).
Have I taken classes on Coursera? Yes. Do I put this on my CV?  Yes...for internal purposes anyway, under a "continuing education" or "professional development" section to show my employer that I am continuing to improve myself and stay up-to-date where necessary.  I'm a scientist.
My husband (a software engineer) tells me that, while MOOCs or similar training is good on a personal level, it is considered a negative thing for people in his profession, and usually only added to CV to make up for a lack of real technical training or experience.  So, unfortunately, I guess the area of your work will make a difference to how others perceive your good intentions.  But, yes, Coursera is better than TV!

Actually these courses for self-paced learning. Those who are really interested in a subject and could not study in any regular university course in any subject of choice, can learn following a path offered by these online courses. It is Similar to "learning on your own". Practical course like programming in any particular programming language currently preferred by industry is good but certificates won't count as much as a regular university degree. In these practical value oriented courses will prove nothing because at the end efficiency will matter and industry will hire those people who have this efficiency and regular degree will always score high. This certificates won't get you an entry in any reputed University for going further with the study of the subject. Professionals take these courses mostly owing to the fact that a curricula offers better disciplined and structured way of learning in which testing what you learn provision within the curriculum is there. Professional, already in a field learn better in self paced learning way. These are the benefits among few others. But one other thing for these online courses associated with university can not be ignored. All over the world private university funding and "Live On your own" and "Live on your own earning" policy for the Universities are one of the causes for them to offer online courses to the people which in the past and still is for only a graded few is for earning money. People who are willing to earn a certificate which might give them an edge over others in the competitive market pay few dollars to enroll and at the end spending few hours earn a 'certificate of value'. These dollars are one of the ways for the universities to earn a fraction of cost to run universities.And not all subjects can be learned this way, suppose Genetic Engineering or Medicine can never be learned through online courses. Yes you can expand your horizon of your knowledge in any particular field of study of your choice. And that's the primary reasons of these courses, i.e MIT open course ware.

Alone, listing an MOOC on a resume has about the same value as expressing other interest in a topic.  It serves only to get you past early (automated) screening steps of a selection process.  This is valuable in that it might save a little time establishing common ground between interviewer and candidate.
But the I can see an opportunity for this to change with the integration course information with evidence of participation in online forums on a topic.    As a screener/interviewer, if I could and see the questions asked and answered in a classroom setting, that starts to add value.
The challenge however is scaling this to massive open online learning.   In many cases, the "good" questions one might asked and answered online and forums like stack exchange.   Posting duplicate questions often gets discouraged (voted down) in this sort of environment.   But if a MOOC platform could also let me see the related searches and clickstream generated by a candidate the possibilities are there that MOOC's might differentiate themselves through participation (even somewhat passive participation) in activities related to the course.   I've not yet seen this in practice, but it seems like what might be needed to increase the value of online information resources over textbooks.

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What should a student do if a professor agrees to write recommendation, then retracts offer upon realizing he confused the student with someone else?
Prof. Z has taught thousands of students in my former school since 2010. In the Biology course that he taught, there were two students (A and B) with similar full names and nicknames, but their academic results were totally different.
Prof. Z liked student A but hated student B because student B used to be very naughty in Prof. Z's courses and got very bad grades.
On January 4th, Prof. Z received student B's email for a letter of recommendation. Prof. Z agreed to do so and arranged a time to meet student B. On the day when they met, Prof. Z knew he had made a big mistake, and he refused to do anything for student B.
Given that situation, what would you do if this happened to you (as student B)? This really happened recently in my former school, and student B was very angry and made a complaint to the head of Prof. Z's department.

Wow that must have been awkward for both parties.

While I agree that this is kinda awkward, what in ${deity}'s name did B complain about? "He promised me a letter, and after figuring out that I was horrible in his course [something that I of course knew] he retracted his offer rather than writing a bad letter"?

"Given that situation, what would you do if this happened to you (as student B)?" Be happy that Z did not write a letter, specifically pointing out how B was  hoping to get away with this misunderstanding that he presumably knew about (otherwise, why ask a Prof. where you did horribly in class in the first place?).

Yes, even if you give the student the benefit of the doubt regarding the misunderstanding (and whether he was deliberately trying to take advantage of it), the alternative would be for Prof. Z to write a short letter saying "B was very naughty in my course and got very bad grades, and I assume that's not what you are looking for."  That would waste Z's time and hurt B's application, so not writing a letter is better for everyone.

Student B has some issues...

As B? Use it as a lesson not to ask for a letter of recommendation from a prof in whose course I made a fool out of myself. Seriously, as prof I wouldn't have dreamed that the bad student would ask for a letter of recommendation, so of course I would have assumed it was the good student. The prof did nothing wrong, B acted wrong in the course and by asking for the letter.

As Student B, I would be pretty mad about this, even more than if he had declined to write me a letter in the first place.  But I would also recognize that it was for the best (if he hadn't done this, he would have written me a bad letter).
Also, I would never have gone to the department head about this because

It's not something that merits a formal complaint
It's not something I'd want to be known for, especially among other professors who may be writing my letters of recommendation.

I don't understand how a sane student could be made about this situation! Could there have been any reasonable expectation that the prof would write a positive letter based on bad behavior and bad performance? A @DanielWessel commented, most likely the prof figured it was the other (good...) student of the same name.

(1) The professor said he would do something for B and didn't.  (2) B may not have known about the student A with the same name, and therefore believed that the professor was genuinely willing to write the letter (after all, he said he would).  (3) B may not have expected a stellar letter, but still thought his letter would be better than the other letters he could have secured.

Making clerical errors does not absolve a professor of being a decent human being.  If I were B I would expect at least an apology for reneging on the promise, regardless of the professor's reason for reneging.

I must confess that I would have been unable to imagine that the requestor was the "bad" student, but instead would have powerfully presumed that it was the "good" student... and would have been dumbfounded for many reasons if/when the "bad" student showed up at my door. For one, I would have been completely confused as to what such a student imagined I'd write in a letter for them. In particular, it would baffle me if they claimed that they'd thought that I could somehow write a non-fatal letter, based on reality. I'd "apologize" in only the most perfunctory way... srsly...

It is certainly a reasonable mistake to make, but that doesn't mean the professor didn't make the mistake, and it's pretty standard to apologize for accidents.  Actually I'm pretty dumbfounded that the prevailing opinion on this site is "how DARE the student ask for a letter from ME" rather than "yeah the professor screwed up, he should apologize for accidentally misleading the student."

IMO this is symptomatic of a larger trend in academia where professors feel entitled to treat their students like shit.  Because they have so much power, they can easily get away with treating students however they want to, so they forget to act like decent human beings much of the time (and often they've internalized it so much that they don't know they're doing it).  I am very fortunate to have found an advisor who is not a shithead, and this fact alone makes me enthusiastically sing his praises to all new students in my department

There is nothing in the question implying the professor did not apologise. If someone here fails to be a decent human being, it is student B, who apparently has difficulty taking no for an answer, regardless of how it is presented.

@fkraiem You're right, the professor may have apologized, in which case I think it's the best he can do in this unfortunate situation.  Also, the student definitely should not have complained to the department head.  It just bugs me that the prevailing opinion on this site is that the professor doesn't owe the student anything, even an acknowledgement of his mistakes.

There is a huge difference between refusing to hurt the student and treating the student as shit. And the prevailing opinion on the side is not "how dare the student ask for a letter from me" but "why would the student ask for a reference letter when he should expect a negative one"...

You are right: the professor owes something to the student: a bad reference letter.

The argument in the 1st paragraph and the comments borders on ridiculous. The was no abuse of power on the side of the Prof. It is the student who clearly doesn't know how to behave. And it is the student who should have apologized for his behaviour (the student was naughty in multiple classes ...).

There are lots of reasons.  Maybe the student actually thinks the professor likes him for some reason, or he knows he did poorly in the class but he did even worse in other people's classes.

@choener: I would not call this an "abuse of power," but it's symptomatic of the general attitude that because someone is a powerful professor, they need not show basic courtesy to their students.

"Basic courtesy" is not "writing a good letter when none is merited". Sure, there is a huge power asymmetry, and power is often abused, that does not seem to be a dominant feature here, or even entering at all. Sure, the situation is awkward, but letter writers should not allow themselves to be coerced by embarrassment into giving false references. Again, "I'm terribly sorry, I stupidly thought you were someone else... when I agreed to write a letter." is a civil response. How can the student be "angry"? "Disappointed", conceivably, but even that seems to require a disconnect from reality.

Oh, I didn't say he should write the letter; in fact, it is good that he didn't.  I just don't like the attitude of "how dare the student ask for a letter," "the student tried to deceive the professor on purpose," and "the professor is always right."  Not just on this thread, but in general.

Ben, I think people were mostly saying that it was operationally not even remotely sensible for the student to ask, since there could have been no reasonable expectation of a helpful letter. A merely less-awful letter is still fatal, for almost any purpose. The anger is hard to figure out, because I cannot visualize what the student thought would happen, either way. I think this particular question was not too much about the (enormous, occasionally abused) power differential.

Ben the attitude is not "how dare he ask for a letter" but is puzzlement: "why would he ask for a letter given the circumstances". There is no way he can get a good letter....

"Maybe the student actually thinks the professor likes him for some reason, or he knows he did poorly in the class but he did even worse in other people's classes. " <---Sorry, I completely disagree... You should never ask from a letter from a professor if the only interaction is negative...And if the only recommendation letter one can get is a negative letter, then one should know better than ask...

I dunno, in my experience most professors are really tactful, so in some cases it's hard to tell that a professor doesn't like you.  At any rate the student may have been poorly advised.  For instance maybe he thought he should ask the most famous professor he knew, or the one whose class was most relevant to his intended field of study, etc.

The questions-not-asked include asking about the basis for student B's actions. As @BenBitdiddle comments after his answer, perhaps student B was "advised" to ask the most famous professor, etc.
My blanket reaction to this is that this advice should not have come from any professionally competent "advisor", but probably from peers, or peer-based information. Abstractly, there's certainly nothing wrong with getting the opinions of one's friends and peers. However, it is exactly in such situations that the critical weakness in asking people who don't know much about a given thing is instantiated. How to know that this would be a problem? Difficult, for many understandable reasons, but that does not resolve the issue!
That is, younger people would benefit from appreciating the palpable fact that important decisions affecting their lives are made by people (often older) who need not share their viewpoint, nor their same-age friends' viewpoint.
While it is true that some people who "have power" abuse it, this is not a universal, and it is not wise to postulate that all experienced/older people are oppressive or selfish. Genuine experience, as opposed to conjecture, is hard to replace. Thus, ideally, letter-of-recommendation writers are sufficiently experienced to have been through (and succeeded in) the endeavor for which they're writing a letter. Perhaps also experience (and successful in) appraising the likely future success of people in those endeavors. From this comes the value of letters of recommendation.
Yes, unfortunately, even a pretty-darn-good performance in a routine course doesn't give a letter writer much to work with. Many people hit that mark, etc.
What's a student to do who has trashed all those bridges, before they realized that it'd matter? Probably spend extra time proving exactly that they'd caught on, and have moved to a different plateau. But there'd need to be tangible evidence, not just a promise.
So, in effect, "tell your friends not to hope for letters from faculty in whose courses they'd done badly"... And, if people discover themselves in the position that there's no alternative, then they need to get as close to a "do-over" as they can, because otherwise they've sealed their own fate, in any conventional avenue.
Yes, it is indeed unfortunate that this "appraisal" period comes during a period of peoples' lives where many things are in turmoil...
So, again, people who become aware of this mechanism should "tell their friends" to work hard to avoid finding themselves in such a situation. If one does, then it is almost surely better to allocate considerable time to repair the damage, rather than somehow "fake it" and limp along with fatally bad letters of recommendation.
By the way, part of the "currency" that faculty have to spend (or not) is their word/reputation, so they are very, very hesitant to blow it on bogus not-so-bad recommendations. Faculty who'll give glowing recommendations to nearly anyone will have debased that currency to an extent that it is nearly worthless... so you'd not gain from a letter from them anyway.

Semi-serious answer:

As student B: Next time, claim a family emergency and ask whether the prof can please send you the letter of recommendation. As much as you liked to see him in person, you're at home caring for your dying grandmother (again). (And drop this case, you're getting an even worse reputation.)
As better student B: Don't ask for a letter of recommendation from a prof if you did show abysmal behavior and performance in class. It's a letter of recommendation, not cronyism, there should be something to recommend.
As an even better student B: Behave better in class and learn to learn (and to perform). University isn't school and you're supposed to be an adult by now -- you actually have a job: to learn the material, to understand it, and to learn how to think. And BTW, there's a place for naughty behavior in class -- if it's smart. But that requires understanding the material, which according to the grades B did not.

As prof Z: Apologize that you have written the wrong letter of recommendation, which was a honest mistake. Ask the student whether s/he really wants a letter of recommendation which essentially states that s/he was in class, disrupted it and got bad grades (if it's legally possible to write about negative events)
As a better prof Z: Never write a letter of recommendation without checking first for whom you are writing the letter of recommendation. Ask for the identifying information that differentiated between the students when it came to assigning their grades. If students failed to understand their job, they might fail to understand what is involved in getting a letter of recommendation.
As an even better prof Z: If you have a student B in your class, try to inform this person about the consequences of his/her behavior. And that in earlier schools, everyone might have been a winner, but here good grades require knowledge/skills/performance. Also inform administration that you have a student apparently riding on the coattails of another student. Every prof who had both students in their class should get this information.

As student A: Never give student B your diplomas.
As a better student A: Ask prof Z. for that letter of recommendation.
As an even better student A: Legally change (add to) your name.

As prof Z: Apologize that you have written the wrong letter of recommendation, I don't think Prof. Z actually wrote the recommendation letter based on the OP's description.

Agreed. I read it as if the prof already did the work, but it seems he "only" promised to do it. Waow, even worse. Overall, the lack of reflection is what would kill writing a reference letter for student B for me.

all_licenses: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/


text:
What can I expect from a Skype interview for PhD admissions?
I contacted a lecturer from my alma mater. He replied me a few days later that he had funding, explained me his project and application process and even attached a detailed research proposal. He asked me to skype with him.
In such case, please advise me what kinds of questions during interview can be asked.

It might include technical/skills examining part. This can be very dependent on your field. I refer you to my own experience of computer science Skype interview here

For me, it was more to discuss the subject of the PhD, they ask some questions about my experiences etc... nothing technical tho.

This doesn't sound like an overly formal process as you're already known to the interviewer. However, in my institution at least, the process is becoming much more formal (person specifications, training for interviewers, etc.) and so there are definite areas that the interviewer will be trying to explore:

Do your skills match up with what you claim on your application? Expect specific questions on your application, particularly on relevant projects, or reports, or dissertations.
Can you communicate? Particularly, why do you want to do a PhD, why in this area, with this person, etc. This also covers language skills, if you're not a native speaker. Expect more general questions probing your motivation.
Can you link together different areas of knowledge? Show that your earlier studies have gone in and you can see where they're relevant to the PhD topic. Expect detailed questions on key techniques for this project, maybe linking back to courses you've taken (if they don't make the link, it's a strength when you explicitly do).
Do you know what you don't know? There's a lot to learn in a PhD and the best candidates will (a) know that, and (b) want to fix that themselves. Communicating what areas you need to improve, and how you want the supervisor to help you improve, can be a strength (provided it isn't key background for the PhD!). This is where you should show you've read the research proposal, and also the papers referred to in it: you don't need a detailed understanding of it all, but you should clearly show what you've understood, and how you'd go about learning what you haven't.
Evidence of problem-solving skills. Talking about projects, reports written, group work done. Show that you understood what you did (even if strongly directed), that you can communicate it clearly, and how you generated ideas.
Can you connect with the potential supervisor? This can be purely personal, and is the hardest thing to do in a Skype call. If possible, try and make it a conversation instead of a question and answer session. Also, try and prepare some questions to ask them, particularly around the research proposal.

As I noted at the top, if you're already known to the interviewer, and if there's no formal university process mandated by central administration, this could well be an informal chat. Even then, I'd make sure you've read the research proposal, and researched its background, so that you can genuinely talk, and not get a huge information dump.

He probably wants to talk about his project and your research background/interests.  He may ask about some past projects you've done and what kind of work you are interested in.  It's best if you can demonstrate sincere interest in his project and read some previous papers of his that seem relevant to the proposal.

He certainly seems to be considering you for inclusion if he gets the funding. I would make a clear list of all your achievements both academic and non-academic and be clear in your own mind what you are looking for in the future. The project may not be something you actually want so make sure to include questions that help you to judge if this is something which matches your own goals.
So I would include questions about the scope of the project, who else is involved and be clear on what funding will be available and how long it will last. Do not be afraid to ask these things.
Regards Skype, the camera is often not where you will look directly because you will be looking central screen at the video relay of other person. Just relax and do not worry though as Skype is easy. Just make sure you remember the different times zones if this is applicable.
You might also find this article useful http://www.socresonline.org.uk/21/2/12.html because it goes into details about Skype for academic purposes.

If you link to your own projects, websites, or papers in an answer, please disclose your affiliation in the answer. See how not to be a spammer.


text:
Can a bachelor of software engineering study masters of electrical engineering?
I'm currently in the process of applying to college for undergraduate degree in software engineering. I really love everything about electronics from hardware to software. I find it difficult to choose between electrical engineering or software engineering till I decided to take software engineering then continue my education for master in electrical engineering. Though, I'm not looking to offer myself more job opportunities, I literally want to know every single bit about hardware and software. My question:
Is it possible to study software engineering and then masters in electrical engineering?

In Canada at least this is fairly common, for someone to graduate with CS degree or engineering degree, then switch their specialization once they get to masters level. Although it usually depends on how popular the subject is, as the less popular ones are usually easier to get positions with.

@user25345 Please post your answers in form of answers posts not comments.

Just to add a data point. I got a BS in CS and did MS in EE in USA.

It depends on the program you apply for your masters degree. Some universities and educational systems accept changing fields for masters degrees and some others not. Some programs may require the applicant to study some more courses from the bachelors syllabus to help them be more prepared for their masters program.
I think you would better ask the program you want to apply to, to see whether they accept and consider applications with different bachelors degree or not.

This is essentially what happened with me. I've crossed from BS in Computer Science to MS in Electrical Engineering. Since I had some "holes" in my background, I had to take some undergrad courses on top of my master level courses.

I know this it is a late response but maybe this will help others. If I was in that situation I would get an undergraduate degree in Computer Engineering. Computer Engineers have to take software and hardware courses. At many universities, they can specialize in either by taking senior electives. However, it really depends on what you want to do. Computer Engineers will not usually take courses in Electromagnetics or Device Science. Those courses are specifically for Electrical Engineers.


text:
Are there tools to prevent students from cheating on a programming exam administered on computers?
I'm teaching an Introduction to Computer Science Course, where we mainly do C programming. I've been assigned a lab for teaching the course, but there are more students than available computers. Also, I have no control over those PCs there, and almost every student has admin rights to them. It is also common that students bring their laptop to the classroom and connect to campus Wi-Fi, which I don't have control at all.
Exams are small algorithms to solve, and initially I was planning - as do other teachers in the course - to allow using a computer (from the lab or their own) for the students to verify the correctness of their algorithms. However, in the current state of things I think is pretty easy for students to cheat: They could use Facebook, e-mail, or any Internet tool to exchange source code or information.
Are there software tools that can help to allow use of a computer but still prevent unauthorized collaboration?

+1 Same problem exists (typically) in Computational Physics lab components. Looking forward to reading the answers.

Sorry but this question seems to be off-topic to me for two reasons. 1. Are there Software Tools that can help to use a Computer and avoid plagiarism? If you are looking for softwares to prevent your students from cheating; you may ask your question on SoftwareRecommendations.SE. 2. Your question is not specifically about academia, what about a company manager who wants to test it's employees via a computer-based exam?

This question appears to be off-topic because it is a shopping request for software. Try [softwarerecs.se] - biut see their meta first, for guidelines on how to ask, there.

This question might help you since it is about plagiarism software although it is not for programming.

@Enthusiastic per this meta post, the community does not consider software questions as inherently off topic, if they are otherwise OK questions (focused, not too broad)

If your employer doesn't supply you with the correct facilities, that is not your fault and you cannot be held accountable for any consequences of not having the correct facilities (assuming you have requested them). Ultimately all you can do is be as vigilant as you can and regularly ask students what their code is doing to ensure that they know what it does and they are confident in what it is doing.

Exams are small algorithms to solve, and initially I was planning... to allow using a computer... for the students to verify the correctness of their algorithms. — Why?  Shouldn't students be able to figure on their own, before actually implementing them, whether their algorithms are correct?

Strongly disagree with the close votes.  This is a question about computer science pedagogy, not just about software recommendations.  Pedagogical questions are firmly on topic.

Written exam. Seriously. You are teaching computer science (or so you say) not computer literacy.

If they use their own computer, certainly you should't ever consider forcing them to install software there...

You may want to google for 'PRAKTOMAT' to see what is possible. Though I believe this project is related to Java it may help you with your evaluation.

Would you please do me a favor? Anybody you find 'cheating,' send them my way. In the real world of programming we call that 'problem solving' and I can't find enough of it.

I'm not allowed to answer directly for some reason; nevertheless I am allowed to comment. This problem has no solution. Commercial non-solutions do nasty things to the machine in question while the cheaters have simply learned to use another computer or mobile phone and type in the answer.

Sometimes a psychological approach works best. You should tell your student you will "MOSS" their answers to find similar code: http://theory.stanford.edu/~aiken/moss/ (like someone below pointed out) This will deter collaboration.

One important point: Exams are usually time-critical, at least in my courses we always were running on edge to finish all questions in the given time. So you don't need anything special to make it impossible for them to cheat, just make it a little hard and time-consuming, and most people won't bother and rather inverst their precious time into problem-solving!

'almost every student has admin rights to them', there is nothing in software you can do then.
You can solve this at a network level with appropriate firewalls, but that won't help you if student are using their own device and connecting to a network you don't control, then as far as technical solutions go, you have no real options.
Admin rights == do what you want with the computer.

At my university in the UK we have two kinds of assessment for programming courses. Pass/fail 'practicals' where students are given programming tasks, and are explicitly allowed to discuss them with each other and search online. When the student is ready to submit their solution a demonstrator will look it over and ask questions etc to make sure the student understands why they wrote the code they wrote. Students don't get a grade for this that counts towards their overall mark for the year, but they are required to 'pass' the practicals in order to pass the year.
Then there are written exams with no computer access. There are questions along the lines of 'write some code that will solve this problem', and also more conceptual 'why is this the case? When would you use that?' questions. For the 'write code' bits, the markers will deduct very few points for simple syntax errors and things like that. The question is not so much 'can the student write a program that will compile on the first try?' as 'can the student come up with a good algorithm which solves the problem and give a reasonable expression of it in code?'. Note that these courses (at my uni) are never for specific languages; they are courses like 'functional programming' or 'object oriented programming' or 'machine learning', which will each use a particular language, but we care more that the student understands the concepts than learns the intricacies of the course's language.
This also encourages students to learn ways of designing and writing provably correct programs: if they can reason about programs on a deeper level than intuition, then writing programs on paper is a better test of this than allowing them to experiment and test until the output 'looks right' for the inputs they've given it.
This seems like a good way to avoid cheating on grades that matter and encourage solid understanding of the important course material. That said, many students hate having to write code on paper without access to S.O. or a compiler!

Having graduated from a UK University where we had pass/fail practicals and hand-written exams I have to disagree with your last paragraph. I hated it not because I didn't have access to the Internet, I hated it because a piece of paper is not a good IDE. It often took me 3-4 cycles of "write some code -> see a deficiency fixable by a line in the middle -> rewrite entire exercise, because there is no space". This is trivial to do even in Notepad, yet so frustrating and time consuming on paper. However I cannot imagine the proctors ever agreeing to an exam with any kind of electronics.

Also common in the United States, and even in technical portions of job interviews. 2 of my last 4 had me either write on paper or whiteboard how I would do certain actions in a language, and the last basically asked me questions specific to the language. It doesn't have to compile, but it should make sense!

Regarding "why is this the case" questions: I always hate it when my professor asks a question like "why does this code compile?" because my response is always "because there's no error!"  :) If you're going to ask "Why does ___ do ___?" sort of questions, please ask them in a form that only has one specific answer.

My uni in NZ was a lot like this as well, down to the classes all using whatever language they felt like, except without any of the 'reasoning' component or any direct interaction with the people doing the marking. I remember not liking to write code on paper at the time. After being in the real world for a while though, I've found that university exams are about the only place where you'd ever want a programmer to work alone without internet access. Not the best preparation for reality.

+1, this may be an intro CS class, but that just means it's the best time to train the students that CS isn't actually about computers!

@Magus: but then, exams aren't intended to prepare students for reality even if the course they're examining was. The ways programmers are actually assessed in reality probably aren't suitable for undergraduate assessment, although it would be fun to try. Put 8 students in a room with a 200k loc code base and a sheaf of user stories, and tell them they have 2 weeks to close as many outstanding feature requests as possible to the satisfaction of the QA team ;-)

Consider two things that are (almost) unique to computer science:

researching programming methods on the internet is standard practice, with stackexchange.com being the #1 hit for many searches. Requiring someone to memorize the details is not industry practice. I would not consider accepting a programming job anywhere that said "no internet access". And I hit the function references 10 times a day to verify things like function_name vs. functionName or replace(needle, haystack) / replace(haystack, needle) headaches.
It is quite likely that 10 students will return nearly-identical results for simple algorithms. There just aren't too many ways to answer "write a function to average the values in an array". Lets see: loop, sum, count. vars i, s, c. If you taught standard code formatting it's quite possible you might get 8/10 absolutely identical responses yet zero cheating. This is a common problem for cheat/plagiarism processors that are not tweaked for CS.

Good luck, and do come back with whatever solution worked out for you.

"It is quite likely that 10 students will return nearly-identical results for simple algorithms." Don't underestimate students' imagination ;-)

"Requiring someone to memorize the details is not industry practice." Hmmm ... requiring student to know the syntax and idiom of the language is standard practice. Likewise for know the identifying features and most common applications of data structures and algorithms studied in an introductory class.

With a tough time limit, there is not enough time to google everything.

@dmckee - idioms, sure. But syntax? I google syntax every day, and I'm considered one of the best programmers, if not the best, in my company.

He's teaching c. I don't use it regularly and the only thing I need to look up is the precedence of the less commonly used operators. I agree that you might need to look up syntax in a big language, but c is so small you might call it "cute". Well, I also look up function pointer syntax if (FSM forbid) I have to go that route.

@MassimoOrtolano, as someone who has graded the work of freshman CS students, peter is very much on the ball. Grading the assignments was easy for me to do quickly, as almost every one was the same. "Yup, this one is the same as the last, 100%!" Obviously not every student had identical code character-for-character, but the similarities were striking over the course of the 3 years I did the job. I only had to launch one academic misconduct investigation during the whole period, and it turned out to be a simple mistake with a communal printer.

@BrianS: Actually your comment indirectly contains several interesting points that would be worth discussing, which are also country dependent, but this would lead the discussion too far. All what I can say here is that at my very first exam as a teacher, before grading the papers, I prepared a table listing what I thought would be conceivable errors, with the corresponding marks to be subtracted; today, some 15 years later, it is plain that I've always failed in predicting possible errors and that students' imagination is by far more developed than mine. PS: I'm in a field different from CS.

@peter: "I would not consider accepting a programming job anywhere that said "no internet access"" -- although there are some quite respectable jobs where internet access is such a significant effort that you have to stop doing it for trivial reasons. For example, an AV company might have a lab with no internet access, full stop. If you want to look something up, you go out through security and use a different machine. Or it might be somewhat more relaxed, with two different machines that at least are in the same room.

@SteveJessop I would have no objection to a security policy that said "this box is for coding, this other box is for the internet." Works for me, works for them, shows they have a good sense of balance.

In one of my programming subjects, we were allowed the class notes, our own solved exercises, and internet; but no communication with other students (email, facebook...). There was nothing really blocking them, just the lecturer wandering around.
Really, it is not that difficult to check: a student should be most of the time working on the IDE, and only sporadically browsing. If anyone seems to browse too much, you can do a closer inspection. GMail or Facebook will blatantly shine on the screen.
You can of course be more sneaky, like using Lynx to enter your mail. But really, if you can do that, you can probably write a simple algorithm without cheating.

It is very easy to exchange code between the students or even an outside tutor. All a student has to do is save a file into drop box, google drive ... that is shared. No teacher walking around the room will ever notice.

Though you may not count this as a software tool: A custom Linux live distribution, which is directly booted from a removable medium, and contains just the necessary development tools (no browser, maybe even remove the ethernet/wifi drivers) would do it; just make them boot that for the exam.
(If anyone is able – within the time limit and with the tools provided – to write the drivers and a browser he not only gets a passing grade but a job offer.)

Yes, a custom Linux counts as a software tool. Or tools, if you want to go deeper. Also, if you want to go deeper, put the Linux on a rewritable media, and preset the IDE to write to that medium. Then the students can surrender the media at the end of the assignment if desired. Also disable mounting of the hard drives.

Our administrator just locked down the installed linux distribution, disabling non-local network routes (and this was in a networking course, so we needed access to specific servers to test our work). Of course, students didn't have admin rights, that sounds like a very bad idea...

The solution employed by my professor is to allow the textbook in the classroom (or any other sheet of paper), but no internet access; not even computer access. The whole exam was on paper.
The exam itself was to develop some algorithms, or maybe creating some classes; stuff for which the textbook is useless , but it still gives you the opportunity to look up names and basic concepts.
As a student, I think there is nothing wrong with this method. Of course others may disagree.

+1 I was about to suggest paper. I think making students do some computing exams on paper is a good teaching method. Aside from preventing cheating it helps to challenge the modern world's over-reliance on the internet (not saying I'm any better of course). It's also an excellent way to make sure students have been taking the knowledge in; students can't expect to be using the internet every 5 minutes if they get a real programming job - they'll have to know by heart.

This. They won't learn real-world programming at university, anyway, so why bother? Teach them the concepts and ignore syntax "errors".

Let us continue this discussion in chat.

Law schools have been solving this problem for many years by making students buy software for exams that locks their systems down and only allows them to use the exam-taking software during the examination time. However, there have been problems. Also, law school exams are generally essays or other non-functional questions, whereas a programming exam could also require a compiler. I'm not aware of a version of this that exists to allow a text-editor, terminal, and compiler.

The students have to pay for software that performs a function one would expect from a virus? I think I'd rather write my essay on the table in blood.

@Pharap, it does no such thing. I don't like the practice, but it's a pretty effective anti-cheating device that allows students to type out an essay on a device that they are familiar with. It's reasonably efficient and makes grading easier than going through hand-written exams written in haste. If you have a better solution, you stand to make some money.

I'd say the ability to lock down a system something that would be somewhat beneficial to a virus. If it's merely a full screen word processor/office suite that won't quit until a certain amount of time has elapsed, that's not so bad. Personally I still think there's no substitute for making students use computers provided (with said computers having strict rights management applied).

@Pharap, the hallmarks of a virus is that it's invocation isn't voluntary, and that there is a malicious purpose. Being able to execute is also beneficial to a virus, but not all executables are viruses. Simply not being able to quit isn't enough to prevent cheating; the rest of the machine needs to be locked out as well. Some allow for pen and paper exams to be done instead if you don't the software, but most students these days work more effectively at their own keyboard. Having enough labs full of computers for law school exams and not much else is a prohibitive cost for many law schools.

Sure, the blackboard CMS provides a locked-down browser (used for taking quizzes and exams) which has a similar purpose: only the browser can be accessed.

Are there Software Tools that can help to use a Computer and avoid plagiarism?

I can't answer the above question and I'd be surprised by the effectiveness of such a tool. So, I suggest another solution: do the exams on paper, scan the papers at the end of the exams, send the copies back to the students and give them a couple of days to debug their programs. The differences between the paper version and the working one can thus be taken into account to decide the final mark.

Please don't. We are already producing plenty of "programmers" who can't program for the life of them. Let them use literature during the exam, they can use it in the workplace anyway...

@Davor I haven't written anything about not allowing students to use literature during the exam. Indeed, they won't be able to use online literature, but they could surely bring their own books to the exam.

We are already producing plenty of "programmers" who can't program for the life of them. Let them use literature during the exam, they can use it in the workplace anyway. — Oh, the irony.

If the design goal of a computer science course is to produce craftsmen (programmers) then something is seriously amiss.

@Raphael As with a lot of disciplines CS has programs have several goals. One, of course, is to advance the state of the art but as a side effect they turn out a corps of people who will find work as programmers but (hopefully) bring a deeper theoretical knowledge than their less specifically educated peers. A great deal of technical work can be done just fine with people who have very task focused education and training, but it is often useful to have a few deep thinkers hanging around the place.

@dmckee While I agree with your last sentence, the implication "computer scientists sometimes work as programmers, therefore we have to teach them programming" is a fallacy. Do you teach mechanical engineers how to weld or electrical engineers how to solder? (I don't think we should discuss this further here as it takes us away from the topic of th equestion.)

@Davor Your assumptions (and conclusions) are wrong. Wannabe programmers have no business being at a scientifically oriented university. Why go knocking at ivory tower and ask for a carpenter? Have programmers teach future programmers (it's called "apprenticeship") and both your and my problem are solved. It's funny that you'd assume that researchers could do the job.

@Raphael - the problem is, universities are not scientifically oriented, just individual arrogant professors who find it beneath them to teach "craftsmanship". And your suggestion that software engineers be taught like plumbers tells me just how much you have no idea what you're talking about. Again, just stop, please.

@Davor Maybe you need some intercultural experience. Your claim is definitely wrong here in Germany. We even have our own track of higher ed for applied sciences, our universities are oriented towards research. But agreed, it seems not worth my time to "discuss" with you since you can't tell the differente between programmer, software engineer and computer scientists.

The design goal of a CS education should not be to teach programming, just as the design goal of an English Lit. education should not be to teach spelling. Those are merely the natural way in which to express the actual content of the education. And to remain on-topic, would you ban a Lit. student from using the spellchecker in Word?!

Well, I haven't checked whether there are actual software tools for that, but I'll tell you what I used to do. The number of approaches to a correct solution are quite limited; if it's an exam-type problem, you should expect to receive many almost-identical, or even actually-identical, replies - as @Peter points out. But
the ingenuity of error is infinite, and the creativity of the misguided is boundless...
So mistakes + copying = easy to catch. If you want to mechanize, check for the same or similar parsing/compilation errors, or identical choices of identifiers of programs which fail to compile or run as expected.

The issue seems to be unauthorized collaboration (i.e. students can help each other by sharing information), not necessarily students handing in identical code.

Its difficult if not impossible to detect (or prevent) students from chatting in the computer lab.  Student who understand the concepts will hand in similar but working code (normal), student who do not will hand in similar broken code, which should raise a red flag.

Two such programs are MOSS and JPlag:
http://theory.stanford.edu/~aiken/moss/

Moss (for a Measure Of Software Similarity) is an automatic system for determining the similarity of programs. To date, the main application of Moss has been in detecting plagiarism in programming classes. Since its development in 1994, Moss has been very effective in this role. The algorithm behind moss is a significant improvement over other cheating detection algorithms (at least, over those known to us).

http://jplag.ipd.kit.edu/

JPlag is a system that finds similarities among multiple sets of source code files. This way it can detect software plagiarism. JPlag does not merely compare bytes of text, but is aware of programming language syntax and program structure and hence is robust against many kinds of attempts to disguise similarities between plagiarized files. JPlag currently supports Java, C#, C, C++, Scheme and natural language text.

Tools similar to these (not sure exactly which) were used at both the schools I've been to. Students were caught and penalized even after they had renamed variables and changed order of functions in the file.

The issue seems to be unauthorized collaboration (i.e. students can help each other by sharing information), not necessarily students handing in identical code.

Solutions to any reasonably scoped exam problem are bound to be similar. Syntactical similarity is therefore a bad indicator for cheating.


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Can copyright prevent claims of self-plagiarism?
So, I had somewhat of a thought experiment idea.
I'll be honest: I define plagiarism as misrepresenting who wrote (or provided the ideas of) parts of your papers. I don't believe you can self-plagiarize. If the goal of the assignment is to teach you something, and you already learned it in the past (by writing a paper that fits), I see no point in the busy work of making the current paper different enough just for the sake of it.
I realized that in the US, authors are granted a copyright to their creative works by default. (Even if few of them realize this or ever claim copyright to their works.)
Could a student use their copyright of their works to prevent (or at least seriously restrict and complicate) faculty's checking of self-plagiarism in the future? Couldn't the student just not grant the right to copy their works? If the teacher/professor hands graded work back, then they would have no copy left, and if they don't, they would have to share that one original copy with everyone who wants to check a student for self-plagiarism.
Personally, I have never (in 3+ years) had a case where I could reuse (parts of) a paper. I haven't yet had instructor specify that assignments had to be written for that assignment only. If an instructor did specify that, I would follow their rules. I would, however, try to convince them to change their mind, and this thought experiment might be part of that discussion.

You've identified a problem (being expected to waste time learning something you already know) and come up with the only wrong solution (turn in the same work a second time).  There are many better solutions, I'll name two: (1) credit by examination (2) doing an equal amount of work on the same topic that starts where you previously left off, and therefore goes farther than your classmates.  Learning more than your classmates is only a problem in a fairytale with equal outcomes for everyone, in the real world it is a very good thing.

If I were a professor I'd simply fail your examination since your work cannot follow the guidelines of the university (well, if there are).

The university can see you and raise you that they automatically own the copyright of everything you write for them; and now they can forbid you from keeping a copy for yourself. I have no idea if it would stand up in court, but the university surely can make it more of a PITA for you than what you can make it for them.

@BenVoigt: Maybe that is field-dependent, but from a CS-angle, I would argue it is a best practice for students to be aware they can reuse some previously written code for another assignment and thereby reduce their workload (and better yet, if that is a result of writing the original code in a way that made it sufficiently adaptable to fit future assignments). The context certainly matters; for papers, there is an expectation of novelty, which is why self-plagiarism matters. In class assignments, on the other hand, I only expect authorship, but not novelty - the more reuse, the better. ...

... Of course, there are exceptional cases where some code written in a student project is bound to a specific non-waivable license, but most (e.g. weekly) assignments are not like that. The most straightforward interpretation is that any code written for such assignments belongs to the student's personal codebase from which they can freely draw at any time. In such a case, I would perceive explicit remarks about which previous assignment a particular code snippet was first written for to be on the same level of chattiness as telling me what the student had for breakfast on the day of ...

... writing the code. I wouldn't deduce any points, but it would make me wonder whether the student has a general problem with distinguishing relevant information from irrelevant trivia. But, as I said, this might be seen totally differently in other fields or other types of assignments.

I don't believe you can self-plagiarize. — You're welcome to believe whatever you like, but you're still subject to the consequences of breaking the rules. — If the goal of the assignment is to teach you something, and you already learned it in the past — It's the process of creation that teaches you something, not the product.

There are situations where the author of a work does not automatically own the copyright. Works for hire are normally owned by the employer or client, for example.

You are always allowed to sue yourself. The benefit of doing this is that you always win.

@BenVoigt I would love to learn extra, but I would much prefer to do it out of the classroom (tests and deadlines take the fun out of learning). I see a degree as a certification of a minimum level of competence/knowledge. Am I at a disadvantage because I previously took the effort to learn elsewhere and now need more competence for the same degree?  Credit by examination may be the solution, but I have only seen it done on an entire course level, not for an individual paper.

First off:

I don't believe you can self-plagiarize.

I'm afraid that it doesn't matter what you believe about the word or its definition. It is not the reuse itself that is considered here, but it matters that most other academics believe that unattributed reuse of one's own work is ethically incorrect. If you choose to do things that most others label "self-plagiarism," then sooner or later it will not go well for you.
Now, as for your idea about copyright: potentially you could in fact make yourself a pain for the faculty members who deal with you.  You don't even have to be right or sane about your argument, you just have to threaten to make a big legal stink.  You will then greatly complicate your professor's lives, but one way or another you will not prevail: most likely either you will lose the legal case or the university may simply decline to continue instructing you.

How is it "unattributed" if you, the author, have signed your name to it?

@Random832 It is "unattributed" in the sense that it does not acknowledge the original source.

@jakebeal: So does that mean if you attribute it and say "Portions of this paper were recycled from  by myself" then it's okay?

@mike3 That would certainly mean it is not unacknowledged self-plagiarism.  Whether such recycling would be OK or not then depends on the policy of the professor.

It'll never work.
I have a hard time believing that any attempt to sue the university for copyright infringement would stand up in court.  I think one could make an argument that by handing in the assignment, you implicitly grant the university a license to copy it for internal use.  "Fair use" permissions might also come into play.
If somehow you got the university to take your legal threats seriously, you can expect the immediate effect to be the following: all course syllabi would start to contain a clause saying something like "To take this course, you must consent to the university making and indefinitely storing copies of your work."
I think most academics would also consider that you would be acting unethically by trying this strategy.  It's generally accepted that university instructors have the ultimate right to set the parameters of their courses.  If those parameters include "you may not hand in work already submitted in previous courses", then I would consider that this policy is binding on you, and that if you won't abide by it, you shouldn't take the course.  Your proposed strategy seems like a transparent attempt to weasel your way out of abiding by them.  If you attempt to use it to get away with forbidden duplicate submissions, and you do eventually get caught, expect the full weight of academic dishonesty sanctions.  Short of that, expect a very bad relationship with your university and instructors, no letters of recommendation, etc.

Your point about fair use is more than enough, as criticism of copyrighted use is absolutely a pillar of fair use. Assignment of a grade would simply be seen as critique and criticism of work submitted for review.

Whether this is up to instructors depends where you are. In the US this is common. In the UK it is not. But usually in that case the institution forbids e.g. gaining credit twice for substantially similar work in the context of, say, the award of degrees.

Interesting question! Let me address the points you make and ask about. Like the other answers, I will take the liberty of discussing not just your literal question but some of the other issues you raise, which I find quite thought-provoking.

I'll be honest:

That's a good idea, especially since you are posting your somewhat misguided beliefs in a public forum from a user profile that clearly reveals your identity.

I define plagiarism as misrepresenting who wrote (or provided the
  ideas of) parts of your papers.

Okay, that's a reasonable way of putting it.

I don't believe you can self-plagiarize.

Hmm. I think you are falling into a common trap here that is related to the unfortunate and rather misleading terminology associated with the behavior referred to as "self-plagiarism." Indeed, when you submit your own work you are not "plagiarizing from yourself" in the sense of "misrepresenting who wrote parts of your paper," since you are claiming that the paper was written by you, and indeed it was. Rather, self-plagiarism involves a misrepresentation of when (or in what context) the work you are submitting was written. It is an unethical thing to do, but for slightly different reasons than plagiarism, and it is not a special case of plagiarism; it is quite a different offense.

If the goal of the assignment is to teach you something, and you
  already learned it in the past (by writing a paper that fits), I see
  no point in the busy work of making the current paper different enough
  just for the sake of it.

But are you not assuming a rather narrow interpretation of "the goal of the assignment"? Would it not be equally plausible to say that "the goal of the assignment" is to increase your knowledge of a certain subject? In that interpretation, if you have already learned "something," the assignment would be an opportunity for you to learn even more about the "something" in question. Rather than submitting the same work a second time, you could reach the goal of increasing your knowledge by expanding on your earlier work (as Ben Voigt suggests in a comment), and achieve an even deeper level of knowledge and understanding, and do all of this without needing to work any harder than any of the other students.
Now, it's not for me to say that my interpretation of "the goal of the assignment" is correct and yours is incorrect. That's really for your university and professors, who are the ones giving you the assignment, to say. However, I will point out that my interpretation is motivated by a desire to maximize the new knowledge I gain from a given situation I find myself in, whereas your interpretation seems motivated by an apparent desire to minimize the amount of work you put in for your classes. A good university will definitely want to appeal to students like me more than it would want to appeal to students like you, so I suspect it will agree with my interpretation (and I know this for a fact in the case of my own university).

And finally, to your actual question:

Could a student use their copyright of their works to prevent (or at
  least seriously restrict and complicate) faculty's checking of
  self-plagiarism in the future? Couldn't the student just not grant the
  right to copy their works?

The main problem with this idea is that as a student, the legal rights that you have in practice are very different than the legal rights that you have in theory. Remember, you want something from your university: a degree. Because of that, the university can force you to voluntarily give up all kinds of rights that you might theoretically have, just by making that a condition for getting grades and eventually your degree. For this reason, your idea will never work. As others have pointed out, as soon as you attempt to exercise this right to prevent your professors from copying your work, or any other right that your university reasonably perceives as interfering with its educational mission, the university will simply insist that you must waive that right if you want to remain a student in good standing. I am not a lawyer, but I don't see anything that would prevent your university from making such a requirement.

'learn even more about the "something" in question' - that sounds good in theory, but I think it is somewhat unrealistic in many situations. If the assignment is to write a binary tree class with preorder, inorder and postorder traversal methods, then the code that does so is what it is. There is not much more to dive into. Furthermore, as an instructor, I have a certain idea of what effort students will typically spend on a given task, and thereby, how "deeply" they are going to dive into the topic. If I ask them to implement an AVL tree, ...

... my expectation is that they do exactly that, in order to get (1) programming practice, (2) practice in handling pointers, and (3) an idea of how self-balancing trees work. I would certainly not want students to dive into optimizing this particular kind of trees, given that AVL trees are rarely used in practice and are primarily taught because they are a reasonably demonstrative and not too complicated example of self-balancing trees. If the above expectations have already been met by a student, I would prefer if they did something entirely different rather than cling to the assignment.

@O.R.Mapper no problem, if you would prefer if they did something entirely different, then you could assign them an alternative exercise since they have already learned as much as you think anybody needs to know about AVL trees. This is consistent with my answer, if you interpret "something" more broadly as, say, trees, or data structures, rather than something super specific. Anyway, as the instructor I'm sure you will figure out a good way for the student to make productive use of his time to further his knowledge, in keeping with the philosophy of my answer.

Also, if you don't mind students reusing code (as you stated above), then the student is not committing self-plagiarism. In that case, presumably you factored reuse of code into the scope of the assignments, so that the time the student will need to work on his project is no less on average than for any other student. In that case that part of my answer will not apply. Again, I see no inconsistency between what you're saying and my principle that the goal of an assignment is to generally further one's knowledge rather than to learn some very specific skill that one might have already learned.

I think my general thought about the suggestion is that no matter whether student dive specifically into AVL trees, learn more about trees or data structures, or do something completely different that has nothing to do at all with the topic, they will be outside of the scope of the assignment (and its intended final discussion). As such, I don't really see a need to assign an alternative exercise; once they can hand in a solution that fulfils the requirements of the assignment, they are free to use their remaining time in any way they wish - possibly finding more information on the topic, ...

... possibly doing something entirely unrelated. "the time the student will need to work on his project is no less on average than for any other student" - not necessarily; some classes overlap topically, while others do not. Students that happen to pick many overlapping classes might have to spend less time overall because, e.g., similar exercises on SQL might appear both in a class on enterprise systems and in a class on database management. But then, I realize that in my own assignments, I spend quite some effort to ensure they are specifically useful to learn a specific set of skills, ...

... while leaving the general furthering of one's knowledgeability on a broad topic to the general responsibility students have for themselves. Approaches in this respect might differ.

@O.R.Mapper ok, fair enough. I think your philosophy is reasonable and internally consistent, as is mine.

I have nothing against learning extra things -- I love learning and learning by actually trying things for myself is the preferred way to spend free time. I just don't enjoy doing it under the confines of a course -- the tests and deadlines have a special way of removing fun. I see a degree as a certification of a minimum level of knowledge, not as certifying an increase in knowledge. If it is an increase, then what is a degree supposed to mean to an employer? If it is an increase, then what is credit by examination?

@Azendale Good points, and great to hear you have a passion for learning, however: 1. there are others with similar views about self-plagiarism to you who do not have such passion. 2. I would say a degree certifies some complicated combination of an absolutel level of knowledge and an increase of knowledge. 3. In any case, a good university, and in particular one that follows the approach I was advocating, will produce many many students who have a lot more than the minimum knowledge. Why settle for the minimum? (See also this answer.)

Another way of thinking of my advice is in terms of an efficient allocation of resources. You're in the course for X amount of time, the instructor is there for Y amount of time. How can we use these resources to maximize the benefit to you? If you already know half of the material, a lot of this will just be a waste of your and the instructor's time. Credit by examination is indeed a good solution -- I'm by no means against it; my solution is another good approach, which has the added benefit that you (or someone like you but without your passion for learning) will gain even more knowledge.

@DanRomik I'm not settling for the minimum. I would be thrilled if a professor pulled my aside and said that I already seemed to know X, so they were giving me the option (and challenge) to go learn about A, B, & C instead, and told me if I took that option I would need to set up a meeting with them in the future where they would ask questions to find out what I learned.

@DanRomik I love reading/researching and learning. Writing is OK if I know it will benefit someone else, and I have passed all the writing courses I have had so far with straight A's (some of those with points above 100%). But writing something (that will only be read by my professor) to prove I have learned...well, I might prefer sorting grains of sand for an equivalent amount of time instead.

@Azendale it sounds like we mostly agree, and I can see you have good intentions. I think what was challenging about your question is that you were proposing to use rather dishonest means to get around a requirement that may seem stupid to you, sort of like sorting grains of sand, but in many cases will be far from stupid. Yes, some professors can take such things to an unhealthy extreme. I encourage you to go to your professor and ask for an alternative assignment in such a case, as you suggested, which I'm sure they'll be happy to do, and regardless, always be honest.

@Dan Romik: "expanding on your earlier work (as Ben Voigt suggests in a comment), and achieve an even deeper level of knowledge and understanding, and do all of this without needing to work any harder than any of the other students." However, I thought the objection was to redoing work already done . The subtext seems to be that the assignment would require repeating a substantial amount of the points already made in previous work, not that it was a follow-on that would by the requirements require a wholly different text starting off where a previous one left off.

@Dan Romik : As if it did indeed require something totally new, albeit starting off the previous one, then even modulo any plagiarism issues, if you could turn in the original paper it would still be worth a zero for not addressing the assignment. Conversely, if identical paper would satisfy the assignment, again modulo plagiarism issue, then turning in wholly different paper might not, and give lower/zero grade for not meeting assignment points. Finally, if it does require something new so that the original paper would not suffice, the question is moot.

The business trajectory of Turnitin provides a fairly conclusive answer to this question: no, at this point copyright offers little or no protection against checking for any sort of plagiarism, including self-plagiarism.

Good link! It does sound like that article only refers to the case where a student agreed to a contract though. Not that making students agree to a contract that allows copying their work wouldn't be the result of a student trying to pull this (as mentioned in other answers).

Personally I consider it highly unethical that universities store my work for an indefinite amount of time in some dubious third party system. (Luckily none of my work was submitted to such a system)

I don't disagree, CodesInChaos -- I don't like and don't use Turnitin, and would not mourn if it fell off the face of the earth.

At least at my institution, submitting to one class work that was done previously for another class would not count as plagarism (see Article II of our Honor Code). Plagiarism is clearly defined to be submitting the work of another person without proper attribution. In fact, the enumerated items in Section 3 wouldn't apply to your example. But there are two catch-all's -- first, "Students are expected to act according to the highest ethical standards" and second, "other acts of academic misconduct may be defined by the professor."
For the first point, I assure you that submitting work a second time would be brought as "unethical" behavior in the absence of anything else. And while one could try to argue in front of the judiciary committee that it was, somehow, not unethical, I am fairly certain that argument wouldn't work (having served on the committee and been an advisor to students facing the committee).
But the second point is the most direct. In Section 4, it says faculty are expected to:

Make known to their class as specifically as possible what constitutes appropriate academic conduct as well as what comprises academic misconduct. This includes but is not limited to the use of previously submitted work, collaborative work on homework, etc.

Every professor I have ever taken has included a line on the syllabus that says all work is expected to be our own, original, not used previously, and done within whatever limits they want to impose about collaboration. So in every class I have ever taken, re-using work would be an academic violation -- not because of plagiarism, not because of copyright or lack-thereof, but because it was explicitly said that it was not allowed.
And in the odd case that it wasn't listed that way, it would be wrapped up under unethical behavior and shot down anyway.

In my classes, I design the interface in such a way that there is a certain amount of understanding and adaptation necessary to make it work with the exercise which makes naive plagiarism difficult.
I expressly allow students to use own prior work, as long as it is clearly indicated which part of the work was carried out before. I consider it good practice to understand how earlier work can be fit into later projects, and if adaptation is easily possible, it speaks well of the design ability and mental flexibility of the students and thus can even gain bonus marks.
However: for this, the added value of current achievement with respect to past achievement must be transparently assessable. What is called "self-plagiarism" here, is trying to obfuscate the delineation with respect to past achievement. This is the actual assessment offence here; this component it has in common with "traditional" plagiarism (and it holds independently from the unethical aspect of withholding credit from whoever would deserve it which is not relevant here).
Abusing the law to get away with unethical behaviour may work may appear to be subversive fun for "legislation hackers". However, one needs to keep in mind that the fact that there may be a legislative hole (if there is one in this case) is not necessarily a sign of gullibility of the system, but of time-effort tradeoff. For the powers-that-be it may be a better tradeoff to set a drastic example to one individual abusing the system and leave the legislative hole open than to close the hole and make all others suffer from the restrictions. Although, in my experience, both things happen.
In other words, chances are, one won't get away with the copyright/self-copy model, and everybody else at the uni will be slapped with additional restrictions on the copyright they can retain (if there were no or looser restrictions before) and possibly other restrictions. In other words, one would have poisoned the village well. Of course, just in your thought experiment.