The Real Story Behind the West Point Cheating Scandal

In spite of the honor concept that states “a cadet will not lie, cheat, or steal, or tolerate those who do, West Point officials broke the news this week that 73 cadets had cheated on a calculus exam last academic year. What does this mean about the state of our service academies and the modern military?

[mnawrath]

As an Army Vet Nam vet (enlisted) I have to say this title made me think, oh boy, here comes a knock on West Point from an Annapolis grad. I was pleasantly surprised that this was actually a thoughtful discussion with parallel situations at Annapolis cited. We do ask a lot of future officers, as well we should. I'm glad I listened to the entire clip. A worthwhile expenditure of my time, as is everything else I've seen on here.

[gslick]

Thanks for explaining that. You have a gift for teaching.
My brother served with you in the Navy and was a coworker of yours at Fed Ex. He speaks highly of you. Thank also for your service. 🇺🇸

[punishedsneed]

I was at my service academy and I had a situation. We were doing our calculus exam. A guy raised his hand. "Sir, I've seen this exam before and I don't feel morally right taking it with prior knowledge of it." Guy gets up, hands the test to the prof, and asks if there can be another exam to take. That same guy graduated top of the class. Dude was mythical to guys like us.

[brandon_wren]

Man, you are SUCH a good storyteller. Loving this channel. Keep up the excellent work, Ward!

[wdbguitar]

As an ex-navy nuc sub officer it was very interesting to hear how Rickover had such an influence on the overall curriculum.
I got my commission via the OCS pipeline, and we also had 'the gouge' system happening to a degree in OCS, although I'd have say. OCS was not really so difficult that it was needed.
When I reached nuc power school there was an O6 from the aviator community that had to take the course to be eligible to command a carrier. I used to talk to during the smoke breaks. I felt bad for him as we were all fresh out of college, and some of the material was still fresh in our minds. He didn't have that luxury.

[brettking]

USAFA graduate, Pilot, USAFA Air Officer Commanding, and finally a USAFA Poli Sci Prof...that was my career. There is a lot of nuance between “gouge” and “cheating.” Gouge is a great time management tool for discovering exactly what you NEED to learn...the operative words are NEED TO LEARN. In my opinion, if you learned the information you were being tested on, and every student had access to the gouge (which they did), you did not gain an unfair advantage over other students...which is the definition of cheating. I was still in the Air Force when the missileer scandal broke...Nuance plays a large role in that scandal as well. Great video on this topic Mooch. Would have been interested in your ethics class. There’s a long discussion that needs to take place at our service academies on this topic...

[curtisphillips]

I spent 25 years on active duty and retired as a captain, and naval aviator (E2/C2). At the end of the day, Mooch, you nailed it. Gouge abounds and there is a line we are not to cross but every single training evolution in the Navy, including the promotion, and training of the best naval line officers to flag is based on one fundamental paradigm: you will have more work than you have time to complete. I was not an academy graduate but I knew plenty of them. The commitment a young man or woman makes to spend four years or five, if they go to prep school in some cases, at a service academy is admirable and displays superlative dedication. I think the academies are sound. I respected my service academy colleagues and I think there are a lot of politically-motivated loud-mouths who need to sit down, shut up, and revise their exams.

[howardg]

Your opening phrase hits home for me, as I was a Civil Air Patrol cadet in junior high and high school (1985-1988). "We will not lie cheat, or steal, nor tolerate anyone who does." It was a very formative experience that directed me toward a career in the military. I went through the hard courses at St. Cloud State University, which is a public university in central Minnesota.

[jimmerrithew]

In the late 1960s, I attended Canada's Royal Military College. I agree with your assessment that the academic workload was very heavy. In addition to classes and homework assignments, similar to your military academies, we had to participate in sports, drill, keep our rooms tip top for inspection, press our kit every day and spit and polish our boots. Everyone had to find ways to cut corners and shave time.
These educational, military institutions are very demanding. About 2/3rds of our recruit class did not make it to graduation. After two years, I decided this was not the life for me. I have a lot of respect for those who made it through the 4 years.
Thank you for the informative and thoughtful videos you create.

[trevorthrupp]

In my Australian Air Force Academy years I remember time management as critical. Doing a science Degree majoring in Physics, on top of all the additional military studies and activities, definitely taught me to prioritize things. I loved Advanced Mathematics and Physics but sucked at several Physics subjects when it came to exams (particularly statistics, a core subject .. 2 attempts before passing). The Past Paper Principle (what Ward refers to as "the Gouge") was based on accessing what was readily available in the Academy Library (which I didn't find out about this until Year 3, by accident), and practicing as many past test questions as I could in the little time I had left in the day/week. Remembering everything taught in class was impossible (tertiary education lessons in 1974-77 were not as well constructed as they are today), and there was certainly not enough time to construct answers from first (science based) principles. Big difference to getting beforehand access to the exam, or plagiarising someone else's thesis, or going into the test with cheat sheets or notes written on the inside of your wrist: definitely wrong. I don't know the full story with either what happened at West Point or Annapolis, but when you're a teenager struggling to survive a very new and very high pressure environment I bet we all looked to find ways to keep our head above water long enough to pass. Then follow up with the air force pilots course, with failure rate as high as the Academy's - I look back now and wonder how I managed to get through it all. Great topic Ward.

[VAhistTeach]

I am a high school social studies teacher and and a recent subscriber to your channel. There was a story told to me by another teacher of how he discovered the class was cheating on an assignment he had given. At first he could not find his answer key sheet, but then after finding it noticed that many students were writing for the last question "Answers will vary" as it said on his answer key.

I did not know they had such a thing as honor remediation, and frankly don't think such a thing should be offered in college, particularly at the service academies. We obviously have too many young students who have grown up in a culture where honor in such things is not emphasized. I can see it in many students I teach. I think we need to do a better job and teaching these values at a younger age, but we place too much of that burden on the schools. I first learned about the importance of doing your best and not cheating from my parents. Teachers can assist this process, but it has to begin at home.

[gregb]

A good talk. Reminded me of another West Point Scandal that I heard about while I was in the Army - as an enlisted soldier 71-74 in Germany. during a Race Relations seminar, (where all of the attendees were required to use our First names and no rank in introducing ourselves, ) the subject of the scandal was brought up. Apparently what happened was that one cadet squealed on the cheaters.

Sounds good to me. I didn't want to possibly serve under an officer that might possibly not be qualified. Makes sense in a shooting war. Especially since the many ring knockers in our brigade demonstrated that while they might have been taught to be good field grade and general officers, they were, with few exceptions, pretty arrogantly stupid as Lieutenants when out 'in the field'. The general consensus was that in general the OCS LTs were far better leaders than West Pointers or the ROTC ones.

But we had a Captain in the seminar, a West Point Captain. We all knew who he was in spite of the civilian clothes we wore - he was the company commander of "B' company in our Battalion. He told us that the 'squealer' at the point was punished by the rest of the cadets - they refused to talk to him or have anything to do with him. Our Captain told us that he fully supported what the other cadets did. He was almost vitriolic about how evil the poor guy who told about the cheating was. Nobody understood how he felt. There was cheating going on, that broke the honor code, but somehow telling the people in authority that your classmates were cheating was an even worse crime, according to his classmates and the officer in our seminar. He kept saying that the cheaters were honor bound to turn themselves in - get real Captain, they cheated, they sure has heck weren't going to turn themselves in.

I guess you can tell that even after this many years I still get a little hot under the collar when I think of his attitude. The 'no tattle tale' rule is for grade school. When it involves the possible qualifications of a military leader it's just dangerous.

Sorry if I went a little off topic on this one.

[golfmaniac]

If you get hold of a test you know for certain is the test that will be given as your next exam, that is cheating. If you get a multitude of tests that have sometimes been given in the past, and use them as study guides, it is not. You still have to know how to solve the problems on all of those tests for them to be useful. The latter goes on at every college there is.

[nolsp]

Reminds me of some of the civil engineering classes I took in college. Exams were often "open books." No amount of printed material could help if you didn't understand the lessons. For sure these exams were more nerve-racking for many students.

[mickydee]

Many years ago I took a police sergeant written test and realized they had lifted a large section of questions and answers out of a book on taking police promotional examinations that I read. I didn’t know prior to the examination this was going to happen and I aced the test and got promoted during that cycle. I never felt bad about being well prepared and studying harder than the next guy. I did wonder if the “powers that be” ever helped their favorites along by giving them inside information on what specific materials to study for a upcoming promotional test.

[stevelavergne]

USMA 83. The Superintendent has said this episode has led to them scrapping the experimental honor system they had tried the last 5 years and going back to the no-tolerance system from my time. Of course, the Supe is one of my classmates.

[rjeffm]

At the school I attended, all previous final exams, in every subject, were available in the library to be studied by the student body. The profs knew this, as did the students. The result of course was that the sheer volume of possible questions fed into the same time management problem you spoke of. And it gave profs an incentive to vary their game too.

[citadelgrad]

Very interesting topic. I graduated from The Citadel. We ran the last cadet administered honor system. Senior year, i was Vice Chairman of the Honor Committee. Many people who were not subject to an honor system are blown away when they hear that we ejected cadets who violated the code. Great channel!

[MADMAX]

Too bad Congress doesn't have an honor code!

[lesstraveledpath]

In undergrad Thermodynamics, I struggled. I had to drop the course the first time, because I was failing.

The next semester, I found & bought some used study guides from England -- Shaum's Outline Series (I think). Something about the British English in the prose of the book helped me to understand the material a bit better. This study guide had really good review questions and solutions -- much nicer than the US version of the book. Coming into the first exam, I had worked all the questions in the outline book as prep for the exam, and checked my solutions against the back of the book. I really did do the work.

The tests were open notes & book -- you needed the steam tables, etc. I started working the exam, and the questions were REALLY familiar. ALL of the questions were copied verbatim from the study guide that I had bought AND worked through to prep for the exam! I triple checked the problem setup, and then copied over my notes and turned it in.

The test was proctored by a TA, so when I finished I went to the Prof to fess up to what had happened. I really did solve the problems, but I also had the questions AND answers ahead of time without knowing it. He said that I should hang onto that book, as it was going to be a REALLY valuable study resource for the rest of the semester. Every exam was taken verbatim from the review questions in that study guide -- so if I worked all the questions ahead of time, I just needed to turn in the right solutions on exam day.

It felt "cheaty"...but the prof knew I had found his "secret" question bank and still decided to be lazy. I did actually do the work, and I did take the A. ;)