"Gross Academic Fraud" @ RA UTB-TSC

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The system allows professors to post tests and course materials for students, teach entire courses online and keep online grade books. Blackboard generally serves to enrich the learning experience; however, former student employees of the school’s Office of Distance Education, the office that manages Blackboard, confessed to a police investigator that they had used the online system to access test answers to help themselves cheat, give the answers to other students, or even to sell.

In Italy high-school exam tests should come from a parliament committee and be sealed in envelopes entrusted to the police until it's time. A MP I knew admitted that the content of these tests 'is around' for a while before the exams. Cases of mysterious foreknowledge of the tests' content were common enough, with answers being passed to relatives and 'clients' of particular individuals. That shined in everyone's face as typically students perform very poorly on these tests, but at times entire classes performed wonderfully. This was the situation prior to the 1990s reforms. AFTER the reforms, newspapers denounced the common practice of D students to take the exam at 'friendly' schools, thus getting As. New reforms ensued.

Dean of Students Maria Fuentes-Martin said that the university aims to rehabilitate those who violate the code of student conduct, rather than demoralizing them. In this sense, she said, exposing students who cheat to public scrutiny would undermine the school’s mission.

Had Pedro Burrito and Maria Fajita found a student with three copies of Mein Kampf (sorry for the example, but can't say three copies of Lenin's speeches: that is required textbook for an A in many courses ), they'd have blasted him into oblivion. But a racket of high ranking school fraudsters must be treated with the utmost sympathy and condescension...or angry Felipe Guacamole might start talking about what REALLY was going on...you know, you look elsewhere as long as I look elsewhere.

The police report further states that another male employee, who was not a student at the time of the investigation, initially denied wrongdoing, but after "calming down" eventually admitted to stealing answers to a test for a female student saying: "I guess I was influenced by the fact that I liked her." That employee no longer works for UTB-TSC, and Blanchard, the school’s attorney, said he is "not re-hirable."

Women having sex for grades...what sensational news.

However, after the cheating was uncovered, police investigators and the UTB-TSC Internal Audit Department offered plenty of advice on how such breaches could have been prevented.

Gold standard, no doubt.