[fuball63]

I'm a new computer science professor coming from "industry" (as the academics call it) and can confirm that cheating is rampant. I've also noticed that it is an arms race you'll never win; cheaters will always find a way to cheat, and you can try to subvert them as best you can but will eventually end up harming legitimate students, which is unacceptable.

What I wish existed was an independent board exam that students had to take for employment. Many professions have this, from medical professionals, accountants, engineers, and the trades. My thought is this would disincentivize cheating and encourage deep learning at the university level, while offloading the cost of cheat detection and enforcement to a board, whose job is to solely evaluate if someone is capable of entering the workforce. A separation of concerns.

Another reason for board exams: when I was working, I was asked to do a bunch of flimsy engineering to satisfy management. It would be nice if I could respond "If I do this, I could lose my license, so no." Just like if someone asked a carpenter to build a house not up to code, or a dentist told the hygienist to do shoddy work to improve throughput.

If anyone knows anything about this, I'd love to chat, because its something I've been thinking about for a long time and I hope there's a good reason why it doesn't exist.

[nelsondev]

This solution just moves the problem from colleges/universities to a “board”, but doesn’t solve it.

People would still cheat on the hypothetical licensing exam.

Licensing also would add friction in changing jobs, immigration policies, thereby hampering general mobility of workers. More paperwork and bureaucracy would develop.

A company’s interview process is currently where someone’s declared skills are put to the test, which although imperfect, provides the filtering mechanism you’re looking for.

[lifeisstillgood]

I think that software is a form of literacy.

So my axiom takes me to "we can test if you can read or write, but beyond that, there are an infinite ways to write about star crossed lovers, so just greping for Romeo and Juliet is it going to work"

Then again there must be incentive to cheat at bar exams.

[nmlt]

That sounds really cool. I’d say the only reason that something like that doesn’t exist is that nobody has created it yet.