This seems like a classic case where many people tried to cut corners and they're now trying to claim that they're the victim.

The professor claimed that he wrote the tests while he was actually using pre-fab tests. One can argue that the pre-fab tests are as good or better than the ones he would write himself and, as such, there's nothing wrong. Except that passing off another's work as your own is usually known as plagiarism. With that declaration, it is perfectly conceivable that students would expect that these pre-fab tests are things from the textbook manufacturer that they could study off of. If that is the case, there is no generational disconnect about cheating and the premise of the article is overblown.

Personally, I'm very sympathetic to the students. Logic tells me that if you're cheating, you try not to spread it around to a group of 200 - most of whom you won't know or trust. I mean, there are two ways it could have played out:

1) You send the exam (or it gets continually forwarded down the line) to 200 people telling them that it's cheating (acting with bad intent). Odds are that one of those 200 is going to tell the professor that you're cheating before the exam. Plan foiled.

2) You send out the pre-fab exam to people thinking it's just a study guide from the teacher's edition of the book since the professor makes up his own exams. It gets widely forwarded because, hey, awesome study guide! Then it turns out that it's the actual exam questions and someone tells the professor that.

#1 seems more believable because it came to light after the exam rather than before. It seems plausible that the professor had been lazy for years using pre-fab tests and by chance got caught this year passing off pre-fab tests as his own. Rather than say, "well, unfortunately a lot of students got a copy of the test before since I wasn't making them myself and we'll have to re-do the midterm", the professor tried to defend himself by attacking the students. By accusing them of cheating, it wasn't his laziness that caused a re-take of the midterm, but cheating students. He shouldn't be blamed for wasting time, it's cheating students.

At the beginning of the article, I really disliked the students - people who didn't want to put in the work trying to get a good grade they didn't deserve. It's possible that's what they were. However, I can't see any evidence that indicates that's the case. All of the evidence seems to point the other direction.

* The professor said he made the tests

* The situation came to light after the exam, not before and one would think someone of the 200+ would snitch before the exam

This isn't a generational disconnect on what constitutes cheating. The students aren't defending themselves saying that it's ok to get a copy of the exam beforehand. The soul searching that the professor needs to do is around his exam preparation.

Let's say there's an open-source econ exam online (someone's written and published it). I, as a professor, print off 600 copies and give it in my class. It just so happens that many of the students, while looking for practice materials, found that exam. It's my fault for using a public exam.

In this case, the professor was using semi-private materials. The questions seem to be from the teacher's edition of the book (you know, the kind with the answers already written in). Yeah, it's not "public", but it isn't quite private either. If students think that you're going to be making your own questions, maybe an exam in the teacher's edition of the book they're using seems like the perfect practice test. It's the material you've been covering, but not the exact exam.

I don't want to sound too harsh on the professor, but sometimes you have to own up. Saying, "I thought that the teacher's edition materials wouldn't be available to students. Unfortunately, they were" makes me feel bad for the situation that both parties are in. It's a little sketchy whether it's ok to grab the teacher's materials of a textbook if you're a student. Clearly it's not all roses - you know that it wasn't written for you (a student), but if it doesn't affect the course of the class it isn't so bad, right?

This feels like when Harvard Business School denied entrance to students who looked at whether other people were admitted. Phil Greenspun wrote about it (http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2005/03/08/). Baiscally, they gave students a URL that had a code in it (with no check). So, students typed in example.com/admitted?stud=12345 and saw whether they got in. However, they could just change the number and see other people and were accused of hacking. They blamed the students for what was their error when, really, their disclosure of admissions info without protections might have left them open for a lawsuit. And it isn't just "hacking", curious users wondering whether their software was really so bad and those who made typos could cause problems. Imagine that I'm #12346 and you're #12345. I accidentally type in 12345 and pull up you, realize my mistake and pull up me. Now they think that you looked at you and then "hacked" the system to look at me when you're innocent all along.

In this case, even if a few students had malicious intent, it's highly unlikely that a secret conspiracy of 200 students of malicious intent could happen and the vast majority just thought they were getting a practice exam. Now, the professor and the university want to make them out to be immoral cheaters to cover themselves. I'm not saying that getting access to teacher editions isn't problematic and morally above reproach. However, if you're operating under the assumption that the professor isn't using it, it's understandable and certainly not the type of immorality that the professor is trying to paint.