Well, this post DID raise some bloodpreasure here. First of all, if anyone was ever at our faculty, he or she would perfectly well know that we don’t have the furniture like this (tables, seats) anywhere at Faculty of Social Sciences (people invited, I personally will guide you thru). However, I know where this picture was taken. Secondly, I and my colleagues do invigilate many exams and we do not LET students cheat without punishment. Of course, some of them still cheat and get away with it, but not nearly as easy as suggested. And of course, there are specific cases when nothing happens but we are really working on lowering the number of such instances.

So, I would kindly ask to first make sure who we are talking about before making any false judgements.

     by Bojana on March 31, 2005 at 6:43 am

ok. first of all, as a student of the FDV I can say without a shadow of a doubt, this photo WAS NOT taken at the FDV (see the photo for futher proof –> www.fdv.uni-lj.si/obvestila/Informativni%20dan/IMG_1652.JPG)

There will always be cheating. The problem is not in the curriculum or the lack of “watch-dogs” but in people who cheat. The cheaters are exploiting the professors. And since the latter don`t wanna treat the former like a pack of nazi prisoners, it`s understandable that people did, people do and people will cheat. It`s like a tale of the snake and the turtle. “It`s in my nature”.

The problem is not in uni. It`s much, much earlier that people should realise that cheating wins nothing. That cheating nullifies the victory you achived by it.

And as for photo itself and the caps…this is just communist propaganda. Leave the FDV alone. This is stupid beyond belief. People taking pot-shots at FDV and ridiculing the faculty. I heard so many “You know what I heard?” in the past few years that it`s almost absurd. How people pass judgment without even thinking in terms of common sense if such thing is even possible. What people have against FDV I will never know. Jealous of what? What did we ever do to them? We should start a contra-revolution, emailing pictures of people getting high and saying “This is what the Faculty of Arts looks like” or taking photos of pedophille sex and dub it “An oral exam at the Faculty of Teology”. Why exactly are we not doing that? Maybe cause we`re not assholes?

And as for Bojana`s comments on “cheating being not as easy as it sounds”…I hate to disappoint you, but sometimes, it`s actually even easier. And you`re right…sometimes it is impossible.

In conclusion, I won`t pass a judgment how the cheaters are lesser people and how they should be whipped by “cat ‘o’ nine tails”.

The results of cheating always show later on. And if nothing changes whether you cheat or not…what`s the point then?

     by cookie on March 31, 2005 at 7:54 am

This photo is not from FDV. It is always good to check your information before drawing conslusions.

     by Some-one on March 31, 2005 at 8:02 am

FDV schmDV. Does it matter?
People who cheat will burn in hell.

Satan: “Welcome to hell! BURN NOW!”
Cheater: “Erm…”
(unsuspiciously takes a look at a piece of paper glued to the hair in his left armpit)
Cheater: “Oh, right; (in flames) AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaAA!”

     by maQmIgh on March 31, 2005 at 8:38 am

Michael, you should know better Cheating efficiently employs a lot of useful real-world skills. Anyway, that’s how I completed my high-school

     by Dejan on March 31, 2005 at 9:40 am

I’m a FDV student as well. I guess it’s flattering seeing people trying to make our uni look bad. Envy is bad for your health, mister! Oh and cheating goes on everywhere. I think that when the exams/subjects are useless- those you gotta pass and you learn nothing from them- cheating is welcomed. Too bad i can’t really cheat- too much of a chicken, hehe. Anyways, cheating does fire back eventually. You learn what you learn, and if you don’t, you don’t know. I guess it’s a personal decision, isn’t it?

     by Baya on March 31, 2005 at 10:33 am

I can’t see why everybody is so quick to put the blame on the cheaters without even considering that there might be something wrong with the educational system itself. The exams given by some professors in Slovenia (no names mentioned!) are done in such a way as to ensure that the majority of students will fail - the point isn’t to demonstrate one’s knowledge of the subject at hand (god forbid!), but rather one’s skill in memorising various texts and largely pointless details… Something I find much more disturbing than the act of cheating itself is that I would often pass University exams simply because I would know what intricate little details of a subject to study - hence, even after spending weeks studying all the “right” things for the exam I wouldn’t get any closer to actually getting a better overview of the matter, much less any long-term gain from the acquired knowledge. I might as well have taken the short cut and cheated from all I got out of this!

     by Tanja on March 31, 2005 at 11:21 am

I do not agree with those who wrote - students cheat everywhere. I got my M.A. in England. No cheating there. You get questions in advance, so that you can prepare for written exam, and later, when you defend your thesis, you do that in front of the professors who - in my case - came from Dublin to Leeds!
Slovenia is now in EU and should look around how the others do it. (But not on the Balkan!) For the sake of Sloevnian studens - so that one day they can work all over the world.

     by Seesaw on March 31, 2005 at 1:13 pm

You get questions in advance? That must be interesting.

Compared to my colleagues I really didn’t cheat a lot at school and university. I always went through the notes and tried to understand and memorize them as well as I could. But I know that lots of my colleagues cheated on certain exams (where the professor wasn’t very strict) and didn’t spent even one minute studying. It depends a lot on what the professor is like. I guess it really isn’t fun if you have to patrol round the classroom all the time like you’re in a prison or something. Although some people actually enjoy doing this. I also agree that if you want to cheat you have to know how to cheat, if you don’t you’ll get caught. Besides even thought I always studied I don’t remember much of what I learnt in the first year.

     by Anonymous on March 31, 2005 at 2:48 pm

I study law in Maribor. If we get caught we have to miss 2 exam terms. That’s 3 months at least gone to waste. At least something, eh? Though in all my years going to exams I never saw ONE person cheat. So it’s either that they are that good, or they don’t cheat at all. Assistant Professors patroling exam terms are very diligent at their jobs. Go knows I never even attempted to chaet before. It’s not like cheating can help you a great deal - maybe in secondary school, bu as soon as you’re at the University, there’s just too much stuff you need to know, to have all of in writen on small pieces of paper, anyway. It’d only help if you could smuggle in a whole book. Which would be kind of obvious.

     by freddie on March 31, 2005 at 3:15 pm

I’m a university student. I have three professors who don’t care at all if you cheat. In one exam the professor spent the whole time signing “indeks” booklets while the class openly talked about what answers to write. In my class of 30 people maybe 3 people don’t cheat regularly.

     by La Flaca on March 31, 2005 at 4:20 pm

Perhaps the main reason to cheating lies in stiffness of educational program.

     by Katsumi on March 31, 2005 at 4:20 pm

He he, cheating.

I don’t know about FDV, but at all the science/technical faculties you have to take an oral exam after your written one. An I mean every single subject. What is more, 100% of your grade depends on this exam. So all the written exams and papers you do before the oral exam are just hoops you have to jump through, before you get to face the big kahuna professor mano a mano. Now you tell me, how you can cheat your way through an oral exam (excluding fellatio) and if your way actually works, you have earned your degree on creativity alone. If you are smart, you actually do the work on the papers and written exams yourself and thus learn the material.

The problem is FDV (faculty of social sceinces) and EF (faculty of economics) have too many students to be able to put them all through the test of an oral exam. So a lot of people do cheat and get their degrees. Everyone in Slovenia knows about this and these degrees are not very much respected. You guys (students) did it to yourselves.

     by crni on March 31, 2005 at 5:15 pm

I can not agree more…

     by Robert on March 31, 2005 at 5:20 pm

ahem.

technically, you cannot cheat to get a degree. Although some cases are known where people faked their own degree assigments, the most you can do is cheat on some exams. And even as you move higher into senior years, the number of people taking a single test decreases dramatically.

As for diploma appreciation…diploma is shit. It`s just a piece of paper telling everybody the faculty members got fed up of your bullshit and they are letting you go. Sadly, the majority of people graduating at FDV does not know shit, because they spend most of their time theorizing about stuff they ought to be putting into practice. FDV is one of the few breeding places for ego trippers, who do not know what they wanna do when they grow up. That`s what decreases the “value” of graduating on FDV. I remember when we had an open faculty day, where you get information about the faculty in order to ease up the choice of enrollment, and one of the parents asked “Are there any self-image improvement trainings planned in senior years of this program?”. Erm. Right.

People are expecting that after four years of faculty, they`ll be reborn into a super being, able to do stuff they were not able to do 4 years ago. It does not work that way. Degree (especially in the area of social science) does not mean diddly squat if you don`t have “it” in you. And people just don`t get that. Sad but true.

     by cookie on March 31, 2005 at 5:53 pm

Well, then you are wasting your time at FDV. Your diploma says: this guy is shit. You said it yourself.

My diploma says: this guy wrote technical reports every week for 4 years. He attended all the laboratory sessions, some of them until 6:30 at night, some of them at 7:00 in the morning, while his friends at FDV were scratching their balls or went travelling for months at a time, only to return in June and cheat through all their exams. He has proven his understanding of the basic and advanced concepts and demonstrated their use by passing all the written and oral exams and by doing research and defending his thesis. That’s what my diploma says. And a lot more. I wouldn’t want it devalued by some cheaters.

Maybe if you actually paid for your degree, you’d view it all differently. Students in USA are concerned about the value of their degree and they put pressure on the professors to actuallly do their job and eliminate cheaters with extreme prejudice.

Check this out: Honor Code Advisory Council, created in 1995 through initiative by the students!

     by crni on March 31, 2005 at 7:50 pm

Well, then you are wasting your time at FDV. Your diploma says: this guy is shit. You said it yourself.

My diploma says: this guy wrote technical reports every week for 4 years. He attended all the laboratory sessions, some of them until 6:30 at night, some of them at 7:00 in the morning, while his friends at FDV were scratching their balls or went travelling for months at a time, only to return in June and cheat through all their exams. He has proven his understanding of the basic and advanced concepts and demonstrated their use by passing all the written and oral exams and by doing research and defending his thesis. That’s what my diploma says. And a lot more. I wouldn’t want it devalued by some cheaters.

Maybe if you actually paid for your degree, you’d view it all differently. Students in USA are concerned about the value of their degree and they put pressure on the professors to actuallly do their job and eliminate cheaters with extreme prejudice.

Check this out: Honor Code Advisory Council, created in 1995 through initiative by the students!

     by crni on March 31, 2005 at 7:52 pm

Students in the US pay but they actually get their money’s worth. Schools actually teach you something there. Here Universities are just a formality (okay, that might not be the case for techinical one) andonce you leave one with a degree you’re utterly clueless. The whole cheating thing is part of greater problem - professors are on average completely incompetent. People don’t attend their classes, cause they do nothing but read things from books. We can do that on our own. It’s a part of the tradition that you shouldn’t count on gaining any knowlage while you’re at the University. People know they’ll take nothing useful from the whole program, so why not cheat? (if there’s a possibility)

     by freddie on March 31, 2005 at 8:45 pm

Examinations, sir, are pure humbug from beginning to end. If a man is a gentleman, he knows quite enough, and if he is not a gentleman, whatever he knows is bad for him.

     by George Fermor on March 31, 2005 at 11:31 pm

Freddie: your professors might be incompetent. But your attitude about cheating tells me this:

-this guy has questionable ethic and moral values

-this guy is lazy

Most people in Slovenia know this about FDV students and that is how you guys are perceived or stereotyped, if you will. Unfortunately, this thread has proven the sound basis of such stereotyping. Instead of working towards eliminating cheating and forcing the professors to do their job, you are happy with the status quo and spending 4 years of your life on getting a worthless piece of paper. Just please don’t expect me to support your habits through oppresive taxes.

     by crni on April 1, 2005 at 6:01 am

I know loads of good ways in which to cheat! But im not going to tell you because you will use them! Buts here a tip. If you are a girl entice your examiner by wearing a mini-skirt and a revealing top. Men, when the women are keeping them occupied, nick the answers. Its a team effort. You didn’t get that from me OK!!!!!

     by Bobby on May 16, 2005 at 10:48 am

FDV = morons’r'us

     by Anonymous on December 9, 2005 at 12:12 am