That's pretty funny. At UC Berkeley's J-school, grad students complained bitterly about waking up early to take law and ethics classes. I think it was the coke hangovers.

Columbia students have their own professor rating website: http://culpa.info/

Sadly, this isn't new to me. I taught media ethics and caught college students cheating on exams, buying papers off the 'net and recycling or fabricating research and quotes in stories ALL the time. This is the future generation of journalists. Worry.

I've hired many a Columbia J-School grad, to babysit my kids. Anyone who'd spend $90,000 to learn how to call someone and ask questions doesn't get near my magazine.

Well, Graydon, I'm going to trust you on this one. Your magazine's the best and has been for years.

Graydon ... you owe me 1 year and 10 months on a Spy subscription! I hope you put my freshly re-upped (two years, no less!) unused subscription money to good use.

A respected veteran journalist lecturing Columbia J School students on ethics. (Add punchline)

"$90,000?"

At least most Columbia students probably learn how to fact check.

http://www.jrn.columbia.edu/prospective_students/finance/fees.asp

When I attended Columbia every prof from Friendly to Block grilled us on ethics as part of class instruction. A special class on ethics? Every class should be a class on ethics!!!

As a member of the J-School's Class of 2007 I am appalled at the media response to this pretty minute situation. We learned (yes, in Ethics) about the rumor mill that influenced the MSM in the wake of Katrina and somehow, we have elevated a small situation which involved a handful of students into a schoolwide fiasco. It reminds me of when I used to play the "telephone" game as a kid. It starts out with "oh, one or two people cheated" to "alert the media, this is the j-school cheating scandal." It's absolutely ridiculous on all fronts. But, as one professor pointed out, you can't put the toothpaste back into the tube. So, I guess we just deal with it. Also, regardless of whether the school finds out who/how many students were/are involved, it is apparent that most students have not grasped the overarching lesson to be learned--in the session today, students focused on finding out who told the administration, not who did the cheating. If we are ethical, as the vehement discussion that was had this afternoon suggests, why don't we feel the need to focus on those who actually had the unfair advantage?

I am troubled at the lapse in ethics allegedly displayed by some Columbia J School students. Even in a pass-fail essay test they should abide by the rules. Given the nature of the test I am unable to generate righteous anger. The student or students who allegedly cheated still had to write original essays. The only advantage gained was to have additional time to think about the essay questions. Were this an objective test which had abc answers I would be quite upset. But it wasn't.

In our less than ethical 21st Century society maybe this unfortunate episode serves as a lesson to the journalists of the Class of 2007 and others in the field. Maybe some good may come from this. They may think twice before violating ethical canons.

I cannot and will not let one area be unaddresed.

In the 12/1/2006 edition of the New York Times Dean Nicholas Lehmann is quoted as saying "...that he was surprised that students might have been concerned about how they scored on the pass-fail exam, and that exams and grades at the school were rare."

“We are not a very grade-intensive institution,” he said. “Our school is run on a pass-fail basis.”

“Our students are strivers,” he added. “But they are striving to get good clips. It is not like law school, where fine differences in points make all the difference in the world.”

The impression left by his comments gives the reader a sense that all the students need do is pay the high tuition rates of an Ivy League Institution and voila....in a short period of time you will have an MS or MA from Columbia. I have been reading the comments on various blogs and this impression comes through either explicitly or implicitly.

It seems from your comments that journalism is not a profession which has similar exacting standards demanded by the legal profession. It took Columbia a number of years before they accepted Pulitzer's gift to start the J school since journalism did not have the cache of a profession like law or business. Do I sense some of that pre-1912 thinking? I hope not.

Yes Dean Lemann those who cheated need to be condemned and there should be no cover-up. A cover-up is generally worse than the offense. But please defend your instituion and the student body. The students work hard to study, improve their skills, and strive to ply their trade to the best of their abilities. Your school has an international reputation in the field and sure as hell did not get it because your graduates paid high tuition.

I am grateful that when I was on trial in 1735 my advocate was the great Andrew Hamilton of Philadelphia. He protected me and brought about a successful conclusion for the institution of the press. You sir should do the same for the Columbia J School.......JPZ

tubeotoothpaste.blogspot.com - The Inside Scoop...

I’ve spent a great deal of time with this year’s class at Columbia Journalism School – I attended the reception for admitted students last spring, and though I opted to attend NYU instead, I’ve socialized quite often with a wide array of Columbia students.

I’ve joined many sober discussions about journalism. I’ve attended happy hours where students talked about their craft and their program without inhibitions. I’ve even attended a Sam Friedman ethics lecture, sticking around afterward to participate in a discussion section.

Finally, I’ve conducted lengthy interviews with various students about their experience at the journalism school.

In the course of these utterly frank conversations, social outings, and uninhibited bitch sessions, I’ve always been impressed by the sense of ethical uprightness that pervades the program. These are journalism dorks, people who sit around student housing or at Upper West Side dive bars earnestly debating what an ethical journalist ought to do in a given situation, and carrying out the high standards they’ve adopted for themselves to the best of their ability.

I have never heard a student allude to cheating or any other unethical journalistic practice – never once, not even referencing other students, and believe me when I say that some of these kids are sufficiently competitive, self-important and gossipy that if there were even the hint of cheating going on I’d have heard an earful.

Did a student cheat on Sam Friedman’s ethics exam? I haven’t any idea.

I can say that news coverage penned thus far has the effect of misleading readers about the academic culture at CJS. There are certainly legitimate grounds to criticize the school and some of its students. But the general ethical climate is praiseworthy, and the vast majority of students and faculty are above reproach.

Unfortunately the trend in journalism is to cover higher education only when a scandal, however blown out of proportion, occurs on an Ivy League campus. The news: a student may have cheated on an ethics exam at Columbia. The coverage: it’s international news! Is this really the most important story in higher education going on this week? Does anyone doubt that some student has tried to cheat sometime this semester at every college in America?

In any case, covering this story fairly demands that press outlets give readers some sense of the pervasive ethical climate, rather than the thinly sourced, context-free stories so far written. So I’ll close by repeating once more—and somewhat against interest, since I’ll be graduating with a rival diploma—that whatever happened this week, the typical Columbia Journalism School student is a paragon of journalistic ethics, and any lapses among an individual or three shouldn’t reflect poorly on their classmates.

As an undergrad journalism major, I fully understand why the students might complain this ethics course was a bit light and simply a forum for Freedman to pontificate. Students should be taken seriously when they pay big bucks to go to school and have sub-par profs, but they lose that privilege when they cheat.

Journalism is an occupation, not a profession. An Ivy League school demeans itself by having a post-grad, degree granting program in journalism. Journalism, at best, is only worthy of a terminal program at a community or jr college.
A person who is in journalism or other forms of media has no need to know of ethics. Look at this blog if you must have proof.