Last spring, Brown University economics professor Roberto Serrano gave his first take-home midterm in his course, ECON 1170: “Welfare Economics and Social Choice Theory.”
Sitting in his office in Providence, Rhode Island, this summer, he recalled how he immediately suspected “massive cheating,” because the grade distribution was, in his words, “absurd.”
“While the historical average of these midterm exams in previous editions of the course ranged between 65 and 80, the average this time was 96,” said Serrano.
