YOU HAVE TO DO YOUR OWN WORK. Illini or Huskie comments on a homework cheating scandal, or something, at Mr Jefferson's University. First, the details.

Department officials said that some problem sets from textbooks used in introductory graduate economics courses have answer keys online. At least one student found answers for a course taken by all first-year students, and apparently shared the information with classmates. Though the solutions were apparently available, David Mills, chair of the economics department, said students should have “known it was off-limits,” but that they instead “used it without the professor being aware.”

Now the commentary.

To tell you the truth, the answers helped...but not nearly as much as one would think. ...and they certainly didn't impact my grade in the course ....and the time I used trying to figure out all of the steps that Greene was skipping in the solutions manual would've been better spent pestering my professor (although she was probably getting sick of seeing me since I was in her office about 10 hours a week).

I can't believe that this is that big a deal. I've seen cheating...I know what cheating is about and I know that this isn't it. No grad professor would ever make the homework worth more than 15% of your grade (if they count it at all)...and simply having the answers without a clear understanding of the material won't help you for the exam.

I agree with Chris, there must be something else going on here.But why would the department bring this to light? They're not making the students look shady...they're making their professors look lazy and dumb for

1) not creating new questions for every year...or even simply creating a stock of reused questions that aren't in the book

2) not realizing that the answers from past students have been available to first year grad students forever.

Indeed. And that nobody in a responsible position said anything the first time 15, or 20, or however many identical problem sets came in squares with the lazy professor hypothesis, or a Steve Levitt observation that the problems were too easy.

At MIT and Chicago, I feel like hardly anyone ever gets a completely right answer to anything.

Yes. And here's another bit of advice to cub economists: asking questions during office hours just might be more productive than cruising the web looking for what might be solutions to related problems ... something that's been downloaded without careful thinking about its applicability is as obvious as an improperly expanded determinant.