The stone is worn and chipped, but you can still make out the motto inscribed above the 111-year-old McKean Gate that leads to Harvard Yard: “Veritas”, it says. Truth. It’s ironic, then, that in August the US’ oldest and most prestigious university was embarrassed by allegations of a cheating scandal involving a reported 125 students.

Talking to undergraduates on the university’s lawns, it’s clear they aren’t surprised to hear the news. They claim that cheating is not unusual at Harvard University.

But to observers outside the institution, the incident has laid bare a culture in which success is such an obsession that any shortcut to achieve it is acceptable. “For most American students today, the biggest project in their family’s life has been to get them into college, and, if possible, to get them into an elite college,” says Howard Gardner, Hobbs professor of cognition and education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and co-author of Good Work: When Excellence and Ethics Meet. “If this becomes all-important, then clearly you’re willing to cut corners to make it happen. The ends overwhelm the means.”

The students involved have been referred to the administrative board, Harvard’s ‘honour council’, for an investigation likely to take several months. Potential outcomes range from exoneration to suspension for a year. A few students who have graduated are at risk of having their degrees revoked.

In the five years ended in 2010, the most recent period for which there are figures, only 85 students — 17 a year — were required to withdraw because of academic dishonesty. Over the same time, 55 others were placed on probation, and 30 more formally admonished. But Eric Kester, a 2008 graduate and author of That Book about Harvard: Surviving the World’s Most Famous University, One Embarrassment at a Time, claims that cheating at the institution is more widespread than these figures suggest. He says this is apparent from the fact that 125 students in a single class allegedly felt justified in indulging in it. “One reason this is such a shock to people outside Harvard is that when you think of Harvard, you think of academic excellence, and you think of students like this having academic integrity,” says Kester.

Harvard does not have an honour code, although its president, Drew Gilpin Faust, says it will draw one soon. Last year, the university added a voluntary pledge for first-year students to uphold “integrity, respect, and industry”.

Observers believe this might be the silver lining to the Harvard cheating scandal: that its high-profile shines a spotlight on the problem. “Harvard has an opportunity here, because this has become a national story, to really make a good statement about the importance of keeping integrity at the forefront of the conversation all the time, and not take it for granted,” says Kester.

Gardner, who acquired his undergraduate and graduate degrees at Harvard and has taught at the university for three decades, is more sceptical, especially as the university nears the launch of a $6 billion (Rs.31,800 crore) fundraising campaign next year. “The administration would love for this to just go away,” he says. “And if they try to wish it away, things won’t change.”

(Excerpted and adapted from Times Higher Education)