Inside Higher Ed. has a story about economics graduate students at UVa who may face permanent expulsion for cheating.  The cheating incident here was finding the answers to problems in their textbook that were available online and sharing them with one another.  The students did not alert the professor that the answers were available online.  At UVa, there is only one punishment for violating the Honor Code:  permanent expulsion.

I would like to know the more facts before I described this homework incident as "cheating."  What if the answers were in the back of the book, but the professor didn't know that they were.  On the first assignment, students handed in their answers, which they copied from the back of the book, or perhaps checked against the answers in the back of the book.  Is that cheating?  Was the website with the answers hosted by the publisher, so it looked more like a study guide, or was it hosted by an anonymous student who had figured out the answers or maybe secured a copy of the teacher's manual?  What did the syllabus say about study guides or Internet websites?  I think that to one generation, finding answers on a website has the same degree of difficulty as breaking into a teacher's office desk drawer, and therefore requires the same criminal mental state.  I would say that finding problem answers on the Internet has the same degree of difficulty as flipping to the back of the book.

I've had conversations like this with academics before, and usually the response is "they know it's cheating" or "everyone knows what cheating is."  I'm not sure that's true anymore.  When I was in junior high, using a calculator was cheating.  It's not anymore.  Having someone check your spelling before you turn in your senior theme used to be cheating, but using spellcheck is not. 

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