Taxpayers for fraudulent competitions?
On April 21st, I attended a science and engineering competition hosted by MESA at Mission College in Santa Clara to showcase to the public the knowledge and inventiveness of students on the theme of developing new clean technologies. It was disturbing enough to learn that the team that had received first prize (brand new $500 iPads!) had presented a store-bought toy. I remember seeing more creative projects when I was in elementary school! I was shocked when I later learned that the winning team had cheated and plagiarized. Troubling still was when MESA decided to take no action when presented with evidence of academic dishonesty. It really does make one wonder: What sort of values are we teaching our students? Or more importantly, what kind of nonsense are we taxpayers funding at these community colleges?