125 out of 279 Harvard undergraduates who recently took the course called “Introduction to Congress”  are accused of cheating in their final exams, plagiarizing the identical passage (presumably from a course book or something on the Web).

And these are America’s brightest and best?  What on earth is the point of cheating in a final exam?  Eventually “The Market” will find you out, and all your life you will know you are a fraud and a scumbag.

I am reminded of the fact that Glenn Hubbard, then Harvard Professor of Economics (now at Columbia and Romney’s economic advisor), was paid a handsome sum of money by the Icelanders to give a glowing account of the financial health of Iceland, shortly before the financial crash and before Iceland went bankrupt.  This was deemed acceptable by the head of the economics department at Harvard.  Hubbard also co-wrote a paper praising derivatives and securitization for reducing volatility of markets and making recessions less frequent and milder (Hah!).  Hubbard is a consultant to an number of (unnamed) financial services companies.

If the Harvard professors are either incompetent or corrupt, how can the younger generation be blamed for wanting success at any price, abandoning integrity, and attempting to hoodwink future employers?

Time for the cleaning of the Augean stables?