CAS Disciplinary Report - Exams

This had nothing to do with the just-completed sitting, seeing as how this was opened up in '19. If it involved 67 individuals, this … strikes me as a non-trivial thing.

1 Like

I’m almost 100% sure this is referring to people accessing their exam results early in the fall 2019 sitting. The CAS called me about it and shamed me by asking “if you know it was wrong to look at your results early, then why did you do it and cheat?”

It was really upsetting they were equating cheating on exams to looking at my results one day early, and honestly I think it’s kind of ridiculous they made such a big deal about it.

Wait, was this something where the results got posted earlier than announced and someone happened to notice by randomly checking? I really don’t know anything about this and can’t recall having seen anything about it, but I’ll also admit I’ve slept once or twice since the '19 sitting.

1 Like

67 individuals? No way. There were at least 6 I knew at just my company :laughing:

2 Likes

No, there was a way to access results early but it wasn’t as simple as checking early the normal way. I won’t go into detail since that’s probably not a good idea. Here’s precept 1 that they’re saying there could have been a potential violation of:

image

I’m assuming they’re talking about annotation 1-4, but I don’t see how accessing results early, even if it’s done in a sketchy way, reflects adversely on the actuarial profession…

Perhaps it’s borderline dishonesty? But even then it’s not really clear dishonesty.

Yeah, I don’t see how exploiting a flaw in the CAS’s website and result posting process to see what they’ve already uploaded to our profile is dishonest. But I guess they see it as that way.

Either way, they explicitly updated the exam NDA to say that we won’t access exam results early now, so if anyone does this moving forward I could see them actually taking action.

OK, you got access to your results earlier than everyone else by some obscure method. I’m struggling to understand how that’s cheating, except by some bizarre definition that 99.9% of the world would agree isn’t … wait, I’m talking about a handful of actuaries making the decision on what is cheating. Never mind.

Should you be trying to find them early? Probably not. If you do it and find them, what’s it worth? IMO, a rap across the knuckles with a ruler by an old nun. [I hear it was painful as hell; maybe some of you can attest to that.] Discipline beyond that? Maybe - and this is just me spitballing here - don’t upload the results into some area that might be accessible to others until you’re ready to release them to … I know, this already makes way too much sense.

2 Likes

I thought it was telling in my interview I was asked how I felt about it and I described remorse and mostly embarrassment but also noted that this is really a victimless crime. My interviewer retorted that some would say my integrity was the victim.

1 Like

I don’t mind them investigating to make sure that nothing illegal was actually done, but it sounds like it wasn’t (though we are only getting one side of the story here). Assuming there was no criminal activity, I think a warning and changing the terms of the exams (which has been done already iirc) is appropriate.

Based on some of the questions asked I think the real worry was that people were accessing other people’s results and then possibly selling those results, which obviously takes things to a whole other level of unethicalness. I don’t know that they found any evidence of that though, to be honest I hadn’t even thought of that until the interviewer brought it up.

2 Likes

Yep, they asked me the same question about whether I accessed anyone else’s results. I completely agree that doing that is 100% wrong and should be disciplined.

Good point. In that instance I would see an issue, so I can see the need for questioning people to see what exactly happened. And yes, if one found the results of others, that’s a problem and merits some kind of discipline.

Otherwise, if you saw yours and only yours and especially if you couldn’t get to anyone else’s, I still think that’s worth a “yeah, bad on our part for making that available, don’t be fishing around for results early again” admonition. I still can’t wrap my head around “do you know that by accessing your results earlier than we intended, you were CHEATING?”

I learn something new every day. Well, off to go talk about closing on the home refi before we sign papers on it tomorrow as we navigate 5-10" of snow incoming and plummeting temps after.

Oh. That actually would be wrong. I had wondered why the CAS was making a mountain out of a molehill. It sounded like a really stupid investigation to me. But if candidates who did that were potentially looking at other people’s results i can see why they were concerned.

2 Likes

Agreed, yeah. I don’t really know if they had much reason to believe that was happening, but the guy who interviewed me asked me a few times about if I saw anyone else’s result and I commented about not being sure why I’d care about someone else’s score and he mentioned the concern.

Given that the people in the SOA who thought it was a good idea to spam CAS members using the Actuarial Directory info… oh wait, that was via the ABCD, not CAS’s own disciplinary process. Never mind.

1 Like

CAS seems to have lots of issues with operational risks.

1 Like

I seem to recall a certain well-known CAS actuary who acknowledged engaging in a fraudulent reinsurance transaction and paid a six-figure fine in exchange for a deferred prosecution. The CAS announced the matter had been submitted to the ABCD, but as far as I know nothing public ever came of it… Maybe I missed something?

But yeah, investigate students who saw their grades early. We wouldn’t want people questioning the integrity of the profession…

On a related note, is it just me or does the CAS not have a Public Discipline page? The SOA has
https://www.soa.org/about/governance/notices-disciplinary-determinations/
and the AAA has
https://www.actuary.org/content/public-discipline
but my google-fu couldn’t come up with an analogous CAS page.

1 Like

It doesn’t seem to be a page, but all their discipline announcements are published in the review, like this one: