Before taking any Cisco exam you must now provide a digital signature and a digital photograph. The new policy, which Cisco says will be rolled out worldwide next year is designed to help 
combat exam cheating and to preserve the integrity of certifications, say Cisco officials. The company reckons that exam cheating in the Cisco world is an 'isolated problem' but CertGuard, which works with different vendors to stamp out exam cheating says the problem is more widespread for Cisco - even more than for Microsoft. CertGuard says it has even spoken to so-called gunmen - who are paid to take tests for others - who claim to own some testing centers.
Read the full story here about Cisco's new exam policy and how there is a lot more to be done before exam cheating is compeletely wiped out.
Exam cheating sucks because, as Cisco recognizes, it devalues the whole nature of certifications for employees and employers.
More Cisco Subnet items:
* Quiz: How much do you know about Cisco? Take our quiz and find out
* 7 Cisco bad luck happenings in '07
* Top 6 Cisco acquisitions of 2007; what it should buy in 2008
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I took my CCSP exams 3 years
I took my CCSP exams 3 years ago in a "bootcamp" setting at a prominent location in Dallas. The cheating in the classroom was blatant and widespread. The instructor that proctored the exam often left the room so students could cheat and even helped students with the answers. Those of us who did not cheat were afraid to turn anyone in with the fear of having our certs taken away. Has anyone else see this?
MCSE and Cisco exams 3 years ago
It is funny that you mention test centers being involved. To the lesser experienced folks making a career change they went as far as providing sample tests that were suspiciously identical to the Microsoft Exams. I guess being able to say that you have a 95% success rate for your boot camps means helping students cheat. You can tell which test centers and instructors care about students learning the material. They will work with the students who have no prior background in IT. They should have started in A+ training before jumping into the MCSE/CCNA boot camp. There are minimum requirements that need to be met, right?
Shady test centers are more concerned at churning out MCSEs in what I describe as paper mills. Watch out for these places. They get you in the door and take your money and once you leave the close shop and move to another town. Some of career movers began to brag how well they were doing on their exams but in class they couldn't even troubleshoot a network interface card. Everone caught on that the new to IT folks were getting a little something extra with their study materials. Alarmingly, the test center was providing 'student loans' to some people in class and these individuals got calls from their banks that the test center had taken out loans or attempted to remortgage their homes on thier behalf to get them to the IT training. Halfway through the two week boot camp, the half of the class on such loans rebelled and threatened to sue for the deceptive practices in this CTEC Academy in Duluth, Georgia. As soon as the Academy got paid from the bank they closed shop and relocated. They reopened right next door and renamed themselves. It is a scam to get money from student loans for careers in IT, acting, nursing, and business schools. Do your homework! Look up the place in the BBB. If they offer something too good to be true then it is not. They post on the job sites for paid internships and training all over the US. The burden falls on you because you have to repay the bank not the school. The bank doesn't care if the school no longer exists.
Cisco/MCSE fraud
Dude,
I remember that guy! He was a certified trainer with a business card with five lines of certs. Couldn't even subnet in his head or answer a question about a router configuration problem from the cisco/sybex books. Turns out it was a typo in the printing of the book. And the man couldn't figure it out by looking at the code in the book or doing the router configuration. I'd expect someone with a business card listing 5 lines of certs to be a walking encyclopedia of IT knowledge or a graduate of the paper mill training center. Believe me when I say that serious employers will send you to a gold certified test center to get tested to measure your skills and then have their IT pros grill you during your technical interview. Memorization will only get you so far!
The guy would take the Cisco & Microsoft exams and somehow come out of the test center with all the test questions memorized. Maybe he took pictures of the questions. The Duluth CTEC was shady and dirty. He gave out the test questions to the people in his class who wanted the extra help. Then he installed his sample quiz script on your pc so if you wanted to take a look at 'sample test questions' you could. I feel sorry for all those people that chose to take the easy path and cheat. Memorizing questions and answers is not the same as doing IT work everyday. The people that did put an effort into studying had better luck landing jobs because they knew the material and learned the skills. Walk the walk people!
Take a look at the new 650.xxx exams
Cisco are even online proctoring some of their partner exams now (and a contact at VUE suggests most of their exams may move online in the future).
The exam I saw could be booked at anytime and completed in the comfort of your own office with whatever documentation you want open.
And even worse you can move forward, back and even pause the test for up to 48 hours!! So what is to stop a candidate from writing down each question and then pausing the exam to go and research the answers.
I know these exams have no real standing as they are basic partner exams but, what was Cisco thinking, is this the slippery slope.
Re: Take a look at the new 650.xxx exams
Matt, as you stated, the exams have no real standing. They are Partner based exams and have no bearning on IT Certifications as a whole. You can find all of Cisco's online testing >>here<< if you want to keep an eye on it, but I believe that your VUE contact's information is speculative, at best, and that Cisco would make a public announcement if they ever decided to make a move like that.
I'm not too familiar with Cisco's Partner Program, but I intend to be. I will see if I can pull some strings very soon to get more information out about the potential problems with a program like this. Maybe Cisco has already covered all this prior to the launch of the program, but one downside I see to allowing partners test online is that they can "scam" potential employees into taking exams for them. All the employer needs to do is create profiles for the potential employees, provide the login credentials to those employees, let them take the tests (as employees of the company) and have them take the tests. The employee doesn't have to pay for the exams ($62 USD) and they don't have to hire the employees. My question is, does the employer get credit for having the exam taken? This is something that we will be looking into.
Thanks again Matt, Best Regards,
Robert Williams; Taylor Ripley
CertGuard, Inc.
www.CertGuard.com
http://www.networkworld.com/community/user/4864
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