MrMike, it really sounds like your beef is with the Prof for failing to write a test that actually tests whether his students know and are able to apply the material.
When I was in law school, nearly every professor made past exams available for us to study. When I studied for the bar exam, I did so by taking dozens of old exams. In both cases, the testers wrote new exams for every administration - it's time consuming, but what they're paid to do. This sort of preparation is common in professional and graduate school (my younger brother is a physician, and I vividly remember him taking practice test after practice test so that he could do well on his boards; my wife is a veterinary oncologist, and did the same).
Here, the professor seems to have explicitly told his students that he wrote his own tests. If true, the testbank questions have no value *except* to prepare for the professor's exam. Turning around and using the test bank questions then getting in a huff because your students have actually made an effort to prepare is asinine.
To crib some of your false logic, would you really want your heart surgeon to have graduated at the top of his med-school class at a school where the professors couldn't be bothered to write their own exams? How about a doctor who wanted to be a heart surgeon but couldn't, because despite knowing all of the material wasn't able to quickly and efficiently deal with the questions presented on his boards?
Obviously, if the students were aware of the fact that the professor used these questions, studying from them would be cheating. Here, however, it seems like the most fortuitous sort of prep - tantamount to focusing on a particular section of course curriculum while studying only to find that the professor has opted to emphasize it on the exam. Nearly everyone has had that experience (or its converse) at some point in their education, and it's ridiculous to contend that its some sort of cheating.
When I was in law school, nearly every professor made past exams available for us to study. When I studied for the bar exam, I did so by taking dozens of old exams. In both cases, the testers wrote new exams for every administration - it's time consuming, but what they're paid to do. This sort of preparation is common in professional and graduate school (my younger brother is a physician, and I vividly remember him taking practice test after practice test so that he could do well on his boards; my wife is a veterinary oncologist, and did the same).
Here, the professor seems to have explicitly told his students that he wrote his own tests. If true, the testbank questions have no value *except* to prepare for the professor's exam. Turning around and using the test bank questions then getting in a huff because your students have actually made an effort to prepare is asinine.
To crib some of your false logic, would you really want your heart surgeon to have graduated at the top of his med-school class at a school where the professors couldn't be bothered to write their own exams? How about a doctor who wanted to be a heart surgeon but couldn't, because despite knowing all of the material wasn't able to quickly and efficiently deal with the questions presented on his boards?
Obviously, if the students were aware of the fact that the professor used these questions, studying from them would be cheating. Here, however, it seems like the most fortuitous sort of prep - tantamount to focusing on a particular section of course curriculum while studying only to find that the professor has opted to emphasize it on the exam. Nearly everyone has had that experience (or its converse) at some point in their education, and it's ridiculous to contend that its some sort of cheating.