As a student at St. Louis University, Demir Oral met students acing exams partly because they had access to a bank of previous tests from the same professor. Fraternities and sororities had compiled exams from prior years and made them available to students, providing an invaluable study tool during pressure-packed final exams.

So last November, Oral launched Postyourtest.com, starting a free online service that he hoped would democratize the sharing of college exams. And as the site has attracted attention from students nationwide, educators have become wary of the potential for academic dishonesty.

Experts say sites like Postyourtest.com could change the way professors assemble their tests, aware that previous versions of their questions might be available in cyberspace.

"I don't think that should just be available to a few students," said Oral, 23, who operates the web site from San Diego. "That should be available to everyone."

Oral said there are more than 500 tests posted on his web site, with most of them coming from the San Diego area, where Postyourtest.com is advertised. Tests from schools such as the University of Houston, Rice University, Harvard, and Notre Dame are also posted on Oral's site. Critics compare Postyourtest.com to web sites that sell term papers--charging students more than $10 per page in some cases--but Oral said that comparison is unfair. Exams on Postyourtest.com only give students a better idea of what might appear on their upcoming test, he said--they don't supply students with a cheat sheet.

"There's a certain difference there," he said. "I'm not giving a student answers to an exam that's coming up."

Oral's position notwithstanding, Clemson University's Center for Academic Integrity has warned college officials of the cheating potential of Postyourtest.com.

Stephen Satris, the interim director of the Center for Academic Integrity, said many college professors distribute identical exams year after year, allowing students to simply memorize answers--for both multiple- choice and short-answer questions--instead of studying the class material and lecture notes. The proliferation of sites that post exams could shake longtime college faculty members from their malaise and force them to create brand-new tests every semester. 

"Yes, [web sites like Postyourtest.com are] worrisome, partly because we can be pretty sure that not all instructors are changing their tests every semester, as they should," Satris said in an eMail message to eSchool News. "It should be something of a wake-up call. We should assume that if we've given a test, then the test is somewhere out there. These sorts of sites bring that message home to faculty."

He added: "With sites like these online, instructors will be more likely to change their tests more often; the unintended consequence is that if instructors change their tests more often, then sites like this will become less valuable."