Integrity is the primary value of an individual in accomplishing a particular task. It mainly deals with fairness and honesty in every personal and professional relationship. However, many consider integrity as a personal choice that is categorical under any situation. Integrity, therefore, has strong moral principles and uprightness including being honest, and it is a personal choice to hold it. Ethics is an internal set of rules and regulations that an individual adheres to truthfulness and accuracy of their actions.
Academic integrity is primarily based on morals and values including trust, respect, honesty, and responsibility for individual actions. Academic integrity instills valuable and desirable decisions amongst students to conduct honest work. Academic dishonesty is any form of cheating that occurs about the prescribed educational practices of an institution. It has been recognized in almost all types of academic setting and been faced with various challenges.
According to Ransome & Newton (2018), the internet has opened doors for academic misconduct with various websites containing pre-written and custom services for essays and academic research, reports and term papers. The principles of academic integrity are beyond the classroom, and good students are always honest with their friends, lecturers and the community at large. Academic honesty involves the search and conduct of fair and open scholarly activity in a responsible way. Students should express high levels of respect for other students work with dignity and create and maintain materials that would result to then succeeding because of their efforts.
Part of students learning is numerous assignments that are designed to assist students in learning through research and consultation to other students. They are aimed to show how well a student had grasped the course material by completing the task. This task might vary from subject to the other and might be informed of problem-solving, report writing, presentation or preliminary reports. It is a requirement that when producing the assignment, students need to gather information from various sources including the internet, books, journals, and newspapers. In this instance, students are expected to smite their sources and produce honest work. Presently, instructors can determine whether student’ work is plagiarized. Academic cheating erodes the trust that instructors may have with students, being unfair to those who did honest work and reduces the value of all graduates in the job market.
It is essential to adhere to academic integrity and avoid practices such as cheating, using illegal material during tests and recycling submitted reports without instructions recognition. Many instructors blame the internet for the rising cases of dishonesty among students in various institutions globally. It is vital to appreciate the significance of honesty in academic and the adverse consequences of practicing academic dishonesty. It is a serious issue especially in a university setting because it violates institutions’ rules, expulsion is among the many implications of academic cheating.
An institution establishes codes that are supposed to guide integrity and professionalism in universities which assures every individual of getting right credit for their hones work. Ethical decisions that students face while doing their studies is like that in the professional environment after graduation or their current workstation. University academic integrity rules assist deferent faculties in the institution to conduct an unbiased and correct assessment of student’s performance and to uphold a helpful learning environment. When Texas A&M University students repeatedly practice academic dishonesty, the institution will have its reputation devalued because it will be known that minimal effort is required to get a degree from the institution.
This will result in a decrease in the standards of the institution in both reputation and its ranking in the overall university performance. Hence, graduates from institutions will adversely suffer after their graduation in the job industry. Therefore, cheating is a stepping stone to a future after graduation that will be a footstep behind. It might endanger the career of a graduate from the institution since employers might be afraid to higher graduate with a prior record of integrity issues. When a candidate presents certificates from Texas A&M University to an employer, they have the perception that the person has little value and cannot be productive to the organization.
Texas A&M University enrolment will be adversely affected when its students repeatedly commit academic cheating. Managing the reputation of an institution is essential to maintain student enrolment to the university. Decreasing student numbers would increase the need for external funds to facilitate its activities as well as build its reputation. Students’ defection and withdrawal of donors are the adverse effects that TAMU will face. Repeated student dishonest would mean that the university governance has failed to honor its duties to take corrective actions in implementing institutions’ codes. Therefore, TAMU should aim to build its reputation by discouraging academic dishonesty among its students than repair its status after it has been damaged.
Academic integrity is vital in any institution and students. Both universities and students face the consequences of academic dishonesty. Students’ outcomes include expulsion from the institution, retake of courses, social values related to self-esteem. Effects to TAMU in instances of repeated student dishonesty include poor reputation to the institution and a reduction in student enrolment. Therefore, both students and universities should strive to academic integrity.