In the discussion of academic dishonesty in universities, one controversial issue is what factors that lead to students cheating. The increasing rates of academic misconduct have led to the community speculating what solutions will help students be reprehensible. This problem affects more people other than students, such as teachers, parents, hiring managers and the school reputation. The many factors that affect this are external which include age, race, socioeconomic background and internal factors such as lack of awareness and competency, fear, pressure, and personal attitudes. Given college students, as well as their rapidly increasing rates of academic dishonesty and the competing demands for honoring the honor code, peers are reporting and practicing ethical honesty in order to gain trust by their professors. One solution is to offer students who are likely to commit academic misconduct a way to establish a clear policy of rules and repercussions.
Academic misconduct today is an issue which needs to be addressed given the current tendencies for students to do so. It is defined as using one’s thoughts and ideas without giving them credit in an academic work such as cheating, plagiarizing, aiding or any unfair advantage that other students don’t get. In Maureen McMahon’s study, McMahon defines academic misconduct as “academic dishonesty is the active or passive falsifying of academic work. An active deceiver copies answer from someone else steals an exam or downloads a paper directly from the Internet”(McMahon, 2013). They are many factors that lead to students perpetrating academic dishonesty such as age, gender, race, economic background, minimal knowledge of what the consequences are etc.
One factor that influences academic dishonesty is herd mentality. “Jordan (2001) notes that academically-honest students-witness less cheating and believe their peers are cheating less. Conversely, academically-dishonest students-witness more cheating and believe their peers are cheating more often”(Bernardi, Banzhoff, 2013). In other words, students are more inclined to cheat when they see a peer doing it because they think it’s right. This factor leads to more and more students cheating. Another factor that’s causing academic dishonesty rates to increase is fear of failure.
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Students are taught at a young age that if you fail at something, then you won’t be successful. Kaufman explains in her journal that “students are sacrificing their education for what they think are indicators of success. “Success” is often measured by whether a student has a passing grade on a written assignment, exam, or quiz, or passes a course that leads to graduation rather than the ability to complete an assignment, exam, or a course with integrity” (Kaufman, 2008). Essentially she argues that students would rather pass something even though it is not their work than put in the effort and fail at it.
Kaufman also argues that in this driven society pressure from parents and peers lead to academic misconduct. Students are put in so much pressure and stress to succeed by parents and peers that they choose to go on the easier road and put in less effort. She states “The pressure and stress necessary to compete and succeed in a college environment are what lead the majority of dishonest students to resort to cheating. Some students feel the need to cheat due to the pressure from parents or peers to be successful”(Kaufman, 2008). McCabe further supports Kaufman and states “ the strong influence of peers’ behavior may suggest that academic dishonesty not only is learned from observing the behavior of peers but that peers’ behavior provides a kind of normative support for cheating”(McCabe, 2001). This indicates that the stakeholder’s actions downplay the student’s academic integrity.
The author Maureen McMahon acknowledges that students cheat because they are ignorant or they think that the result of cheating or plagiarizing is negligent. In her article, she reasons why students cheat and specifically which students cheat. McMahon states “male fraternity members cheated more often than female sorority members. Also, simply participating in fraternity/sorority sponsored activities increases a student’s likelihood of cheating, with more participation leading to more cheating.” The author’s point in stating this is that students in fraternities and sororities cheat more than the other students. She further argues that “Students who had jobs outside of school were also less likely to report being academically dishonest than students who did not have jobs”.
With this information, I have inferred that there’s a drastic difference between greek organization members and part-time college employees. With part-time college employees, they tend to have more responsible and self-advocating trait, while in comparison sorority and fraternity members who are typically known for partying usually rely on other individuals. Lukas Neville further urges that people who come from a high-income community or state are more presumably to perpetuate academic misconduct than a low-income state. On the contrary, another factor to consider is social economic background. Neville states, “When there is higher economic inequality, people are less likely to view one another as trustworthy. This lower generalized trust, in turn, is associated with a greater prevalence of academic dishonesty. These results might explain previous findings on the effectiveness of honor codes.”
The essence of the author’s argument is that individuals who come from a high-income family are less trusting than low-income people which then causes them to cheat. In deeper analyzation communities of mostly minorities have more academic integrity than ones who are the majority. Carolyn Curasi maintains this idea with her study on what races are more inclined to commit academic misconduct. In Curasi’s study, she found that African Americans have a percentage of 22.90% of people who have cheated, while 44.30% Caucasians have committed this act. This drastic difference supports my claim that race is a factor of academic dishonesty.
Lastly, another factor that influences students cheating is negative personal attitudes. Patrick Love explains in his article that a negative attitude towards self is an internal contributing factor that affects their competence and makes them feel like they are incapable of doing a particular skill. “Negative personal attitudes are the converse of positive professional ethics. Whereas acting on positive professional ethics made a student less likely to cheat, negative personal attitudes were part of a mindset that appeared to make cheating and plagiarism more likely”(Love, Simmon, 1998). This is a serious problem that needs to be addressed, the consequences are not acted on in most universities. This problem starts out at a young age, mostly around high school, where there are no punishments for students cheating, and it becomes a habit that continues till college and jobs.
One solution that helps students not commit academic dishonesty is peer reporting. Eric Beasley, an author on ethics and behavior did a study at Michigan State University and found that the impacts of peer reporting is as significant as guilt and reporting oneself. Beasley states “31-campus survey found the perception of peer behaviors was strongly correlated with self-reported academic dishonesty. Their similar study in 1997 found peer (“a close friend” and “one of the students you go around with”) disapproval was the most salient predictive correlate of self-reported academic dishonesty”(Beasley, 2014). Although there’s no clear way to measure how much peers are a solution to academic misconduct, it has a significant impact that can help pupils stop.
The second solution that would help students not to cheat is the honor code. The honor code is a set of ethical rules based on academic integrity that states the expectation of students and staff, some being no aiding in exams, no plagiarising and no cheating. This code is already put in place in universities, but some state universities and prestige colleges don’t act upon it or the consequences of committing academic misconduct are not taken seriously. This solution is not very impactful today because.
Lastly, the last solution is more restrictions on students use of technology. Many answers to homework or tests are put online and students can easily find the answers, which is a result of internal factors. Chegg is an example of a website for college students to find answers to textbook homework and recycled tests for any course. This solution would make the teachers make their own tests, but it would impact the students because they wouldn’t take the easier road rather they would actually have to put in the work themselves. These solutions won’t help academic dishonesty stop completely but it will make a moderate change and the rates will stop rapidly increasing.
Taking everything into consideration academic dishonesty is a big problem that will take us as a community to help cease it. Despite the fact that the factors that impact cheating are also the solutions, researchers have found that they are more of a result than a problem. This is predicament that’s been happening for a long time and will continue to recur if we don’t find a solution that will make a significant impact on both the students and the professors.
References
- Academic Dishonesty Amongst University Students: Using Names to Understand Clustering Coefficient in Social Networks
- Who cheats more often in exams? Individual and situational factors predicting students’ cheating behavior
- Factors Influencing Academic Misconduct among College Students: An Exploratory Study Using a Structural Equation Model Approach
