Experts have determined that students cheat for a variety of reasons. Among these are that it is viewed as a victimless crime in a “Dog-Eat-Dog” environment where everyone else is doing it and in order to keep up with the class work students have to do what they need to do. Other reasons include that while cheating on an exam is clearly dishonest, “borrowing” a paper from an older sibling or another student and plagiarizing from another source is not viewed in quite the same light. They feel the odds are they will not be caught and other students enable this by feeling they have to look out for each other and are reluctant to turn in a fellow student.
These behaviors and attitudes are not victimless crimes; have a negative effect on all students and faculty at an institution. The students who cheat are, obviously the first victims. They receive a degree, without receiving an education. When they leave the campus, they are not prepared to face the real world because of the resultant gaps in their learning and are more likely to fail. While many students feel that this is a form of “karma,” that those students are just getting what they deserve for cheating, it can have more far-reaching effects. If the students do not self govern and enable others to cheat, or even worse begin cheating themselves in order to keep up, it tarnishes the reputation of the institution and all students who graduate find their degrees are devaluated because of this.
The University faculty understands this so they find themselves taking time away from teaching in order to police the students instead of educating them. Other resources such as support staff, computer time, Internet access and funds budgeted for software are squandered to run papers through plagiarism checks and maintain an archive of work from former students. Instructors attempt to make it difficult to utilize work completed in past semesters by varying assignment questions, details of lab assignment and test questions but the reality is that the same learning must be passed on to each student and there are only so many ways to do it. Measures such as these further distract staff from their goals of educating the students. These resources would be better spent helping students develop the skills necessary to be able to complete their work rather than avoid it.
References
Carnegie Mellon University. (2012). Why Do Students Cheat? Retrieved 5 15, 2012, from Carnegie Mellon University: http://www.studentaffairs.cmu.edu/acad_int/why.html
