Why is academic dishonesty bad

After three years, you can appeal to have the notation on your transcript removed. That sounds pretty bad. Is having past exams cheating? Yes, if you saw a copy of an exam that was not released after the exam, it could be considered a form of cheating and you might get in trouble. If it was released to the class or is a take home exam everyone had a chance to see , then there is no issue.

Why is academic dishonesty important? Having academic integrity is important for several reasons. First, having academic integrity means that others can trust you. Second, having academic integrity is important because it provides value to your degree. Employers prefer to hire graduates whom they believe to have high personal integrity. Can colleges see academic dishonesty? Colleges also tend to care about certain types of offenses more than others. Since colleges take academic dishonesty this seriously among their students, it's not surprising that they also consider it when evaluating applicants.

What is considered academic dishonesty? Academic dishonesty is defined as a student's use of unauthorized assistance with intent to deceive an instructor or other such person who may be assigned to evaluate the student's work in meeting course and degree requirements. How does academic dishonesty affect you?

It interferes with the basic mission of education, the transfer of knowledge, by allowing students to get by without having to master the knowledge. Furthermore, academic dishonesty creates an atmosphere that is not conducive to the learning process, which affects honest students as well.

How do you deal with academic dishonesty? Handling academic dishonesty Make a paper trail. Contact each student individually for meetings to discuss their work.

Start each meeting by getting the student to discuss the work itself. First, there are those who would condemn the actions in and of themselves as violating some principle of the moral good. Second, there are those who would condemn the acts for what they produce or fail to produce.

Given the current limitations in time a very quick overview as applied to cheating the following is offered. A follower of Immanuel Kant would condemn such acts as violations of the Categorical Imperative for we cannot will that all humans would behave in such dishonest ways in their dealings with all other humans.

The moral duty for Kant would have people use reason to examine if they could will that all other people should behave in the same way towards all other persons. So the would-be cheaters should consider if they would want to live in a world where people cheated as they please.

Given that would-be cheaters need to consider living in a world where would-be cheaters need the services of others it would appear to be reasonable to conclude that the would-be cheaters should not want to have inferior care and services from providers who cheated their way into positions. Nor would they want dishonest or inferior services being delivered to those they know and for whom they care. Natural Law Theory would condemn such acts as violations of behaviors which species exhibit that enable them to survive and prosper by personal achievement and growth.

People, indeed our species, survive by virtue of our accomplishments. We learn a good deal which we use in our efforts to survive and prosper. Cheating instead of learning weakens all in society. People need to be truthful and to earn their way in the world if the species is to survive challenges and to progress and flourish. People need to trust one another if we are to have social life. People need to trust that others have the knowledge and skills which they claim and upon which others rely.

For those who believe in a deity as the source of all creation and the provider of laws, there is the notion that survival and prosperity takes place through direct exchanges not to be diminished through falsehoods such as represented in cheating. For those who believe in a deity and the acknowledgement of several commandments there are the purported directives that direct humans to avoid falsehoods. Divine commandments prohibit not only the taking of what is not ours but of coveting it as well.

Cheating violates these divine prohibitions. For someone applying the principles of John Rawls and seeking to maximize human liberties and equality of opportunities while minimizing the differences amongst social classes and individuals, there is also a condemnations of cheating and lying as violations of the liberty principle and as supporting unjust differences.

Now I offer a look at those approaches that condemn the acts for what they produce or fail to produce. For Utilitarians who consider the consequences of repeated behavior upon others Rule Utilitarian there are also strong reasons to think that acts of cheating do not produce the greatest utility or the greatest amount of physical and emotional happiness nor does it satisfy the interests of society nor provide for a sense of wellbeing for humanity.

For the Utilitarians who consider the consequences of acts of cheating there is a concern that as a rule cheating would not only not produce much general happiness but would actually produce harm instead. Society is not well served and the interests of society are not well satisfied if persons who are not capable of providing the knowledge and services needed by others are given positions due to their having cheated. There is an approach to ethical thinking based on consideration of virtue of mind and character rather than upon rules or duties.

When considering moral character or virtues it would appear obvious and direct that the virtues of truth and trust and excellence of character would not support engaging in any forms of deception or dishonesty. Virtues are acquired and demonstrated through practice. Developing virtuous habits strengthens character and the willingness to resist temptations to do what is not consistent with virtuous behavior. Whether the virtues to be cultivated and exemplified are those based on what aim at a good life or wellbeing or based on those exemplifying the virtues associated with women more than men with caring, self-sacrifice, nurturing of others and solidarity and community or based on what most deem as admirable traits in others, cheating is not virtuous.

For Ethical Egoists there is the attraction to such actions in thinking that through cheating some desirable end could be achieved with less effort than otherwise would be required. This is the popular thought anyway. Ok, so how do egoists justify cheating? Well, whatever makes the egoist happy is thought of as the GOOD thing to do. This is the ethical principle of an egoist.

The potential cheater thinks achieving the desired end by stealth or falsehood or through a variety of means that are in violation of academic integrity will make the egoist happy. Most likely this is the case because they think there is less work involved rather than being motivated by thoughts of the pure joy of achieving a successful deception.

Few people cheat for the pure sake of cheating. The cheat usually gets a higher grade or reward than otherwise would result from their lack of legitimate efforts.

They avoid negative outcomes. Friend and family of the cheater may also be pleased at the accomplishments and achievements. For the ethical egoist cheating might appear to be morally justified unless the ethical egoist has an interest in having a properly functioning society with fully capable individuals proving goods and services.

Why is cheating attractive? With so many theories providing a clear set of principles and reasons with which to condemn cheating as being immoral, it is a wonder that people would do it. So, what makes cheating appear as attractive? Why would anyone want to do it and think that they had done a good thing rather than a bad thing? Well there are several reasons and there is research into why people do cheat in general and even in the academic setting. Based on a survey done by a company that performs private investigations and digital and business forensics, Kessler International , comes the claim that 9 in 10 students admit to cheating in college and the students who do report cheating indicate that they cheat frequently using a variety of techniques and that they suspect faculty do the same.

Most disheartening come the reports that only 12 percent of students said they'd never cheat because of ethics. Hicks Crawford on the College Life reports that students are not lazy but they do cut corners and they offer these reasons for cheating. These categories were ambiguous attitudes, competitive pressures, institutional apathy, lack of understanding, and self-interest. Their focus was on what can be done to reduce its prevalence and they hold that a program featuring deeply embedded honors code as a key to creating an ethical environment.

However other measures might also be considered and attempted including altering student attitudes towards cheating as early as possible and identifying the reasons that particular groups are more inclined to cheat and then addressing those factors. As well as it has been documented that cheating is widespread and appears to be rising in frequency, it also appears obvious that simply offering reasons why it should not take place appears to be ineffective in halting or even diminishing its occurrences.

Offering rather sophisticated reasons why cheating is morally wrong appears not to be a means of making a significant decline in its frequency. Then what is to be done? Perhaps getting down to basics might work. Making the case clearly and often and in the simplest terms as to just why is it wrong both morally and even practically, might be worth making part of a program.

Why is it wrong? Now here is where we shall put aside the formal theories and simply focus on the most popular reason people give for finding an action to be morally wrong. How do they rationalise their behaviour to continue to think of themselves as decent people?

According to studies performed in many countries, the vast majority of students have at least once committed academic fraud such as plagiarism, using cheat sheets during exams, 'outsourcing' one's homework, sharing information between peers regarding test answers, etc. There are many reasons why academic dishonesty is so widespread. Often students' perception of their peers' behaviour has an effect on the likelihood of cheating. Students who believe that most of their classmates do it are more inclined to cheat.

A recent study by the Centre for Sociology of Higher Education of the HSE Institute of Education suggests that cheating students use various mental strategies to rationalise and justify their dishonesty, indicating their awareness that cheating is wrong and their attempts to resolve an internal conflict. The students interviewed were predominantly economics and business undergraduates whom other studies found to be more prone to academic fraud.

Cheating such as copying from other students' papers was found in both countries. But the study did not involve a cross-country comparison, rather, its main purpose was to provide a generalised classification of reasons why undergraduates may either judge or justify cheating and to suggest appropriate measures against academic fraud for various national contexts.

If none is expected, cheating is okay. In a more recent paper, Boltanski and Eve Chiapello added a project-oriented mode, in which the equivalency principle is based on whether one is active and likely to initiate projects. This mode, however, can hardly be applied to academic dishonesty, because cheating and plagiarism are associated with precisely the opposite: an unwillingness to be active at school.

Interesting vs Boring Being in the inspiration mode often means that the student is interested in the subject and finds it easy to engage with the teaching and learning materials and the teacher's presentation. Students who are motivated and passionate about a subject are not likely to cheat.

On the opposite end are negative feelings, such as extreme anxiety at the exam, fear of failure, boredom and aversion to the subject or to the teacher. Students experiencing such feelings are more likely to cheat and often rationalise their dishonesty by being too nervous, finding the subject too complicated and the teacher overly demanding, and saying that 'you cannot retain such a huge amount of information in your head anyway'.

According to a study participant, 'Some teachers give lectures in a monotonous manner, so following them is virtually impossible.

Also, some teachers are not really involved in the process during seminars, and their students answer by reading out papers downloaded from the internet and no one cares'.

But sometimes people are motivated to be honest because they want to avoid negative feelings. I do not consider myself too stupid to write an essay'.