Pros And Cons Of Dishonest Behaviors In College Education

Academic dishonesty is the use of unauthorized assistance with the intent to deceive an instructor. Academic dishonesty includes behaviors like cheating, plagiarism, and fabrication. Cheating is the use of materials, information or notes that are not authorized by the instructor. Plagiarism is the act of claiming or using someone’s own words or ideas and using them as your own without giving them credit. Fabrication involves falsifying information or data.

Ethics are the principals that build an individual’s character and integrity. It is the code of conduct that a person lives by; it is the way that a person conducts themselves when no one is around. Stealing, lying, and cheating are wrong, yet every day in the workplace these issues occur. Growing competition lends to the need for people to do what they can to get ahead and stay ahead. Ethics are pushed to the side as people try to gain power or to stay out of trouble, all at the risk of tarnishing their character. This same mindset has spilled over into Academia. A student’s desire to successfully earn a degree by any means necessary has caused educational institutions to address these ethical issues by setting policies in place to combat academic dishonesty.

Cheating used to be considered an unmentionable sin. However, in this day and age, it has become more common and somewhat of a daily occurrence. Cheating is more widespread today than in the past. According to the article titled Education: The New Morality, cheating has not been an issue of values, but simply one of practicality. This shows that many view cheating as a mere occurrence and something that can often be skipped over. The reason cheating has become such a pervasive movement is because many students tend to rationalize their cheating behavior. A common rationalization that many students use is, " That 's the only way I 'll get anywhere in life." Many students also tend to incorporate reasons, such as parental pressures,

Nowadays, it is a common occurrence for students to copy assignments off of either the Internet or their peers. Because colleges and society in general put so much emphasis on the grade students receive to determine their intelligence and their ability of attend a college, it becomes the grades, the letters students receive on a piece of paper, that matter. Even when teachers warn students about the punishments that go along with cheating, students still cheat, thinking they could get away with it. The students then carry the habit of cheating through their careers and lives. Therefore, it is important for the school to implement an honor code in order to promote a culture of integrity and to reduce academic dishonesty.

Rules governing academic integrity among students and schools is a practice deeply entrenched in the American education system and that of those around the world. Likely beginning at the University of Virginia in the United States during 1842 as a way to discourage cheating, dishonesty, and plagiarism, it soon spread throughout the nation. Today, the overwhelming majority of schools in the US, from elementary to collegiate, have their own form of a honor code. Among these schools is Port Charlotte High School, PCHS abbreviated, whose own code of conduct is based heavily on students being educated about the effects that their cheating will have on their academic future and punishing those who are discovered to have cheated in any form. So far, these particular academic regulations have proven successful and because of this, the charge put forward by the school should continue to be maintained. Revising the Code of Conduct into a peer-enforced system creates is statistically inefficient, hostilities between students, and eliminating the honor code would easily produce a school where cheating reigns free.

Superior education institutions are correct when enforcing honesty among their students. It is important because a student register at a college/university with the purpose of getting

Over the years, cheating does not carry the same stigma it used to represent. Because of competition and expectations, students are doing whatever it takes to achieve an A average. There are students who are fighting for scholarships or for the position to be on the top. Also, parents and teachers are the root cause of this matter because they have advocated the idea that high GPAs will lead to more successful futures. As a result, grades have become the main focus for most students,

A poll conducted by a website, CollegeHumor, revealed that 60 percent of college students had admitted to cheating on tests and assignments. Due to its popularity, society has began to accept cheating as an average tool used by students to succeed. Accepting the issue of cheating has not only decreased society’s standards, but also has led them to become less ethical. Thus, as a result of the decrease in standards, academic cheating has become a reaccuring problem that is now being accepted by society.

I received a discipline referral for committing academic dishonesty in the form of collusion on September 24th, 2014. I allowed my classmate to copy my calculus homework for Chapter 7:6, Integration using Tables and Computer Algebra Systems, from Stewart Calculus: Early Transcendentals, 7th Edition textbook. What I did was wrong because I was colluding, which is defined in the Suncoast Community High School Student Handbook as, "to support academic misconduct by another student, as in allowing one's work to be copied or submitted for assessment by another." No matter what my intentions were, I was cheating and cheating can never be justified. It is immoral to enable another to be given credit for work they had not done themselves and I have

Solution of cheating culture is honor codes and techniques for academic integrity which are important parts of the solution. It is the responsibility of students as well as faculty and administration to establish an environment where honest students do not feel that they are at risk or disadvantage. “Just as cheating can become normalized at a school, so too can academic integrity efforts move the pendulum in the other direction and create a climate where cheating is not cool” (Callahan, 2005). Academic integrity and

America places a heavy emphasis on the crime of stealing. Starting at a young age individuals are taught that taking things that don’t belong to you is wrong. Once these children enter academic institutions, they learn that stealing does not just mean taking material objects, such as your friends Go-Gurt, or candy from the corner store, it also applies to idea and thoughts. In other words, intellectual property. Crimes involving intellectual property include, plagiarism, cheating on an exam, and submitting work that is not your own. Academic institutions have waged war on academic dishonesty through several methods, but the main combative tool they use is an honor code. These honor codes act as contracts that students agree to, acknowledging that they will be academically honest, not receive unauthorized aid, and so forth. These honor codes vary from institution to institution. The Honor Code in use at Hofstra University is a prime example of a classic honor code. However, to demonstrate the differences between honor codes we will also analyze the honor codes in effect at The State University of New York (SUNY) and University of Colorado Boulder (UC Boulder).

Academic dishonesty is a threat to every student and every institution of higher education. The very act runs contrary to the fundamental values of higher education (Bowers, 1964). Dishonesty compromises the integrity of the individual student as well as the reputation of the institution (Engler, Landau, & Epstein, 2008; Gallant, 2008).

Many questions as to why students decide to preform acts of unethical behaviors have been posed. The most common reasons students resort to the unethical behaviors mentioned above, are because of objective parameters of academic life, such as; difficulty of the course, or not enough time to prepare. While on the other hand, the least common reasons are related to subjective factors, such as, the teacher’s leniency or the importance of scoring a good grade. (Iorga & Romedeac, 2013)

McCabe has said that an estimated seventy percent of college students have admitted to some type of cheating. He supports this claim by saying that the parties to blame here is the school system and the media. HBU defines academic dishonesty to when a student cheats or steals someone’s work and passes it as their own among these are a list of actions that count for academic dishonesty. Some examples being brought up about dishonesty is how in the NFL saw past the deflating incident in the Super Bowl were it seems like the media praised the player for his actions (Loschiavo). Therefor, students think it is correct to do be dishonest in their class work.

Academic dishonesty is another facet of unethical behaviour. It is an action or attempt that results in creating an unfair academic advantage for oneself or a disadvantage for any other member of academic community. A child uses his or her experiences in society to shape personal ethics. Family has a strong influence on one's values and behaviour,parents establish rules from the start and it becomes the basis for our ethics and morals. A personal ethical commitment is part of what makes students a success. A lack of ethical commitment will always result in acdemic failure. I personally believe that students who are academically dishonest cheat themselves out of an education and harm their fellow students by screwing the grading curve for the class as a whole. Therefore academic ethics are vital and students should commit themselves to maintaining highest personal ethical standards.