The Causes And Effects Of Academic Cheating In High School

Cheating has always been an issue among students. Almost everyone cheats in some fashion in classes. Whether it’s by blatantly copying another student’s answers, or working together on an assignment meant to be done on your own, cheating will remain a staple occurrence in academic life. In Rebekah Nathan’s article, “The Art of College Management: Cheating,” Nathan (2005) delves into students’ various reasons for cheating and even includes cheating as an “aspect[] of student culture,” (p. 27) from the point of view of a student. Nathan defends cheating as a whole by including it as an inevitable part of student culture. Additionally, she claims that everyone cheats, further diving into the idea that cheating is not inherently wrong. As a result of consistently defending cheating, Nathan neglects to provide worthy solutions to the issue as well as ignoring the consequences of cheating.

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,

As college standards increase yearly, students feel greater pressure to succeed. As a result of the rising academic expectations, cheating has become a national issue and most students have admitted to cheating at least once in their educational career. Overloaded with school work, students see cheating as an advantage and step towards academic success. Thus, cheating results from an urgency to do well in school and being overscheduled.

75% of college students cheat at one time or another in their college careers due to laziness, competitive pressures, or simply fear. In “Cheating Lessons: Part 3”, by James M. Lang, he explains that certain learning environments unknowingly give students opportunities to cheat. Lang also provides tactics to help classrooms reduce the numbers of cheating, while aiding students to achieve their academic goals with the right “tools.”

When asking a student do they think cheating is bad most will say yes and will even admit to cheating.Cheating doesn’t affect many students on a regular day basis until they have been caught red-handed.When it comes to cheating blame automatically goes to the student but what about the adult as well.Some teachers have admitted to seeing student cheat but haven't said anything because it was on homework.Some teachers have even gone to the depth of helping a student cheat on a test.There was a survey that was taken through all of the high schools asking students if they had ever cheated on a test, the results were that there were 64 percent who cheated,58 who plagiarised, and above all 95 percent of them admitted to cheating of some sort.(Academic Integrity Under Statistics paragraph 3 )Students cheat to make it through a semester and to make their parents proud.Students cheat simply because of lack of knowledge, pressure from the adult looking for them to do their best, and last lack of time.

Cheating was not a big deal to me when I was at Myojo Gakuen high school in Japan. However, when I went to LaGuardia Community College in New York, cheating was a serious issue to me and other students as well. While my teachers in my high school at Myojo Gakuen high school viewed cheating as breaking school rules, I believe that the teachers at LaGuardia Community College took cheating as a more serious issue than my teachers from my high school, Myojo Gakuen high school did. In addition, the penalty for cheating was also different. LaGuardia Community College kicks out a student from the school if he/she is caught cheating on exams. Myojo Gakuen high school, on the other hand, dons not kick out a student from the school because of cheating on exams. There are different opinions about cheating in my high school, Myojo Gakuen high school and my college, LaGuardia Community College.

177 cases of academic cheating were reported in the 2013-2014 school at the University of Wisconsin (UWIRE 1). Academic cheating has been a huge problem in the educational setting for a long time. The effort to limit cheating is there, but has not always been the most effective or very well thought out. Academic cheating is present in every type of educational setting, whether it be the middle school, high school, or college level. It is present and it is a problem, which means that something has to be done. Academic cheating comes in many forms. These forms include using a technological device, asking other peers for the answers, and writing answers or helpful information down on objects, such as water bottles, phones, pieces of paper, or

Academic cheating is the most common form of cheating. Students are so desperate to receive a satisfying grade in a class that they will do anything to get it, but what they do not know is that it really does not benefit them. In"Dishonor Roll: A New Study Says Students

Evans & Craig (1990) found in a study that 61% of middle school students and 71% of high school students perceived cheating to be serious problem in their schools. Moreover, in research conducted by Murdock, Hale, and Webber (2001) on a survey among American High School students, 80% of high achieving high school students admitted to have cheated at least once. The Centre for Academic Integrity (2005) found that on most campuses, over 75% of students admit to some form of cheating.

“How College Students Cheat on In-class Examinations: Creativity, Strain, and Techniques of Innovation” by Phillip C.H. Shon offers thorough examples of techniques student cheaters use in classroom administered tests. This article focus mainly on cheating during in-class tests as a form of academic dishonesty; it illustrates the reasonings behind why honorable students decide to cheat, as well as various approaches used to accomplish their goal.

McCabe offers and insightful opinion as he suggests that students cheat because they will see others cheating, and getting away with it. This gives them an unfair advantage in the race for a high GPA, which will influence other student’s to cheat in order to level the playing field ("Cheating in College"). Academics have become a never ending battle for grades. The goals of structuralized education have shifted from engaging student’s to learn valuable and world altering knowledge, and instead has shifted to producing student’s with a 4.0 GPA. Performance oriented educational systems only invite dishonest behaviors because the legitimate acquisition of knowledge is undervalued and less important than the letter on a report card. When this undervaluing occurs students see cheating as a necessary means by which they must use to achieve the ill-conceived goal of education which has been seeded into their minds.

Many researchers have indicated that cheating is a serious problem on campuses (Bowers, 1964; Engler et al., 2008; Gallant, 2008; Leming, 1978; McCabe, Trevino, & Butterfield, 2001). Studies completed by Bowers (1964) and McCabe and Trevino (1996) revealed nearly identical results regarding student-cheating behavior despite the 30 year time span; both studies identified that

Most people believe that people will cheat just because they are a dishonest person. Although, scientists have done studies that have shown that most people will cheat under the right situation. In James Lang’s article “How College Classes Encourage Cheating,” Lang states, that 75 percent of students have at least cheated once while attending college (1). Academic dishonesty is a growing problem in college and there are many possible ways to fix it. My solutions are improving plagiarism detection software and using it more often and increasing students’ knowledge on honor code.

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.

Recent studies have shown that a steadily growing number of students cheat or plagiarize in college -- and the data from high schools suggest that this number will continue to rise. A study by Don McCabe of Rutgers University showed that 74 percent of high school students admitted to one or more instances of serious cheating on tests. Even more disturbing is the way that many students define cheating and plagiarism. For example, they believe that cutting and pasting a few sentences from various Web sources without attribution is not plagiarism.