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Why do college students cheat? essay

Professor Kruger English 1164 31 March 2008 Why Do College Students Cheat? Cheating among students in college has worsened over the years and not much is being done to stop it.

Where is the line drawn when it comes to cheating in the classroom? And why do kids do it? In today’s world people are growing lazier and always looking for ways to do less work and a lot of that has to do with improved technology. Improved technology has also made cheating easier. Students can send each other e-mail’s back and forth in the middle of class with answers. So as long as computers are a part of our world and apart of classrooms, how could cheating ever be stopped then? The major reasons that college students cheat is because they want to get better grades without doing as much work, they feel pressure from their parents to succeed, and because the benefit/cost tradeoff favors cheating. According to the book “ Next Text: Making Connections Across and Beyond the Disciplines” in today’s age some students want to get better grades without doing as much work that’s why it is one of the major reasons that college students decide to cheat. Better grades could possibly mean better jobs and eventually more money. Student these days are cheating more than ever and that’s because getting a good education is basically a matter of economic life and death (Kress, p.

21). Even students that earn straight A’s cheat because they say they don’t have the time to do the work carefully. They also say that it’s kind of like insurance; like it feels safer and better, knowing that for sure got the right answer (Kress, p. 41). Most parents these days are more inclined to want their children to get a good education.

The financial burden prevented kids from getting a good education back then compared to now. Most anyone is eligible to receive loans these days compared to back then. They also want them to succeed in school and achieve high grades. Some students believe that pressure from their parents to get good grades causes to them cheat to more. Students who cheat are more motivated by getting higher grades and less by actually acquiring that knowledge that would have been gained from the class or book (Pittenger, par. 3). Students nationwide cheat less as they get older so their need to cheat dissipates (Kress, p.

1). They are older and more mature, and should know better. However, in March of 2007, thirty-four M. B. A students from Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business were disciplined following inappropriate collaboration on a take-home exam. It was the largest ever reported from Duke University (Daugherty, par. 1). That right there shows how important higher grades mean to students and the willingness they will go through to get those good grades.

A lot of people think the older people are the less inclined they will be to cheat, but take maturity factor out of this equation because these were M. B. A students. According to the Center for Academic Integrity (CAI), 32 percent of surveyed students said that their primary reason for cheating was laziness, 29 percent said that they cheat to achieve higher grades, and 12 percent cited pressures to succeed (Hutton, par. 4). Those numbers show how students feel about doing school work. Students cheat because they are too lazy to do the work. According to Elizabeth Mustatine’s journal, “ Deviant Behavior”, students who are registered for more credit hours are more likely to cheat.

Also, students that are involved with extracurricular activities like being involved in athletics, and belonging to a social fraternity/sorority are more likely to cheat. Basically students that are involved in more activities are more likely to cheat (Mustatine, par. 11). So students are too worn out from their other activities that they push their school work aside and they get lazy on it. Students want higher grades because they feel pressure from their parents to succeed in life.

It’s as if students care more about what their parents think more than what’s best for them, and that’s doing well in school for their own sake. In Strom’s article, “ Curbing Cheating, Raising Integrity” he points out that even the teachers are reluctant to identifying and punishing the cheaters. Teachers feel vulnerable to possible threats of lawsuits by parents when their child is accused of cheating. 70% of educators can agree to that observation (Strom, par. 7). So not only do students feel pressure from their parents, but the teachers also feel pressure. Parents will get bothered if they hear about their child cheating at a university.

If a student was to get expelled because of cheating not only would the parents/student be wasting money, but they would be messing with their future success. And that is a lot of pressure that a teacher could face. The other reason that I believe college students cheat is because of the benefit/cost tradeoff favors cheating.

This is the reason that I like and the reason I believe that college students really cheat. Students will cheat if they think it’s easy, and they won’t get caught doing it. The consequences of cheating may seem positive to a student, for example, I cheated, got a higher grade, and no one else suffered (Dowd, par. ).

Students are able to rationalize their cheating by saying that faculty does a poor job in the classroom and that institutions don’t do a good job of addressing the issue of cheating (Kress, p. 30). Some people argue that teachers are partially responsible because they ignore the evidence and choose not to hold students accountable for their cheating actions (Strom, par. 2). Students don’t respect the authority in the classroom and if they don’t respect the teacher than they won’t care if they cheat or not (Hughes, par. 1). If the chances of getting caught outweigh the chances f getting away with cheating and getting a good grade then most likely you’re not going to cheat.

But that is not the case among most universities nationwide. According to Ralph Wexler, vice president of the nonprofit Joseph and Edna Josephson Institute of Ethics, less than 2 percent of cheaters are caught (Hutton, par. 4). Even if a student is caught cheating most faculty is going to be hesitant to reporting them to the university/institution (Hutton, par. 3).

I don’t think most teachers realize how easy it can be to prevent cheating n the classroom. With little effort and thought most teachers could make cheating near impossible. One way to prevent cheating is by not giving the same exams repeatedly.

Another is by not giving multiple choice exams where it is easy to copy just a letter down rather than copying words from an essay format test. Also when it comes to writing papers you can ask your students to do several drafts of a paper showing their work develop (Puka, par. 10).

It’s almost as people should be blaming the teachers for not doing their part to prevent cheating. Cheating is always going to be a part of life and people are always going to try and find ways to beat the system, but it’s up to the universities and their faculty to doing as best they can on trying to prevent that sort of thing from happening. Universities/colleges need to punish the cheaters and make an example out of someone to show how wrong it is. If students see that then more than likely they will be too scared to cheat. According to the “ University of Nebraska At Omaha Undergraduate Catalog” if a student is at fault of cheating they automatically receive an “ F” for that course. And it can get worse from there depending on the circumstances. It’s an all around effort from everyone on preventing cheating, even from the students.

With so many activities available on every college campus across the country more and stronger relationships are developed among students which also helps promote cheating by making students more aware of its prevalence and influencing student perceptions of the acceptability of cheating among their peers (Hutton, par. 3). In conclusion the major reasons that college students cheat is because they want to get better grades without doing as much work, they feel pressure from their parents to succeed, and because the benefit/cost tradeoff favors cheating. According to UNO’s undergraduate catalog any of the following can be considered academic dishonesty: cheating, fabrication and falsification, plagiarism, abuse of academic materials and/or equipment, complicity in academic dishonesty, falsifying grade reports, and misrepresentation to avoid academic work. If a student can tell that his teacher doesn’t seem to are about the class or if he is cheating then the student is going to continue to do it. The more lenient you are the more the student will take advantage of the situation.

That’s why I think that most likely a student cheats is because there is too many positive’s to cheating without enough negatives. Works Cited Daugherty, Timothy K. , and Thomas F. Moore.

“ Deep Integrity: Campus Ethics in the Flat World. ” (2007): 1-8. ERIC. First Search. Criss Library, Omaha. 4 Mar.

2008. Dowd, Steven B. “ Academic Integrity: a Review and Case Study. ” (1992): 1-27. ERIC. First Search. Criss Library, Omaha.

3 Mar. 2008. Hughes, Teresa A. , Norman L.

Butler, William A. Kritsonis, and David Herrington. “ Cheating in Examinations in Two Polish Higher Education Schools.

” The Lamar University Electronic Journal of Student Research 4 (2007): 1-4. ERIC. First Search. Criss Library, Omaha. 3 Mar. 2008.

Hutton, Patricia A. “ Understanding Student Cheating and What Educators Can Do About It. ” College Teaching 54.

1 (2006): 171-176. ERIC. First Search. Criss Library, Omaha. 7 Mar. 2008.

Kress, Anne, and Suellyn Winkle. Next Text: Making Connections Across and Beyond the Disciplines. Boston: Bedford/ St. Martin_ 2008. 27-43. Mustatine, Elizabeth E.

, and Richard Tewksbury. “ Southern College Students’ Cheating Behaviors: an Examination of Problem Behavior Correlates. ” Deviant Behavior 26. 5 (2005): 439-461.

Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Criss Library, Omaha. 5 Mar.

2008. Pittenger, David J. , Maleah F. Thorpe, and Brenda D. Reed. “ Cheating the Researcher: a Study of the Relation Between Personality Measures and Self-Reported Cheating. ” College Student 33. 1 (1999): 11-49.

Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Criss Library, Omaha. 3 Mar. 008. Puka, Bill. “ Student Cheating: as Serious an Academic Integrity Problem as Faculty-Administration Business as Usual? ” Liberal Education 91. 3 (2005): 32-35.

ERIC. First Search. Criss Library, Omaha. 11 Mar. 2008.

Strom, Peter S. , and Robert D. Strom.

“ Curbing Cheating, Raising Integrity. ” Education Digest: Essential Readings Condensed for Quick Review 72. 8 (2007): 42-50.

ERIC. First Search. Criss Library, Omaha. 3 Mar. 2008. University of Nebraska At Omaha 2007-2008 Undergraduate Catalog. Omaha: University of Nebraska At Omaha, 2007.

51-56.

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