Let's Put the Heat on Campus Cheats (page 2 of 2)

A Peer Practice

According to Rutgers's McCabe, one big reason students give for cheating is that they see their peers getting away with it. "They notice others doing it, and no one does anything to stop it," he says. "They wonder, Why should someone else get a better job or get into a better graduate school because people are not paying attention?"

McCabe queried hundreds of professors around the country and found that among those who had discovered students cheating, 40 percent never reported a single incident. "Many think it's a hassle," he says. "Some worry that the school may not back them up and they will wind up defending their accusation against the student."

At North Carolina State University, a teaching assistant told microbiology professor Jerome Perry that two students wrote answers in the margins of their tests and displayed them to each other. Perry says he discussed the case with colleagues, and everyone he talked to suggested that it was futile to file charges--he would ultimately be humiliated. He did so anyway. The students were found guilty and lost a series of appeals. One accepted the decision at this point, but the other asked the school's Board of Trustees to review the case.

To Perry's dismay, a board subcommittee overturned the verdict, claiming that the cheating charge was not adequately substantiated. Neither Perry nor the teaching assistant was asked to testify before the subcommittee.

"There is palpable cynicism on this campus among faculty regarding the merits of filing misconduct charges," Perry wrote bluntly to the board. He has since retired.

Return of Honor Codes
Savvy professors now discourage term-paper plagiarism by assigning more narrow writing topics and giving pop quizzes in class on students' research progress. And new websites promise to help educators detect plagiarized papers. Plagiarism.org, for instance, will compare a student's work with the over 100,000 documents in its database, as well as to those indexed by major Internet search engines.

While professors can police their classrooms, a growing number of colleges and universities are reverting to an old-fashioned institution--the honor code. "The student activism of the '60s created an environment of mistrust, which led to the disappearance of traditions like honor codes on many campuses," says McCabe. "Today, adopting some form of an honor code typically reflects a desire to bring a higher level of honesty and accountability to student life."

Unlike long-standing honor codes at schools such as the University of Virginia, most new "modified" honor programs do not obligate students to report incidents of academic dishonesty. But students who do observe cheating are strongly encouraged to do so.

For those who get caught cheating, the case is often resolved through a voluntary agreement. Sometimes the professor confronts the student in private and metes out a punishment if the student admits wrongdoing. In other instances, allegations are reported to a judicial board or honor council, usually composed of students and faculty. Once again, if the accused owns up, the matter is resolved with a punishment. The cases for students who deny cheating are often heard in formal proceedings, complete with evidence presented by witnesses.

At many schools, punishment for first-time violators is an F on the assignment or in the course, or some form of disciplinary probation. More egregious offenses, as well as a second or third offense, can result in suspension or expulsion.

At the University of Maryland, students caught cheating get an XF for the course on their transcript, which indicates failure due to academic dishonesty. First-time offenders can petition the school to remove the X after they complete a six-week seminar, though the F is permanent.

The reported number of cheating cases at the University of Maryland more than tripled from 60 in 1990--when the school's new code took effect--to 204 in 1998. "I'm convinced that's not due to an increase in dishonesty, but to more people willing to report cases," says Maryland's Gary Pavela, director of the Office of Judicial Programs and Student Ethical Development.

Some schools use publicity to send the message that cheating is not tolerated. The California Aggie, the student newspaper at the University of California at Davis, publishes a weekly synopsis of cases in which a student admitted cheating or was found to have cheated by the school's student-faculty honor council. "It's as well read as a police blotter," says Jeanne Wilson, the school's student judicial-affairs director.

There is, of course, no panacea. Cheating is so easy and widespread that it will always attract some students. But it need not be the epidemic it has become.

"My belief is that ten to 20 percent of students will cheat whenever they feel they can get away with it," says McCabe, "and ten to 20 percent will never cheat because of strong convictions or fear of getting caught. The battle is for the 60 to 80 percent in the middle."

From Reader's Digest - May 2000

 

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