In a poll taken at Iowa State University, 53% of the upper-class students cheated on a test or plagiarized a paper while at Iowa State, 91% know someone who has, and 18% know someone who has been punished for cheating. (Bishop) What is driving this increase in academic dishonesty, and what are the effects of an academic career that thrives on cheating? There are numerous reasons why people cheat, but, regardless of whether they get caught or not, there are negative consequences.
The motives students have for cheating are varied. No matter what the individual reason for someone to be tempted to cheat, their motives can generally be categorized as either based on a fear of failure or pressure to perform. Whether the student simply forgot to study and still desires a good grade, is afraid that they aren’t intelligent enough to pass without cheating, or is too lazy to do the work required to succeed, the underlying cause is a fear of failure or from pressure to perform.
Once the line is crossed, and temptations become actions, there are other factors that come into play. In our current society, strong ethics are not highly valued. There is a prevalent attitude that claims: everybody is doing it, it doesn’t hurt anybody, and this material isn’t really important to me. These people don’t possess a profound and thorough understanding of how cheating will harm them. We are consumed with the concept of instant gratification. Our society is near-sighted. Technology makes cheating so easy and convenient, but we often can’t perceive what the long term effects will be if that line between working for your grade and taking the easy way out is crossed.
Most people believe that the consequences of cheating are co...
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..., fear of receiving a low grade, or pure laziness, the results of cheating are severe. Even though getting caught and corrected may seem like the most obvious consequence of cheating, it almost seems insignificant when compared to the alternative. In reality, ramifications of getting away with repeated cheating are even more daunting. Maybe if students understood all the implications of cheating then it would not be considered as an option.
Works Cited
What's wrong with cheating? Professor Michael Bishop
Chair of the Iowa State University Department of Philosophy and Religion http://dsa.csupomona.edu/judicialaffairs/whatswrong.asp
What are the causes and effects of cheating on an exam? https://www.123helpme.com/view.asp?id=14078
Cause and Effect Essay - Plagiarism and Cheating
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080218113757AAxt2cx
Cheating means acting dishonestly or unfairly in order to gain a benefit, in achieving a task or acing an exam. Many factors can affect why many students choose to cheat. First, the temptation of being able to take just a few lines from the Internet can be convincing. Second, achieving better grades, Students will tend to cheat in various ways to give themselves a boost grade in a class. Third, work load and pressure, Students will turn to cheating to lighten the homework load which often takes many hours to complete. In this ted talk, Dan Ariely mentioned two common reasons for his argument. According to Dan Ariely, people tend to cheat if they justify their reason to do so, or when they are surrounded by people who also cheat. And also to gain benefit in a test students can tend to cheat.
That stomach churning feeling of guilt for many seems to appear as a small price to pay when completing an act of academic dishonesty. Colleen Wenke wrote an essay on cheating eighteen years ago called “Too Much Pressure”. In the past fifty years, the number of students who admit to cheating has increased fifty to seventy percent(Gaffe). Many people wonder what leads the students to make this unjust decision. Today, the reason for a rise in cheaters is because of how easy it has become, leading many students to the false conclusion that they aren’t breaking any rules; It is simply viewed as a shortcut to success in the classroom and beyond.
Take out your sticky notes, electronic devices, or the magic markers to write with on the palms of your hands. Look over at your classmate’s paper and copy the “correct” answers for the quiz questions one through ten. Hand in your quiz into your teacher early, and then lay your head on your desk and go to sleep. Does that ring a bell? The topic being focused on is cheating. Not the type of cheating where you break your boyfriend, or girlfriend’s heart. This discussion is based on the cheating a lot of students practice in class, “academic cheating” to be precise. Academic cheating is defined as representing someone else's work as your own. It can take many forms, including sharing another student’s work, purchasing a term paper or test questions in advance, or paying another student to do the work for you.(ETS/AD Council) 70% of public high school students admit to serious test cheating. 60% say they have plagiarized papers. Only 50% of private school students, however, admit to this. (McCabe)
Situations of cheating have seemed to become more and more commonplace when the student is bored by the subject material, poor teaching and or feels they have no use for the knowledge. Kohn even states in his article, “cheating is more common when students experience the academic tasks they’ve been given as boring, irrelevant, or overwhelming.” This infers that if a student were attending a school interested in learning about art, the student maybe more inclined to cheat in a business accounting class due to the fact the student would find the subject material irrelevant to them and their future. Students seem to be less inclined to cheat and it “is relatively rare in classrooms where the learning is genuinely engaging and meaningful to students and where a commitment to exploring significant ideas hasn’t been eclipsed by a single-minded emphasis on “rigor”” (Kohn). To simplify everything mentioned above; students are inclined to cheat in school when they are disinterested in the subject material and or are overwhelmed by in assignment or finally the result in a poor teacher. Everyone who has attended school can relate to this in some way or another, most people do not want to retain knowledge they have no interest in or use for in their
Modern students face many pressures for academic success. They are often unwilling to disappoint their parents or spouses. Some fear that not cheating will weaken a student’s ability to compete with their peers. They rationalize their unethical behavior, unwilling to accept a poor grade, consequently justifying cheating as the only means to that end.
Cheating is a big issue that has reached the most competitive campuses around the United States. It is increasing more and more with the new technology that we have in the 21st century because students have easy access to many sources of information. Cheating is something all students have done at some point in their lives, but as they reach a higher academic level, they are faced with more rigorous consequences that can affect their futures in many different ways. Cheating might be seen as an easy way to obtain a good grade, get into a good college, or maintain scholarships or financial aid, but the consequences could affect the life and the future of the student.
There is no specific reason as to why every student cheats; every students situation is different, which leads to different motives. Some students cheat because of pressure their parents put on them along with their parent’s high expectations they are expected to fulfill. The student cheats as a result of their fear of not being able to fulfill their parent’s expectations and in their eyes see no other option, other than to cheat because of their low self confidence that they cannot do well on their own. According to Tom Keana of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, parents affect the children by constantly badgering and questioning about how well they are doing. Tom says:
But one question that is being asked is why students get to that point of risking everything that they have worked for. What can be a way of preventing students from using technology to cheat? Some reasons that can be mentions for the cause of a student having to cheat are: getting a good grade, lack of time to do the assignments, not being able to study on time and or just being lazy and not willing to put fort the effort.
However, not everyone feels the need to make excuses, as a poll in the USA shows. Many of the young people questioned admitted that one of the main reasons for cheating was simply laziness. Some of them admitted that they did not cheat when they had studied their lesson. If this is really the case, anyone tempted to cheat should consider the following warning in the book of Proverbs: "The one working with a slack hand will be of little means." (Proverbs 10:4)
We might want to first follow that question with another question. What is cheating and why do so many people do it? Most people would agree that cheating is deceitful and one who obtains answers by cheating is not practicing good integrity. We could further add that cheating also prevents the student from having to put in long hours of studying and preparation. Recent technology has made this “time saving method” even more efficient.
Resulting from the numerous pressures of high school, academic cheating places a large amount of stress on the minds of American teens. To begin with, low self-esteem and a lack of morals prompt a student to cheat to maintain an acceptable grade. When students pick on a less academically inclined student, the unfortunate student will loose confidence in himself and resort to cheating, cheating that will begin a downward spiral of negative effects. Furthermore, if failing grades persist and plague the student, one will cheat to halt the continuation of unacceptable grades. Secondly, loving parental pressure will generate the need to cheat in school. For example, a child, who is a good student, will cheat, to prove to their parents that they are smart, and that they can achieve their goals throughout their schooling. Additionally, parents want their children to follow in their footsteps in the aspect of the education that they received; therefore, more pressure will be enfo...
Cheating has grown more and more of a big problem. Schools need to crack down on it. Its only going to get worse. If the punishments are raised and teacher look for cheating more it will help this problem severely. Cheating is an unfair, disgraceful, and unethical thing to do. It needs to be fixed. The Simple solution can go a long way.
Misunderstanding, pressure, and laziness are not good reasons to cheat and the effect of the consequences are not worth it. You can end up with an F, in detention, written up, kicked out of school, and with marks on your permanent record. There is no way to justify cheating, no matter how hard people try to. No matter what happens, students will continue to cheat, it is inevitable.
At havard school in May 2012 a teaching mate noticed that approximately half the entire class had been cheating (Buchmann,2014). If the most prestigious school in the world (havard) contains cheating it is normal to assume that cheating happens in every college more than we could think and what motivate students to cheat is lack of understanding and lectures pressure. Teachers may put a lot of pressure on student in a way that makes the material confusing. Or Students may have other things and so they are so busy far from the lessons. In all cases, classmates should not commit plagiarism in the exams so they feel more honest and capable of making the right
Temptation is another reason for cheating in exams. The birth of internet brought the ability to quickly and efficiently transmit information on anything from anywhere, right to our fingertips with sites. The sites cater for students by providing pre-written reports and essays that you can purchase or download for free. Mobile phones with internet increases the chance of cheating in exam rooms.