Recent surveys conducted on college students indicated that upwards of 76% of undergraduate students admit to having cheated on a quiz, exam, or paper. These shocking statistics, indicative of what some are calling an epidemic, show that cheating is a problem that deserves national attention and authoritative intervention. Students who cheat not only sacrifice their own integrity and conscience, but also obstruct themselves from obtaining an actual education. In order to combat this increasing trend, some schools are contemplating new, harsher punishments for cheating. In Case 15 “To ‘D’ or not to ‘D,’” educators suggested that the transcripts of students caught cheating should be branded with the letter D, indicating to employers and graduate school admissions officers that the student participated in academic dishonesty. Opposing parties argue that sometimes students make mistakes and that the student’s future should not be determined by a one-time offense. Regardless, academic institutions failing to recognize cheating as a serious problem face many potential consequences, such as tarnishing the school’s reputation and attracting students who are more likely to attempt academic dishonesty.
There are two essential questions that must be addressed in regard to the case:
1. Is it morally permissible to brand students for a single offense? Should one offense have the power to affect the rest of your life?
2. Will instilling a harsher punishment for academic dishonesty reduce cheating and therefore encourage students to better learn the material?
Before assessing these essential questions, the moral principles used to evaluate them must be established. The moral system used in considering the case is a conseque...
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...of an academic institution is to teach students; if students are cheating to get the best grades, not only are they artificially passing, they’re also harming themselves and society by not properly learning the material. The only way to combat this issue is to provide a harsh punishment for the crime. If the consequence of branding is applied, students will become more prudent in their cheating habits (therefore learning the material more effectively), and cheaters will be recognized as cheaters, thus providing consequence for the cheaters’ intellectual theft and benefiting those who earn their grades through hard work.
Works Cited
"The Shocking Statistics On Cheating From Kindergarten Through College | News One."
Breaking News for Black America | News One. Web. 11 Nov. 2011.
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In everyday experience one is likely to encounter ethical dilemmas. This paper presents one framework for working through any given dilemma. I have chosen to integrate three theories from Ruggerio Vicent, Bernard Lonergan and Robert Kegan. When making a deceison you must collabrate different views to come to a one conclusion. Ruggerio factors in different aspects that will take effect. Depending on which order of conciousness you are in by Kegan we can closely compare this with Ruggerio's theories also. As I continue I will closely describe the three theories with Kegan and how this will compare with Lonerga's theory combining the three. While Family,
Dan Ariley’s "factors to decrease dishonesty" have connections to how students can stop cheating in and outside of the class room. In the class room, it is easy for the students to look up an answer on their phone to cheat on a test or exam. The way to stop cheating among college students is to think about their morals and honor pledges. If a student cheats on a test and receive a good grade, the student will not have the same feeling as the get a good grade
In this final chapter, Christian Miller speaks about cheating. There is a cheating behavior that many people do for various reasons. This assumes that the cheater might not be the one who is advantaged. Most humans today cheat when the opportunities arise. In studies, it is clear that many students cheat while in college. Of the many students who cheat, only a small fraction of them get caught. In a very large group of people, it was seen that only 3 people stated that they have never cheated while in school. In one case, a student found an exam on the printer and mass distributed it to the class and the class finished the exam quickly and scored higher. This made the teacher skeptical and a retake was made. It is clear that cheating is very prominent on college campuses. In an experiment, participants were told that they could only take 5 minutes on a
In College, high school, and middle school cheating has become a common occurrence on assignments of all types and varying difficulty by students in all levels and types of classes. So how exactly do all these students cheat? Even more curious, why do so many of them go on to cheat even though they understand that it is wrong and could have dire consequences if they are caught. What are the consequences of cheating other than those that are disciplinary? The four types of cheaters can be classified as “addicts”, “desperados”, “bandwagoners”, and “subconscious”.
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.
Pressures from society to obtain a successful career require achieving an education in most cases. In today's economy having a thriving career could depend on our educational background as part of the ingredient to fuel our lifestyles. Students attending high school or college can relate to the pressures of sustaining adequate grades. Students who are overwhelmed with trying to maintain higher GPA standards push the academic barriers using technology to cheat. Our society is more advanced with technology such as computers, cell phones, text message systems, as well as various other electronic devices that could provide the avenue for a desperate student seeking a way to cheat in order to receive a higher GPA score. According to Ad Council (1999),"Grades, rather than education, have become the major focus of many students" (Ad Council, 1999). For those students in high school maintaining high GPA's could equal college scholarship programs needed to attend college. Students with peer pressures as well as pressures from parents to achieve higher grades could thrust students who are not motivated to study, to resort to cheating as an easy solution to an unethical problem. This research paper will discuss ways in which students are using technology to cheat. Other aspects of this paper will include statistics on academic cheating as well as ways instructors are catching students cheating. The pros and cons after using cheating detection programs as well as statistics that show significant changes after using the detection programs will also be discussed.
In the case of Joelle, this study will significantly identify the different ethical principles that can be applied in the case. In addition to it, the study will also arrive in one ethical theory that Joelle can be applied in her situation in order for her to effectively determine what she will do and if her decision and action can be considered ethical or the right thing.
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
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.
The Level of Ethical Analysis: Sometimes one will run into the issue of not finding an acceptable moral to apply
Cheating on academic work is a serious issue that most students admit to doing at some point in their academic career. Elite students are surprisingly the culprits of cheating, but hide it well. (Romm, para 5) Cheating is such a large issue that “70% of students from a sample of 1,800 from nine campuses said they had cheated at least once during their college careers.” (Schneider, para 9) Students cheat on academic work because of different, ongoing pressures in their lives. Understanding the student’s motives and pressures are essential to preventing cheating from occurring in the future. Students cheat for different reasons specific to them regarding their priorities, pressures and because of how easy it has become. Even though eliminating cheating will not happen, there are actions that educational professionals can and should take to prevent most of it from happening so often. Therefor cheating problems are minimized and have a positive impact on the student’s education and understanding of concepts.
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.
4. Unknown. Ethics. Santa Clara University Markkula Center for Applied Ethics. 29th March 2004. http://cseserv.engr.scu.edu/NQuinn/COEN288/EngrHandbook_Ethics.pdf
Today, millions of students will hand in work to a teacher; for some of them this is the assignment that will make or break their grade. If your entire academic future rested on a single grade, wouldn 't you do everything you could to make it your best work possible? Some people stay up for countless hours, working harder than they ever have in their entire lives, to produce high quality work. Other people decide to break one of the most enforced rules at every school in the country. In other words, they cheat. There are many different ways a student can cheat: they could have plagiarized work off of the internet, they could have snuck their phone into a test and used it to look up answers, etc. There are a million different ways students
With a clear definition of what cheating is, it becomes much harder for the student to justify their