Argumentative Essay On Academic Dishonesty

The Future is in Your Hands “Past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior.” A dictum – with unknown root that was popularly used by former president, Bill Clinton, talk show host, Dr. Phil, and many credible psychologists – is the best description to this uprising problem: academic dishonesty (Franklin). Academic cheating is an epidemic to the educational system of America. Typical college students spend so much time and energy trying to satisfy social norms with high grades and good landing careers that they forget honor codes and personal morals. Universities that implement educators and faculties to emphasize more on academic integrity throughout the academic year to their students can only do so much because a postmodern

There are two perspectives: a general definition and a psychological one. Most general population see cheating as plagiarism, cheating on tests, exchanging work with other students, have someone else write their essays or copy and paste from the Internet. This definition is important to emphasize now because it is not presented as a serious matter to students in grade schools (K-12); when students are caught, these situations often have simple solution such as redoing an assignment or retaking an exam with reduction in points. However, in colleges, cheating is not taken lightly on exams and research papers because everything “borrowed” from the internet need to be credited for regardless what excuses are made, assignments are done professionally and correct scientific findings are crucial to future researches. On the other hand, the American Psychological Association defines academic cheating to be a plaque, a personality disorder by manipulation and callousness (Novotney), or “a framework for ethical decision making…such as [cultural] honor code, religious doctrines or social norms.” (Shu & Gino, 2012). Students who cheat often rationalize its definition so that they still remain as good individuals to their peers, their teachers and themselves. Based on the statistics found on Open Education Database website, the Ad Council and the Educational Testing Service (in United States) discovered that between 75% and 98% of college

These techniques are Denial of Responsibility, Denial of Injury, Denial of Victim, Condemning the Condemners and Appeal to Higher Loyalties (Olafson). Denial of Responsibility, act of blaming situations on uncontrollable outside force, is the most common approach (Olafson). Students who caught in academic cheating often give excuses that they were sick, family emergency, too busy with outside job or too much homework to handle in other courses that they’re forced to neglect on one assignment. For Denial of Injury and Denial of Victim, students see cheating as being harmless. College students know that cheating does not portray any physical injuries nor does it make it anyone’s fault if no one finds out, therefore more cheating occur. According to the American Psychological Association, survey conducted that 54% to 70% of students cheat some time in their college life, but only a few actually get caught (Novotney).This is an example of Appeal to Higher Loyalties because college students are surrounded by their peers every day that many grew respect and protective of each other; as mentioned in the paragraph above, if their peers have no issues with them cheating, therefore they recognize it as a normal behavior to cheat. Many students do not admitting to cheating until they finished with college and/or guaranteed with a stable career, therefore many studies have low