Cheating in Academic Institutions

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Cheating in Academic Institutions

Cheating has always been a problem in the history of academics. Academic institutions continue to develop new ways to prevent cheating from happening; while at the same time cheaters come up with even better ways to cheat. This conflict brings up many moral issues as well. To settle these issues, academic institutions create honor codes that show students that cheating is unacceptable and morally wrong; however, some students come up with their own reasons for getting around that code. As one student, John Smolik, says, “Cheating is an answer.” (Clayton 20) John Smolik did not actually believe that himself, he was just stating what a popular belief among students is. The article, “A Whole Lot of Cheatin’ Going On,” states that an increase in cheating has been brought on by a lowering of accepted moral values. The article shows four major themes. Those themes are the proof of cheating, colleges watching more closely, high tech. cheating, and the expectation of honesty.

Cheating in academic institutions is a reality, so says Mark Clayton. He starts off his article by mentioning the student John Smolik in a short little anecdote. The anecdote relies on an emotional hook by having the student state the opposite of what is morally acceptable. This is a very effective technique in using pathos to draw the reader into continuing further into the article. Clayton then explains that Smolik was merely stating a view that many students in fact do believe. I believe that he did a great job in keeping the reader interested. I found that I was definitely drawn in and wanted to read to read more. Clayton then moves on to establish some of his ethos. He quotes a statistic from The Cente...

... middle of paper ...

...sequences of cheating and what academic integrity is supposed to be. Clayton shows that some ways to help with the information is the formation of student-run honor codes.

In the end, this article is more of a statement than an argument. It serves mainly to support the reasoning that cheating is not the proper course of action in virtually any situation. Clayton gets this point across using, for the most part, logos. The logos appears in the form of multiple statistics and surveys about the ways in which students may cheat and how often they do it. Pathos also plays a part in the anecdotes that are told throughout the article describing students’ ideas about cheating. Students need guidance on this measure and educational administrations are doing a good job getting the point across. As long as they do not give up cheating will never become an epidemic.

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