Understanding Reasons Behind College Cheating

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There are quite a few reasons why students cheat while in college. The reason why I’m sure, is because people probably think they’re lazy and don’t really care about what happens but there are actually bigger explanations. Ralph Heibutzki wrote an article that gives us some reasons. For example, he talks about, ambiguous attitudes, competitive pressures, institutional apathy, lack of understanding, and self-interest. I’ve done some research on this and am going to explain some of these reasons that Heibutzki is talking about.
Most students are at a young age when competitive pressures start to arise. A lot of parents dont realize it but they’re actually putting pressure on kids to get nothing less than good grades. This in turn, causes the …show more content…

There are some materials in class that the students just can not comprehend, so what do they resort to? Cheating off of the kid sitting next to them, Googling all of the answers, or having someone else do that work for them which causes that child to not learn any of the material given to them. Seval Eminoglu Kucktepe did a study at Marmara University in Istanbul, Turkey. Out of 26 students that were surveyed, 26% of them marked that they had no idea about the answer to the question that was presented to them. (104) Another way of looking at it is the student isn’t intentionally cheating, they haven’t had a clue that what they were doing is considered cheating. Some students don’t know the institutions policies about the rules of cheating or plagiarism so they think that its okay to sneak a peek at the kids paper next to them but what they’re really doing is forming a habit that’s hard to …show more content…

This is also very contagious to the other kids around them because they see other kids not caring so they automatically assume that they shouldn’t care so they can “fit in.” Some students don’t really feel the need to try at all. To them, college is just another stepping stone to a good paying job or maybe just a retreat away from mommy and daddy. Students that have apathy towards college are not understanding how it affects not only them, but other students who care about college. “Economic surveys in “Academically Adrift” show that in the 1920’s, students averaged about 40 hours a week on academic studies. That number declined drastically over time, and by 2003, the average student spent 13 hours a week on academics”. (Daily Mississippian) With this data, it proves that students with apathy towards college is most definitely

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