According to statistics, the last 50 years cheating among high school students has risen dramatically. Nowadays, more than 75% of the students are cheating in high schools and colleges. According to the “Academic Cheating Fact Sheet,”“ While 20% of college students admitted to cheating in school during the 1940’s, today between 75% and 98% of college students surveyed each year report having cheated in high school.” Understanding of cheating among students is different. For one person cheating is a lie, but for another it is a way to win or get a good grade, in other words, to get a good job. Both cases should provide an explanation why students think and act a certain way and possible justification for their actions. So, why does a student cheat? There are at least two reasons why students choose the path of "dishonesty."
First and foremost, students have high pressure to achieve a good grade. Nowadays, the focus is more on scores rather
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Why is it so important to get a good grade? Because only getting good grades, they can count on the opportunity to get a good job in the future. In short, education is measured by grades, students are assessed not so much on their abilities as a their achievement in scores. An upper-middle-class senior at an East Bay private high school, Sarah says: “There’s so much pressure to get a good job, and to get a good job you have to get into a good school, and to get into a good school, you have to get good grades, and to get good grades you have to cheat.” The difficulty of obtaining high scores also is that you need to memorize a lot of information. Tests and quizzes don 't have a choice for retaking. In brief, as the best estimate of a direct impact on the opportunity to have a good job in the future, the target of the students is more focused on achieving a high level assessment without the right to make mistakes. They are choosing cheating as a way to raise
The thing that confuses me are the reasons why people cheat. I know that in college life, it is clear that grades are important. Since grades are so important, people want to do better and want to succeed in their classes that they are taking. By cheating, it makes it easier for them to get a better grade. I agree that it is not an honest thing to do, but it is clear that they are doing it for a reason, to benefit themselves. Also, people want to help their friends succeed so that is another part of it. I think if schools wanted to get rid of cheating, they should not focus on the grades as much. Grading people is important, but is it that important if everyone cheats? I also see how people want to be viewed as honest. I do not think people want to cheat because they think they will be viewed as immoral. Also, they could be punished which would hurt them as well. If everyone cheats in schools, why not just allow it? That is the way that the world is running currently and everyone is cheating their way through
Grades do motivate students to do better but, grades cause students to want to get a good grade instead of fully mastering the material. They look at school just trying to pass which promotes cheating on tests and homework. They also will choose the material that is the easiest and choose a class with a professor who doesn’t care to raise their GPA. School is supposed to be about learning and understanding new material to help gain knowledge and a new way of thinking.
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.
To begin, students should be flunked because repeating grades allows them to learn the skills such as hard work, motivation, and determination that they may have missed the first time. Proving that students who just get through high school by cheating the system do not learn the skills, Sherry states, “High-school graduates and high-school dropouts pursuing graduate-equivalency certificates will learn the skills they should have learned in school.”
The easier, softer way is not the road less traveled. In this paper, I plan to use myself as a case study for a look inside the mind of a cheater. I will start out with a definition of academic dishonesty given by our school and hope to go through some valid excuses used by people who cheat. I will also look at how further complications and confusion arises by students and teachers perception of themselves and their role in the problem. I will address the changing culture and how it can be a useful smokescreen that tries to make cheating a social issue as well as a moral one. I will use morality to discredit a view that certain forms of dishonesty are more acceptable than others forms. I hope to end my research by showing that this is a serious problem for all us, if only by the effect cheating can have on the economy. This should give cause for alarm. Changes must be made in order to shift the personality of education from impersonal to personal, from social and mental only, to spiritual and moral also.
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.
Everyone has cheated on something at some point in their life, whether it is in a game, on a test, or in a relationship, everyone has done it. Cheating is anything that involves breaking a rule, or getting an unfair advantage. Schools are one of the most popular places people cheat. Many people down play cheating and use excuses like, “He shouldn’t have let me see his paper,” or, “I am just using my resources wisely.” But, what causes people to cheat? Students cheat in school because of laziness, high standards or pressure to do well, and misunderstanding.
From a young age we are taught the differences between right and wrong, but as we get older the line between moral and immoral is often blurred. Things that were once thought of as unacceptable are now perfectly fine in our minds. Have you ever seen anyone cheat on an assignment or exam? Do you know anyone that’s been expelled from school for cheating? What if it was discovered that a U.S. senator plagiarized his college thesis paper? Imagine if it got out that one of the most respected universities in the U.S. was involved in a huge fraud scandal that involved thousands of students. Academic cheating is a terrible offense because it is unethical, self-degrading, and can be detrimental to the learning environment.
With information becoming so widespread and available everywhere cheating has become easier. In result, students ethics have lowered to get the grade they desire. In my research I have found cheating students do it in despair for the grade they need because of the stress kids these days are under is far greater than before. Cheating has become so easy to do and kids are getting better grades with less work; that they found cheating as their solution for getting through school. Why do students let their ethical morals lower just for a grade?
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.
The big question everyone has is why do people cheat? Cheating is something we all do , but no one knows why that's why we have people like Eric Anderman and Dan Ariely who study the human behavior. They help us figure out the big question of why we cheat. Eric and Tamara Murdock,PhD, editor and Co editor of “The Psychology of Academic Cheating” found that “How teachers present the goals of learning in class is key to reducing cheating.
School is a great place for students to go and get an education, yet it has its flaws. Such as cheating, Cheating is happening all over the us in all different stages of school from elementary to the college level. As Abc news put it in their article there is a cheating crisis in America's schools. The reason students are educated is so they have a successful life containing a good job, wealth, and happiness. If students don't get good grades they won't get any of those things. So there is immense pressure to succeed in school. In a six-month investigation, Primetime voyaged to many schools across the US to see how much students are cheating, and why. They found most students do it and that students do it to keep up. Joe is a student at a top college in the Northeast who admits to cheating regularly. Like all of the college students who spoke to Primetime, he wanted his identity obscured. In Joe's view, he's just doing what the rest of the world does. "The real world is terrible," he told the interviewer. "People will take other people's materials and pass it on as theirs. I'm numb to it already. I'll cheat to get by” (http://abcnews.go.com/Primetime/story?id=132376). At school cheating has become the usual.
Cheating on exams is a violation of college standards; it is a misrepresentation of the student’s true capabilities. Cheating can be the worst form of deception, it is considered to be unethical, and it is the opposite of honesty. Forms of academic dishonesty may include copying from the test of someone within eyesight, crib sheets or swapping papers. Likewise because of technological advances, such as the I-phone some of these devices may be used to cheat as well. For instance an exam could be photographed and e-mailed to another student. I believe it is relatively safe to assume if a person is going to cheat on college exams, they are likely to make similar choices in other areas of their life. The practice of cheating can contribute to the moral decline of the family and society. Perhaps their need to be right is stronger than wanting to do the right thing. However, we all know what it feels like when someone cheats us; the cheater may not think that their actions affect anyone, however their can be unintended consequences. Consequently doing the right thing usually requires more time and hard work so the cheater typically rationalizes they do it because they did not have enough time to study.
The major reason which leads to popularity of cheating is that students always desire to have good marks. Today’s academic system is generally based on grade point average or some other alphabetical or numerical representation of academic skill. If students notice that many classmates have high marks, they also want the fame of having good grades. Therefore, this pressure unintentionally causes students to value their goods marks much more than their knowledge. Eventually, students do anything to achieve good marks, even cheating in exams.
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.