The Negative Effects Of Cheating In Education

Academic cheating is, and has always been, a prominent problem in classroom education. Of the many issues that school systems around the country face, cheating is by far the most deeply ingrained and detrimental issue. Cheating itself comes in many forms, including peer-to-peer cheating, sneaking in information, finding answers from outside sources, plagiarism, and more. New access to the internet and other forms of communication have only made this issue more noticeable in recent years. In fact, cheating is on the rise; more students cheat in the current education system than that have in the past (Jones). Thus, negative effects of cheating have been on the rise as well. Unfortunately, these effects create both social and academic problems that the student will face in the future. Current solutions appear to be insufficient or ineffective. The honor code is the most prevalent solution right now, though this system only works to the extent that a student is willing to abide by the code. The primary reason cheating continues

Studies on cheating gained more attention in the early 1900s and have only become more popular since. Most of these studies focused on the causes of cheating, particularly in high school and college. Early researchers believed that cheating was a problem of ethics that could be fixed with an honor code (Joynes). New studies, however, found that cheating was a much harder and complex problem to solve. As years passed, cheating was revealed to be about more than a skewed sense of morality as the first studies indicated. Cheating was also found to be much more prevalent than previously thought. Later studies found that cheating was found on both ends of the academic spectrum, both ends of the economic spectrum, and through every gender, race, and nationality (McCabe & Trevino) (Schab). Cheating simply affects every type of