Why Do Students Cheat Or Plagiarize?

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The pressure on students in high school and college students can be quite overwhelming. A student may have several different classes, each with a heavy workload and none of which they are interested in taking. With their parents breathing down their necks and their financial aid dependent on passing grades, some are tempted and even go through with acts of academic dishonesty in the forms of cheating and/or plagiarizing. There are many reasons why students cheat and plagiarize, they may not even understand the difference between the two, but there are also possible solutions to prevent cheating and plagiarizing in education.
To begin, “the rate of students who admit to cheating at least once in their college careers has held steady at somewhere around 75 percent since the first major survey on cheating in higher education in 1963” (Lang 2). This statistic shows that cheating is not a new problem and that the degree of cheating has been at a constant for many years, but why is this? Why do students …show more content…

In this context, to cheat is to get unauthorized help on an assignment, quiz, or test. Whereas, plagiarism is presenting someone else’s work or idea as your own. Cheating is a deliberate attempt to deceive. While, plagiarism can be intentional or not intentional. When a student intentionally plagiarizes they are cheating, but not all forms of cheating include plagiarism. Compare this to a rectangle and a square. A square is always classified as a rectangle, but a rectangle is not always a square. This is how plagiarism and cheating are related. However, it is not necessarily cheating when a student unintentionally plagiarizes. Unintentional plagiarism occurs when a student does not cite their sources properly, or does not cite paraphrased information. When students are confused and intimidated by citations and their complex rules, then they may plagiarize without knowing they have done

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