Plagiarism in College: A Shortcut to High GPA?

Plagiarism in College: The Obsession to Maintain a High GPA
Every year millions of students enroll in college. Some will give it their all, some will do the best they can and some will try to get out of doing the work required by cheating. The most common form of cheating in college is plagiarism. “Plagiarism is theft: the stealing and appropriating of someone else’s words and ideas and passing them off as your own” (“Preventing Plagiarism”). Due to increasing pressures to excel, students who are motivated by a goal to maintain their GPA because they believe they will obtain a high paying lucrative job once they graduate from college turn to plagiarism as a way to succeed. From the time they take their very first test as children, the

According to the article “Is Student Plagiarism Increasing”, students still understand that plagiarism is wrong, they say; they are just lazy and choose to plagiarize because they believe they can get away with it.” (“Is Student Plagiarism Increasing?”). Schools can implement harsher punishments for cheating, they can embarrass the cheater by publishing their name or even worse, they can expel them from school but even with those potential consequences, students are still cheating because they are getting away with it. Even with tools used now to catch plagiarism, no program is fool proof. If more than 50% of students admit to cheating but very few get caught, it’s impossible to completely stop students from cheating. While there may be many ways to curb cheating in some students who are mature and focused on their educations and learning the course material, these same methods may not work on a cheater. There is no way to stop a student who cheats, gets away with it and continues to see nothing but success in their education and potentially their