What is Cheating and Why Cheating is Bad?

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Introduction - What is Cheating and Why Cheating is Bad?
In this paper, we discuss how academic dishonesty in general and what role if any, the structure and teaching of courses – as a part of business management curriculum in particular – plays, in curbing that dishonesty.
Cheating can be defined as any act of academic dishonesty and is encountered in various forms. There has been extensive research [Whitley, 1998] to analyze fraudulent exercises- especially in undergraduate school setting. 72% students report to have taken part in at least one form of fraudulent exercise. Such activities range from fraudulent excuse making (in order to delay the beginning or end of academic tasks) to “copy-and-paste” plagiarism to cheating during examinations or graded assignments [Roig, 2005]
For the student, there is either a social or an economic incentive to be gained by cheating [MacGregor, 2012]. However, cheating, more specifically, cheating during exams or in graded assignments gives the students who cheat an unfair advantage over those who remain honest and study hard to excel in the same examination or assignment. Grades are reflection of knowledge and competence gained through learning. Therefore, acts of academic dishonesty undermine the validity of student learning. This, in turn, has effect on academic system in two ways – 1. It reflects poorly on the academic standard or quality of education being imparted by the institution from where the cheating student earned his/her grades and 2. It also interferes with faculty’s ability to correctly diagnose gaps in student learning for the purpose of both re-teaching current students and re-designing instruction for future students [Passow, 2006].
As we will see in following sections, che...

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