Academic Integrity Analysis

As we all know, to succeed in school, college, or any other form of education results from a student’s complete understanding and effort of the material. According to Katz, academic integrity is defined as following a code of moral values, prizing, honesty and fairness in all aspects of academic life – classes, assignments, tests, papers, projects, and relationships with students and faculty (2009, p. 82) It is the foundation for responsible conduct of a student’s educational life. Positive value actions that define academic integrity are as follows: honesty, trust, fairness, respect, and responsibility (Katz, 2009). It is entirely important that a student abide by the rules and value of academic integrity to prevent any serious consequence

to evolve or occur. Although students may not be completely aware of what constitutes cheating and breaking the value of academic integrity, they still allow themselves to become penalized because of cheating for these top three reasons: heavy workload, pressure to keep grade/GPA high, and lack of understanding/knowledge.
I came up with the topic, “top reasons that college students cheat” by exploring the ins and outs of what academic integrity really means and why it remains so important to one’s educational schooling. Cheating not only in college, but any other year of schooling is an impulsive act and a very serious matter in relation to academic honesty. It has the ability to ruin one’s college career, which is the reason why I feel as though it is so risky. In most colleges around the world, students pay no attention to the academic integrity code or honor code for the school that they go to. Along with that, their assignments result as cheating work.
As a college student, there are usually more than just one or two classes to keep up with.

Trying to complete more than one or two assignments in a day can be somewhat of an issue. Some students, including myself, do run into this issue and it can be very difficult to manage. Where time management comes into play, student’s (especially freshman) skills may not be up to par so they automatically go to breaking that academic integrity rule. Once they feel as though they can’t do it, they “cheat,” by getting the answers for the assignment from someone else, copying everything from someone else’s work, etc. Cheating happens most in the occasion where the student is involved in sports as well. Loschiavo (2015) found, “College work is challenging, and some students underestimate how long it will take them. When they run out of time, they panic and take a shortcut” (para. 21).
Just as with a student who receives poor grades participates in the act of cheating, a student who gets excellent grades will cheat as well. When it comes down to GPA and grades, of course students are determined to keep them high and acceptable. Some students are pressured to keep their grades up or just get good grades period so they depend on cheating. However, with common sense, cheating really has no benefit because you will get the grade that you want, but you still will have no knowledge or haven’t learned anything from the

material.
Students may lack understanding or knowledge in two different ways. One way is that they have no knowledge or understanding on the material that was taught either because they didn’t pay attention or just didn’t understand it. In this situation, they definitely will go straight to cheating because they have no other option. When writing a paper, students also may be confused on how to properly cite sources that they have used within their essay. In this matter, it is still considered as cheating, or in other terms, plagiarism, because it is stealing another person’s words and using it like it is your own.
Here at Felician University, we submit our essays through a website called “Turn It In.” The importance of submitting essays through this website is that it checks the document for unoriginal content.

Once the paper has been submitted, the website provides an originality report on the paper, including the percentage of the paper found to be similar to other sources. The report identifies if a student has not adequately paraphrased, quoted, or cited a source. At this point, it should be in the student’s best interest to revise the paper and paraphrase, cite or quote so that it will be improved. The paper can then be submitted again for a new originality report. The paper can be submitted by the student as many times as needed up until the day that it is due. Turn it in is not just a target for plagiarism, it evaluates the students work and provides great feedback to improve the student’s learning. Plagiarism prevention, online grading, and peer review is provided all in one easy-to-use

service.
According to Barnett & Dalton (1981), “Six factors related to cheating behavior are identified: stress, environment, intelligence, personality characteristics, definitions of cheating, and moral judgment and will” (p. 545-51).

References
Katz, J. R. (2009). Keys to Nursing Success. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education.
Loschiavo, C. (2015, May 24). Why do students cheat? A dean explains. Newsweek. Retrieved from http://www.newsweek.com/why-do-students-cheat-dean-explains-334906.