Cheaters: Steal the Work, Get the Credit

In College, high school, and middle school cheating has become a common occurrence on assignments of all types and varying difficulty by students in all levels and types of classes. So how exactly do all these students cheat? Even more curious, why do so many of them go on to cheat even though they understand that it is wrong and could have dire consequences if they are caught. What are the consequences of cheating other than those that are disciplinary? The four types of cheaters can be classified as “addicts”, “desperados”, “bandwagoners”, and “subconscious”.

The addicts are those students who cheat on every assignment, whether it is homework, tests, quizzes, or papers. They will resort to looking at other students, getting papers from former students, and anything else it takes to pass the assignment and consequently the class. They are driven to do this as they don’t care enough to do the work themselves and spend their time doing what they want to. These students are typically in lower level classes and are dishonest, deceitful, and untrustworthy. Addicts are those that cheat throughout their entire educational career and pass of the work of others as their own regardless of the consequences to others. They do not care that the people they cheat off of can also be held responsible for punishment. Recently at the University of Kent in Canterbury a student was expelled for copying and pasting sentences from internet resources into his papers throughout his three years of attendance there. The student admitted to cheating as he felt that doing so was alright because he wasn’t caught the first time and thought he could get away with it from then on.

The desperados are students who are so desperate to get good grades an...

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...assmate. The subconscious cheater is also the least harmful form of cheating as it is accidental and not done on purpose to boost grades and won’t create as great an illusion of ones’ intelligence as the other forms.

Almost every student has cheated at one point or another for some reason they use to justify it and they could be any one of these forms of cheaters. Although all these types of cheaters will attempt to rationalize their cheating with various excuses and reasons there is no real justification. They all know it is the wrong thing to do, but will cheat anyways as they can get away with it and it will create the illusion of greater intelligence for themselves and that is a problem for the youth of America. It will make students learn to cheat better instead of actually learning the material assigned to them, resulting in a less intelligent generation.