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The effects of academic cheating
Effects of cheating in exams
Effects of cheating in exams
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Cheating can be defined as academic dishonesty to achieve a better grade; it includes copying one’s homework, plagiarizing, or viewing another’s test. The discussion of whether cheating can be justified or is always wrong has been debated and become extremely relevant in recent years. There are arguments to both sides, but in the end, cheating cannot be justified nor is it ever okay. Nothing can counter the fact that cheating in school is morally wrong, can create a hostile learning environment, and more. Cheating is morally wrong in its definition. It incites lying and claiming another’s work as one’s own. A student who cheats off someone gets the same grade without the hard work. The seemingly harmless act lessens the importance …show more content…
A competitive aura is built, but an unhealthy one at that. Naturally, people want to be the best and being the best is more important than ever to society. It is a common practice among students to use sly methods to get the upper hand. Instead of learning all the information they need, students cheat and just cruise their way to a good grade .Others combat these practices with their own and the race to be the best in school becomes a full out war. Many students, mainly the ones who do their work, get to the point where they end up taking legal action; there have even been lawsuits over less than a tenth of a GPA point. One student sued, “...for two hundred thousand dollars in compensatory damages and more than two million dollars in punitive damages...Her weighted G.P.A. was 4.6894, which reportedly put her .055 points ahead of her closest competitor, Kenneth Mirkin,” (Talbot 5). The plaintiff in the case sued for millions of dollars, over a mere .055 GPA points that were ruled inadequate as she had an academic advantage (private tutoring due to an illness). Competition is a great thing and catalyzes progress, but unhealthy competition like this just sets us all back. Nobody wins in the
Students show bad academic integrity by cheating. but cheating has a wide range of examples. Most people think of cheating to be copying someone’s work, or using a study guide on a test, but it can mean much more than that. Students now have
Situations of cheating have seemed to become more and more commonplace when the student is bored by the subject material, poor teaching and or feels they have no use for the knowledge. Kohn even states in his article, “cheating is more common when students experience the academic tasks they’ve been given as boring, irrelevant, or overwhelming.” This infers that if a student were attending a school interested in learning about art, the student maybe more inclined to cheat in a business accounting class due to the fact the student would find the subject material irrelevant to them and their future. Students seem to be less inclined to cheat and it “is relatively rare in classrooms where the learning is genuinely engaging and meaningful to students and where a commitment to exploring significant ideas hasn’t been eclipsed by a single-minded emphasis on “rigor”” (Kohn). To simplify everything mentioned above; students are inclined to cheat in school when they are disinterested in the subject material and or are overwhelmed by in assignment or finally the result in a poor teacher. Everyone who has attended school can relate to this in some way or another, most people do not want to retain knowledge they have no interest in or use for in their
The Consequences of Grade Inflation When students arrive at university, professors expect them to understand the material to an exceptional standard. The problem is that grade inflation is occurring more regularly in secondary schools and universities across the country and when these students’ marks are sent to universities or colleges, the student may be given multiple scholarships for something that he/she should not have earned. Grade inflation is conceived between both students and teachers, meaning that the students are given higher grades when they have inadequate learning, reading, and verbal skills, while the teachers do not have to grade as many papers as they should in the real curriculum. There have been multiple examinations that have confirmed that grade inflation is very real and still occurs today. Students seem to think that they do not need to put forth much effort in school to do well, and grade inflation encourages this thought.
Cheating is a big issue that has reached the most competitive campuses around the United States. It is increasing more and more with the new technology that we have in the 21st century because students have easy access to many sources of information. Cheating is something all students have done at some point in their lives, but as they reach a higher academic level, they are faced with more rigorous consequences that can affect their futures in many different ways. Cheating might be seen as an easy way to obtain a good grade, get into a good college, or maintain scholarships or financial aid, but the consequences could affect the life and the future of the student.
Modern students face many pressures for academic success. They are often unwilling to disappoint their parents or spouses. Some fear that not cheating will weaken a student’s ability to compete with their peers. They rationalize their unethical behavior, unwilling to accept a poor grade, consequently justifying cheating as the only means to that end.
"Success is one of the reasons people cheat." (McCabe 285) With these words the NASPA Journal touches on another factor that is often mentioned by students. For example, years ago, good grades were desirable. Today, they are a necessity if students plan to apply to college. Cheating has gained greater acceptance as students try to cope with academic pressures. Students have been affected by these pressures, as is shown by a survey organized among 160,000 young Americans. Sixty percent of them said that they studied in order to pass tests and only 40 percent in order really to learn. Randy Herbertson, president of the student body at Colorado University, thus claims that "cutthroat competition" (Hollinger 297) pushes students into "desperate actions," (Hollinger 297) such as cheating.
Deceitfulness and cheating seems normal nowadays because so many people are involved in doing it. Everywhere one looks, some sort of precocious deed is being done. I believe that cheating is wrong and that it goes against what God desires. Along with this, our sense of a moral standard has gone way down. As seen across the globe, cheating in school, life, and everyday tasks has drastically become worse and worse, causing the world to be even more corrupt.
Academic knowledge is the basis on which future prosperity, and financial security has been determined. As a consequence, students feel inclined to perform above average in school. Now, as students perform less and less, they sink to obtain good grades by cheating. This method to acquire the desired grades will only harm the student, instead of the imagined result. Prompted by a child’s inability to perform basic tasks throughout his education , academic cheating spawns numerous negative consequences.
Cheating on academic work is a serious issue that most students admit to doing at some point in their academic career. Elite students are surprisingly the culprits of cheating, but hide it well. (Romm, para 5) Cheating is such a large issue that “70% of students from a sample of 1,800 from nine campuses said they had cheated at least once during their college careers.” (Schneider, para 9) Students cheat on academic work because of different, ongoing pressures in their lives. Understanding the student’s motives and pressures are essential to preventing cheating from occurring in the future. Students cheat for different reasons specific to them regarding their priorities, pressures and because of how easy it has become. Even though eliminating cheating will not happen, there are actions that educational professionals can and should take to prevent most of it from happening so often. Therefor cheating problems are minimized and have a positive impact on the student’s education and understanding of concepts.
From a young age we are taught the differences between right and wrong, but as we get older the line between moral and immoral is often blurred. Things that were once thought of as unacceptable are now perfectly fine in our minds. Have you ever seen anyone cheat on an assignment or exam? Do you know anyone that’s been expelled from school for cheating? What if it was discovered that a U.S. senator plagiarized his college thesis paper? Imagine if it got out that one of the most respected universities in the U.S. was involved in a huge fraud scandal that involved thousands of students. Academic cheating is a terrible offense because it is unethical, self-degrading, and can be detrimental to the learning environment.
According to Merriam Webster’s Dictionary cheating is defined as the act of breaking a rule or law, usually to gain an advantage at something or more specifically to violate rules dishonestly. Based on that definition one can conclude that cheating is wrong. Since the beginning of time man has been cheating, we were not meant to but we did. Remember back to Adam and Eve, the apple in the garden….yea…
Since cheating has such bad consequences for them, poisoning the laboratory atmosphere and causing people to mistrust other's work, students have a steak in establishing a zero-tolerance attitude toward it. In the next chapter, Comstock addresses plagiarism. The definition of plagiarism that was given was the deliberate or reckless representation of another's words, thoughts, or ideas as one's own without attribution about submission of academic work, whether graded or not. To avoid plagiarism, one must find his or her own voice in their writing, acknowledge the contributions of others and add one's own to
We might want to first follow that question with another question. What is cheating and why do so many people do it? Most people would agree that cheating is deceitful and one who obtains answers by cheating is not practicing good integrity. We could further add that cheating also prevents the student from having to put in long hours of studying and preparation. Recent technology has made this “time saving method” even more efficient.
The failure of our education system is demonstrated by the fact that students are sacrificing their integrity for a handful of points on an assessment. Despite the efforts of honor codes, scholars have become numb to their purpose; they break such a promise of honesty to themselves, their teachers, and their peers without second thought. America’s children have lost the value of trust, compromising invaluable relationships with excuses regarding societal pressure and their excessive workloads. We cannot let such actions continue; if educators continue to tolerate cheating, our world may transition into one socially, economically, and politically operated by dishonest individuals. Society’s obsession with creating good academic performers has led to the subsequent creation of deceitful children and the possibility of a fraudulent
Another important reason is the lack of high self-esteem. Students with high self-esteem feel too embarrassed to cheat in exams. Instead, they think they have to study hard so to get full marks thanks to their knowledge. On the other hand, students with low self-esteem cheat on the exams whenever possible. They just think about the good grades because of cheating, and do not feel something wrong for their behavior.