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Cevin Soling

Why I Think Students Should Cheat

You have been kidnapped and dragged off to a remote location where your abductors have tied you to a chair. One of your captors is seated in front of you. He holds up ten flash cards and informs you that he is going to ask you a series of questions and the answers are printed on the backs of the cards. He assures you that once he has finished asking these questions, you will be released. There is a catch, though. For every question you get wrong, he will signal his accomplice to cut off one of your fingers. As he begins to read the first question, you notice there is a mirror on the opposite wall where you can see the reflection of the text on the card. Because you have been taught that cheating is dishonest, you interrupt your kidnapper and let him know that you are able to read the card and that he must conceal them better so that you cannot inadvertently cheat. He adjusts himself accordingly and proceeds to ask you a series of dry and uninspired questions on topics that hold no interest for you, while his accomplice menacingly holds out a set of cutting pliers.

While cheating is technically wrong, everyone should cringe at this conception of morality because it fails to account for context. In this example, cheating is not only justified, it is necessary because it aids a helpless victim who has been involuntarily subjected to unreasonable conditions. Unfortunately, this kind of clarity is absent when it comes to compulsory education.

One of the most salient features of all public schools is the importance of grades. Because grades are the currency and sole commodity of schools, they are used both to motivate and punish. They are a major component of a student’s portfolio and have the potential to impact their future. Educators might try to stress the value of “learning” over grades, but that is a complete farce. When learning is not commensurately represented by grades, students rightly feel cheated by the system and become apathetic. To insist on valuing learning over grades is offensively disingenuous and hypocritical. It is akin to telling workers at McDonald’s that they should care more about doing their job than their salary.

Students have no input regarding how or what they learn, and they are alienated from the work they do at school. Except for a few rare assignments, students are not inspired by their work, and any personal attachment they could have is undermined by the fact that they must compromise their efforts to meet the demands and expectations of the person who grades their work.

It's important to bear in mind that students prepare for tests with the intention that they will retain the material just long enough to take the test and then forget most of what they learned soon afterwards. This completely undermines the purpose and value of testing. Advocates of testing who denigrate cheating conveniently fail to acknowledge this. Testing demands that students view knowledge as a disposable commodity that is only relevant when it is tested. This contributes to the process of devaluing education.

The benefits of cheating are obvious – improved grades in an environment where failure is not an opportunity for learning, but rather a badge of shame. When students do poorly on a test, there is no reason for students to review their responses because they will likely never be tested on the same thing ever again. The test itself is largely arbitrary and often not meaningful. Organizations such as FairTest are devoted to sharing research that exposes the problems of bad testing practices.

The main arguments against cheating in school are that it is unethical, promotes bad habits, and impacts self-esteem through the attainment of an unearned reward. None of these concerns are even remotely valid because none consider the environment. Children are routinely rounded up and forcibly placed in an institution where they are subjected to a hierarchy that places them at the bottom. Like the hostage, they are held captive even if they are not physically bound. They are deprived of any power over their own lives, including the ability to pursue their interests, and are subjected to a barrage of tests that have consequences for each wrong answer.

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Maintaining ethics is part of an unwritten contract of being a willing participant in a community. Students placed in school against their will and routinely disrespected have no obligation to adhere to the ethical codes of their oppressors. Cheating is an act of resistance, and resistance against oppressive powers should be encouraged and celebrated, rather than deemed a “bad habit” or an unethical act. The concern regarding self-esteem that is highlighted by The Child Study Center as promoting the “worst damage,” lacks any scientific support whatsoever.

If students feel bad for cheating, it is because the environment has created a set of conditions where cheating is necessary and justifiable. For this same reason, many students are proud that they cheat. Cheating often requires creativity in terms of execution as well as ingenuity to avoid being caught. It also serves as a statement of disdain against an arbitrary and repressive institution. For these reasons, cheating can be a source for pride that boosts self-esteem. Given this construct, cheating is not simply something many students do; it is something all students in compulsory schools should do. Cheating is a moral imperative.

Punishing students for cheating is completely misguided. People should be most concerned about the student who does not cheat. They are the ones who appear to have internalized their oppression and might lack the necessary skills to rally and lobby against abuses of power that are perpetrated by governing bodies. Cheating should be recognized as the necessary and logical outcome of an arbitrary and oppressive institution. Punishing students who cheat is yet another abuse of autocratic power. In a healthy society, people ridicule and shame those who force children to endure the kind of environment that demands they must cheat.

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Students cheat for good grades. Why not make the classroom about learning and not testing?

Professor, Educational Psychology, The Ohio State University

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Eric Anderman received funding from National Institutes of Health.

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We have been hearing stories about academic cheating: from students caught cheating on homework assignments as well as college entrance exams to teachers being caught in cheating scandals, such as the ones in Atlanta , Georgia, and Columbus , Ohio.

Today, between 75% and 98% of college students surveyed each year report having cheated in high school. So, if cheating is happening at that large a scale, is it just inevitable? And can we even blame our students?

In order to figure out how to answer these questions, it’s important to consider why students cheat in the first place. Although the obvious reason seems to be the desire of students to get ahead (eg, to get a good grade, or to avoid a punishment), the real reason is actually a bit more complicated.

Academic goals matter

When students do their schoolwork (which includes everything from daily homework assignments to major examinations), they usually have certain goals in mind. These goals vary from one academic task to another.

In other words, if you were to ask a student, “What is your goal in taking next week’s chemistry test?”, the student should be able to tell you what she wants to get out of the experience.

My colleagues and I have been studying the psychology behind academic cheating for the past two decades, and we have found that students’ goals in their academic tasks are related in very predictable ways to their likelihood of cheating. Research also indicates that teachers and parents can influence those goals, and thus potentially deter cheating.

If the sole reason for engaging in an academic task is to get a good grade, then it’s probably easy for a student to justify the act of cheating.

As my colleagues and I found , some students might have short-term reasons. For instance, for some students, it might be as simple a motivation as the desire to go to a friend’s party on Saturday night. If they think that their parents will not let them go if they fail the test, they might take the easier option to cheat, to be able to go to the party.

For some others, it might be a longer-term reason: They might want a good salary and other luxuries in their adult life and believe that the only path to those things would be a good college. And they might be willing to cheat on their tests to be able to get ahead in their future.

Students have different goals

Whereas these reasons may seem selfish and shortsighted to some adults, to many adolescents, who are still unable to consider the consequences of their actions, these goals may seem perfectly reasonable.

We refer to these goals as “extrinsic” goals. Research indicates that students who experience classrooms in which extrinsic goals are common are more likely to cheat.

Clearly, not all students have these goals. Some students are motivated by their desire to learn.

So, for some students, the goal might be to truly understand and master the material that is being studied. In other words, whereas some students might have a goal of getting a good grade on a chemistry test in order to get something (eg, to go to a party), others might have the goal of truly learning chemistry: “I want to understand chemistry because I want to develop drugs to help fight cancer; I know that understanding chemistry is essential for me to be successful in this career.”

We refer to these goals as “mastery” goals. Research indicates that students who experience classrooms in which mastery goals are valued and encouraged are less likely to cheat .

If one thinks about this, it starts to make sense. When students are learning in classrooms where the teacher truly values mastery of the academic content (as opposed to getting a good grade on an assessment), then “cheating” really doesn’t offer any benefits to the students.

Teachers can help

The ways in which assessments of student learning are administered are particularly relevant in discussions of academic cheating. If results of assessments ultimately come down to a grade on a test or an assignment (eg, an “A” or an “F”), then students often will come to value the grade more than what they are actually learning.

However, if, in contrast, the assessment truly focuses on a demonstration of mastery of content, then students will focus on mastering that content and not just on getting an “A.”

When students have to demonstrate mastery of material, cheating doesn’t serve much of a purpose – if you truly have to show the teacher that you understand and can apply the information that you learned, then cheating won’t buy you any shortcuts.

Fortunately, there are strategies that educators can use to facilitate students’ adoption of mastery goals instead of extrinsic goals.

Here are a few suggestions, based on our research :

Make sure that assignments and exams require students to demonstrate mastery of content, as opposed to just requiring the regurgitation of memorized facts.

When students do not demonstrate mastery on an assignment or a test, allow them to redo the assignment. Educators sometimes don’t think that this recommendation is fair – after all, if one student gets all of the answers right the first time, why should someone else get a second chance? But, if the goal is really to learn or “master” the content, then does it really matter if the student gets a second chance?

Avoid high-stakes, one-time assessments.

Always provide students’ grades privately – don’t share results publicly or display distributions of scores; students often will cheat in order to avoid looking “dumb.”

Ultimately, some students will inevitably cheat. But, by considering why students are doing various academic tasks in the first place and helping them set their “mastery” goals, educators can make a significant dent in the epidemic of academic cheating.

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Why Students Cheat—and What to Do About It

A teacher seeks answers from researchers and psychologists. 

“Why did you cheat in high school?” I posed the question to a dozen former students.

“I wanted good grades and I didn’t want to work,” said Sonya, who graduates from college in June. [The students’ names in this article have been changed to protect their privacy.]

My current students were less candid than Sonya. To excuse her plagiarized Cannery Row essay, Erin, a ninth-grader with straight As, complained vaguely and unconvincingly of overwhelming stress. When he was caught copying a review of the documentary Hypernormalism , Jeremy, a senior, stood by his “hard work” and said my accusation hurt his feelings.

Cases like the much-publicized ( and enduring ) 2012 cheating scandal at high-achieving Stuyvesant High School in New York City confirm that academic dishonesty is rampant and touches even the most prestigious of schools. The data confirms this as well. A 2012 Josephson Institute’s Center for Youth Ethics report revealed that more than half of high school students admitted to cheating on a test, while 74 percent reported copying their friends’ homework. And a survey of 70,000 high school students across the United States between 2002 and 2015 found that 58 percent had plagiarized papers, while 95 percent admitted to cheating in some capacity.

So why do students cheat—and how do we stop them?

According to researchers and psychologists, the real reasons vary just as much as my students’ explanations. But educators can still learn to identify motivations for student cheating and think critically about solutions to keep even the most audacious cheaters in their classrooms from doing it again.

Rationalizing It


First, know that students realize cheating is wrong—they simply see themselves as moral in spite of it.

“They cheat just enough to maintain a self-concept as honest people. They make their behavior an exception to a general rule,” said Dr. David Rettinger , professor at the University of Mary Washington and executive director of the Center for Honor, Leadership, and Service, a campus organization dedicated to integrity.

According to Rettinger and other researchers, students who cheat can still see themselves as principled people by rationalizing cheating for reasons they see as legitimate.

Some do it when they don’t see the value of work they’re assigned, such as drill-and-kill homework assignments, or when they perceive an overemphasis on teaching content linked to high-stakes tests.

“There was no critical thinking, and teachers seemed pressured to squish it into their curriculum,” said Javier, a former student and recent liberal arts college graduate. “They questioned you on material that was never covered in class, and if you failed the test, it was progressively harder to pass the next time around.”

But students also rationalize cheating on assignments they see as having value.

High-achieving students who feel pressured to attain perfection (and Ivy League acceptances) may turn to cheating as a way to find an edge on the competition or to keep a single bad test score from sabotaging months of hard work. At Stuyvesant, for example, students and teachers identified the cutthroat environment as a factor in the rampant dishonesty that plagued the school.

And research has found that students who receive praise for being smart—as opposed to praise for effort and progress—are more inclined to exaggerate their performance and to cheat on assignments , likely because they are carrying the burden of lofty expectations.

A Developmental Stage

When it comes to risk management, adolescent students are bullish. Research has found that teenagers are biologically predisposed to be more tolerant of unknown outcomes and less bothered by stated risks than their older peers.

“In high school, they’re risk takers developmentally, and can’t see the consequences of immediate actions,” Rettinger says. “Even delayed consequences are remote to them.”

While cheating may not be a thrill ride, students already inclined to rebel against curfews and dabble in illicit substances have a certain comfort level with being reckless. They’re willing to gamble when they think they can keep up the ruse—and more inclined to believe they can get away with it.

Cheating also appears to be almost contagious among young people—and may even serve as a kind of social adhesive, at least in environments where it is widely accepted.  A study of military academy students from 1959 to 2002 revealed that students in communities where cheating is tolerated easily cave in to peer pressure, finding it harder not to cheat out of fear of losing social status if they don’t.

Michael, a former student, explained that while he didn’t need to help classmates cheat, he felt “unable to say no.” Once he started, he couldn’t stop.

Technology Facilitates and Normalizes It

With smartphones and Alexa at their fingertips, today’s students have easy access to quick answers and content they can reproduce for exams and papers.  Studies show that technology has made cheating in school easier, more convenient, and harder to catch than ever before.

To Liz Ruff, an English teacher at Garfield High School in Los Angeles, students’ use of social media can erode their understanding of authenticity and intellectual property. Because students are used to reposting images, repurposing memes, and watching parody videos, they “see ownership as nebulous,” she said.

As a result, while they may want to avoid penalties for plagiarism, they may not see it as wrong or even know that they’re doing it.

This confirms what Donald McCabe, a Rutgers University Business School professor,  reported in his 2012 book ; he found that more than 60 percent of surveyed students who had cheated considered digital plagiarism to be “trivial”—effectively, students believed it was not actually cheating at all.

Strategies for Reducing Cheating

Even moral students need help acting morally, said  Dr. Jason M. Stephens , who researches academic motivation and moral development in adolescents at the University of Auckland’s School of Learning, Development, and Professional Practice. According to Stephens, teachers are uniquely positioned to infuse students with a sense of responsibility and help them overcome the rationalizations that enable them to think cheating is OK.

1. Turn down the pressure cooker. Students are less likely to cheat on work in which they feel invested. A multiple-choice assessment tempts would-be cheaters, while a unique, multiphase writing project measuring competencies can make cheating much harder and less enticing. Repetitive homework assignments are also a culprit, according to research , so teachers should look at creating take-home assignments that encourage students to think critically and expand on class discussions. Teachers could also give students one free pass on a homework assignment each quarter, for example, or let them drop their lowest score on an assignment.

2. Be thoughtful about your language.   Research indicates that using the language of fixed mindsets , like praising children for being smart as opposed to praising them for effort and progress , is both demotivating and increases cheating. When delivering feedback, researchers suggest using phrases focused on effort like, “You made really great progress on this paper” or “This is excellent work, but there are still a few areas where you can grow.”

3. Create student honor councils. Give students the opportunity to enforce honor codes or write their own classroom/school bylaws through honor councils so they can develop a full understanding of how cheating affects themselves and others. At Fredericksburg Academy, high school students elect two Honor Council members per grade. These students teach the Honor Code to fifth graders, who, in turn, explain it to younger elementary school students to help establish a student-driven culture of integrity. Students also write a pledge of authenticity on every assignment. And if there is an honor code transgression, the council gathers to discuss possible consequences. 

4. Use metacognition. Research shows that metacognition, a process sometimes described as “ thinking about thinking ,” can help students process their motivations, goals, and actions. With my ninth graders, I use a centuries-old resource to discuss moral quandaries: the play Macbeth . Before they meet the infamous Thane of Glamis, they role-play as medical school applicants, soccer players, and politicians, deciding if they’d cheat, injure, or lie to achieve goals. I push students to consider the steps they take to get the outcomes they desire. Why do we tend to act in the ways we do? What will we do to get what we want? And how will doing those things change who we are? Every tragedy is about us, I say, not just, as in Macbeth’s case, about a man who succumbs to “vaulting ambition.”

5. Bring honesty right into the curriculum. Teachers can weave a discussion of ethical behavior into curriculum. Ruff and many other teachers have been inspired to teach media literacy to help students understand digital plagiarism and navigate the widespread availability of secondary sources online, using guidance from organizations like Common Sense Media .

There are complicated psychological dynamics at play when students cheat, according to experts and researchers. While enforcing rules and consequences is important, knowing what’s really motivating students to cheat can help you foster integrity in the classroom instead of just penalizing the cheating.

The Real Roots of Student Cheating

Let's address the mixed messages we are sending to young people..

Updated September 28, 2023 | Reviewed by Ray Parker

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• Cheating is rampant, yet young people consistently affirm honesty and the belief that cheating is wrong.
• This discrepancy arises, in part, from the tension students perceive between honesty and the terms of success.
• In an integrated environment, achievement and the real world are not seen as at odds with honesty.

The release of ChatGPT has high school and college teachers wringing their hands. A Columbia University undergraduate rubbed it in our face last May with an opinion piece in the Chronicle of Higher Education titled I’m a Student. You Have No Idea How Much We’re Using ChatGPT.

He goes on to detail how students use the program to “do the lion’s share of the thinking,” while passing off the work as their own. Catching the deception , he insists, is impossible.

As if students needed more ways to cheat. Every survey of students, whether high school or college, has found that cheating is “rampant,” “epidemic,” “commonplace, and practically expected,” to use a few of the terms with which researchers have described the scope of academic dishonesty.

In a 2010 study by the Josephson Institute, for example, 59 percent of the 43,000 high school students admitted to cheating on a test in the past year. According to a 2012 white paper, Cheat or Be Cheated? prepared by Challenge Success, 80 percent admitted to copying another student’s homework. The other studies summarized in the paper found self-reports of past-year cheating by high school students in the 70 percent to 80 percent range and higher.

At colleges, the situation is only marginally better. Studies consistently put the level of self-reported cheating among undergraduates between 50 percent and 70 percent depending in part on what behaviors are included. 1

The sad fact is that cheating is widespread.

Commitment to Honesty

Yet, when asked, most young people affirm the moral value of honesty and the belief that cheating is wrong. For example, in a survey of more than 3,000 teens conducted by my colleagues at the University of Virginia, the great majority (83 percent) indicated that to become “honest—someone who doesn’t lie or cheat,” was very important, if not essential to them.

On a long list of traits and qualities, they ranked honesty just below “hard-working” and “reliable and dependent,” and far ahead of traits like being “ambitious,” “a leader ,” and “popular.” When asked directly about cheating, only 6 percent thought it was rarely or never wrong.

Other studies find similar commitments, as do experimental studies by psychologists. In experiments, researchers manipulate the salience of moral beliefs concerning cheating by, for example, inserting moral reminders into the test situation to gauge their effect. Although students often regard some forms of cheating, such as doing homework together when they are expected to do it alone, as trivial, the studies find that young people view cheating in general, along with specific forms of dishonesty, such as copying off another person’s test, as wrong.

They find that young people strongly care to think of themselves as honest and temper their cheating behavior accordingly. 2

The Discrepancy Between Belief and Behavior

Bottom line: Kids whose ideal is to be honest and who know cheating is wrong also routinely cheat in school.

What accounts for this discrepancy? In the psychological and educational literature, researchers typically focus on personal and situational factors that work to override students’ commitment to do the right thing.

These factors include the force of different motives to cheat, such as the desire to avoid failure, and the self-serving rationalizations that students use to excuse their behavior, like minimizing responsibility—“everyone is doing it”—or dismissing their actions because “no one is hurt.”

While these explanations have obvious merit—we all know the gap between our ideals and our actions—I want to suggest another possibility: Perhaps the inconsistency also reflects the mixed messages to which young people (all of us, in fact) are constantly subjected.

Mixed Messages

Consider the story that young people hear about success. What student hasn’t been told doing well includes such things as getting good grades, going to a good college, living up to their potential, aiming high, and letting go of “limiting beliefs” that stand in their way? Schools, not to mention parents, media, and employers, all, in various ways, communicate these expectations and portray them as integral to the good in life.

They tell young people that these are the standards they should meet, the yardsticks by which they should measure themselves.

In my interviews and discussions with young people, it is clear they have absorbed these powerful messages and feel held to answer, to themselves and others, for how they are measuring up. Falling short, as they understand and feel it, is highly distressful.

At the same time, they are regularly exposed to the idea that success involves a trade-off with honesty and that cheating behavior, though regrettable, is “real life.” These words are from a student on a survey administered at an elite high school. “People,” he continued, “who are rich and successful lie and cheat every day.”

In this thinking, he is far from alone. In a 2012 Josephson Institute survey of 23,000 high school students, 57 percent agreed that “in the real world, successful people do what they have to do to win, even if others consider it cheating.” 3

Putting these together, another high school student told a researcher: “Grades are everything. You have to realize it’s the only possible way to get into a good college and you resort to any means necessary.”

In a 2021 survey of college students by College Pulse, the single biggest reason given for cheating, endorsed by 72 percent of the respondents, was “pressure to do well.”

What we see here are two goods—educational success and honesty—pitted against each other. When the two collide, the call to be successful is likely to be the far more immediate and tangible imperative.

A young person’s very future appears to hang in the balance. And, when asked in surveys , youths often perceive both their parents’ and teachers’ priorities to be more focused on getting “good grades in my classes,” than on character qualities, such as being a “caring community member.”

In noting the mixed messages, my point is not to offer another excuse for bad behavior. But some of the messages just don’t mix, placing young people in a difficult bind. Answering the expectations placed on them can be at odds with being an honest person. In the trade-off, cheating takes on a certain logic.

The proposed remedies to academic dishonesty typically focus on parents and schools. One commonly recommended strategy is to do more to promote student integrity. That seems obvious. Yet, as we saw, students already believe in honesty and the wrongness of (most) cheating. It’s not clear how more teaching on that point would make much of a difference.

Integrity, though, has another meaning, in addition to the personal qualities of being honest and of strong moral principles. Integrity is also the “quality or state of being whole or undivided.” In this second sense, we can speak of social life itself as having integrity.

It is “whole or undivided” when the different contexts of everyday life are integrated in such a way that norms, values, and expectations are fairly consistent and tend to reinforce each other—and when messages about what it means to be a good, accomplished person are not mixed but harmonious.

While social integrity rooted in ethical principles does not guarantee personal integrity, it is not hard to see how that foundation would make a major difference. Rather than confronting students with trade-offs that incentivize “any means necessary,” they would receive positive, consistent reinforcement to speak and act truthfully.

Talk of personal integrity is all for the good. But as pervasive cheating suggests, more is needed. We must also work to shape an integrated environment in which achievement and the “real world” are not set in opposition to honesty.

1. Liora Pedhazur Schmelkin, et al. “A Multidimensional Scaling of College Students’ Perceptions of Academic Dishonesty.” The Journal of Higher Education 79 (2008): 587–607.

2. See, for example, the studies in Christian B. Miller, Character and Moral Psychology. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014, Ch. 3.

3. Josephson Institute. The 2012 Report Card on the Ethics of American Youth (Installment 1: Honesty and Integrity). Josephson Institute of Ethics, 2012.

Joseph E. Davis is Research Professor of Sociology and Director of the Picturing the Human Colloquy of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia.

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Why Do Students Cheat?

• Posted July 19, 2016
• By Zachary Goldman

In March, Usable Knowledge published an article on ethical collaboration , which explored researchers’ ideas about how to develop classrooms and schools where collaboration is nurtured but cheating is avoided. The piece offers several explanations for why students cheat and provides powerful ideas about how to create ethical communities. The article left me wondering how students themselves might respond to these ideas, and whether their experiences with cheating reflected the researchers’ understanding. In other words, how are young people “reading the world,” to quote Paulo Freire , when it comes to questions of cheating, and what might we learn from their perspectives?

I worked with Gretchen Brion-Meisels to investigate these questions by talking to two classrooms of students from Massachusetts and Texas about their experiences with cheating. We asked these youth informants to connect their own insights and ideas about cheating with the ideas described in " Ethical Collaboration ." They wrote from a range of perspectives, grappling with what constitutes cheating, why people cheat, how people cheat, and when cheating might be ethically acceptable. In doing so, they provide us with additional insights into why students cheat and how schools might better foster ethical collaboration.

Why Students Cheat

Students critiqued both the individual decision-making of peers and the school-based structures that encourage cheating. For example, Julio (Massachusetts) wrote, “Teachers care about cheating because its not fair [that] students get good grades [but] didn't follow the teacher's rules.” His perspective represents one set of ideas that we heard, which suggests that cheating is an unethical decision caused by personal misjudgment. Umna (Massachusetts) echoed this idea, noting that “cheating is … not using the evidence in your head and only using the evidence that’s from someone else’s head.”

Other students focused on external factors that might make their peers feel pressured to cheat. For example, Michima (Massachusetts) wrote, “Peer pressure makes students cheat. Sometimes they have a reason to cheat like feeling [like] they need to be the smartest kid in class.” Kayla (Massachusetts) agreed, noting, “Some people cheat because they want to seem cooler than their friends or try to impress their friends. Students cheat because they think if they cheat all the time they’re going to get smarter.” In addition to pressure from peers, students spoke about pressure from adults, pressure related to standardized testing, and the demands of competing responsibilities.

When Cheating is Acceptable

Students noted a few types of extenuating circumstances, including high stakes moments. For example, Alejandra (Texas) wrote, “The times I had cheated [were] when I was failing a class, and if I failed the final I would repeat the class. And I hated that class and I didn’t want to retake it again.” Here, she identifies allegiance to a parallel ethical value: Graduating from high school. In this case, while cheating might be wrong, it is an acceptable means to a higher-level goal.

Encouraging an Ethical School Community

Several of the older students with whom we spoke were able to offer us ideas about how schools might create more ethical communities. Sam (Texas) wrote, “A school where cheating isn't necessary would be centered around individualization and learning. Students would learn information and be tested on the information. From there the teachers would assess students' progress with this information, new material would be created to help individual students with what they don't understand. This way of teaching wouldn't be based on time crunching every lesson, but more about helping a student understand a concept.”

Sam provides a vision for the type of school climate in which collaboration, not cheating, would be most encouraged. Kaith (Texas), added to this vision, writing, “In my own opinion students wouldn’t find the need to cheat if they knew that they had the right undivided attention towards them from their teachers and actually showed them that they care about their learning. So a school where cheating wasn’t necessary would be amazing for both teachers and students because teachers would be actually getting new things into our brains and us as students would be not only attentive of our teachers but also in fact learning.”

Both of these visions echo a big idea from “ Ethical Collaboration ”: The importance of reducing the pressure to achieve. Across students’ comments, we heard about how self-imposed pressure, peer pressure, and pressure from adults can encourage cheating.

Where Student Opinions Diverge from Research

The ways in which students spoke about support differed from the descriptions in “ Ethical Collaboration .” The researchers explain that, to reduce cheating, students need “vertical support,” or standards, guidelines, and models of ethical behavior. This implies that students need support understanding what is ethical. However, our youth informants describe a type of vertical support that centers on listening and responding to students’ needs. They want teachers to enable ethical behavior through holistic support of individual learning styles and goals. Similarly, researchers describe “horizontal support” as creating “a school environment where students know, and can persuade their peers, that no one benefits from cheating,” again implying that students need help understanding the ethics of cheating. Our youth informants led us to believe instead that the type of horizontal support needed may be one where collective success is seen as more important than individual competition.

Why Youth Voices Matter, and How to Help Them Be Heard

Our purpose in reaching out to youth respondents was to better understand whether the research perspectives on cheating offered in “ Ethical Collaboration ” mirrored the lived experiences of young people. This blog post is only a small step in that direction; young peoples’ perspectives vary widely across geographic, demographic, developmental, and contextual dimensions, and we do not mean to imply that these youth informants speak for all youth. However, our brief conversations suggest that asking youth about their lived experiences can benefit the way that educators understand school structures.

Too often, though, students are cut out of conversations about school policies and culture. They rarely even have access to information on current educational research, partially because they are not the intended audience of such work. To expand opportunities for student voice, we need to create spaces — either online or in schools — where students can research a current topic that interests them. Then they can collect information, craft arguments they want to make, and deliver their messages. Educators can create the spaces for this youth-driven work in schools, communities, and even policy settings — helping to support young people as both knowledge creators and knowledge consumers. 

Additional Resources

• Read “ Student Voice in Educational Research and Reform ” [PDF] by Alison Cook-Sather.
• Read “ The Significance of Students ” [PDF] by Dana L. Mitra.
• Read “ Beyond School Spirit ” by Emily J. Ozer and Dana Wright.

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Why Students Cheat on Homework and How to Prevent It

One of the most frustrating aspects of teaching in today’s world is the cheating epidemic. There’s nothing more irritating than getting halfway through grading a large stack of papers only to realize some students cheated on the assignment. There’s really not much point in teachers grading work that has a high likelihood of having been copied or otherwise unethically completed. So. What is a teacher to do? We need to be able to assess students. Why do students cheat on homework, and how can we address it?

Like most new teachers, I learned the hard way over the course of many years of teaching that it is possible to reduce cheating on homework, if not completely prevent it. Here are six suggestions to keep your students honest and to keep yourself sane.

ASSIGN LESS HOMEWORK

One of the reasons students cheat on homework is because they are overwhelmed. I remember vividly what it felt like to be a high school student in honors classes with multiple extracurricular activities on my plate. Other teens have after school jobs to help support their families, and some don’t have a home environment that is conducive to studying.

While cheating is  never excusable under any circumstances, it does help to walk a mile in our students’ shoes. If they are consistently making the decision to cheat, it might be time to reduce the amount of homework we are assigning.

I used to give homework every night – especially to my advanced students. I wanted to push them. Instead, I stressed them out. They wanted so badly to be in the Top 10 at graduation that they would do whatever they needed to do in order to complete their assignments on time – even if that meant cheating.

When assigning homework, consider the at-home support, maturity, and outside-of-school commitments involved. Think about the kind of school and home balance you would want for your own children. Go with that.

PROVIDE CLASS TIME

Allowing students time in class to get started on their assignments seems to curb cheating to some extent. When students have class time, they are able to knock out part of the assignment, which leaves less to fret over later. Additionally, it gives them an opportunity to ask questions.

When students are confused while completing assignments at home, they often seek “help” from a friend instead of going in early the next morning to request guidance from the teacher. Often, completing a portion of a homework assignment in class gives students the confidence that they can do it successfully on their own. Plus, it provides the social aspect of learning that many students crave. Instead of fighting cheating outside of class , we can allow students to work in pairs or small groups  in class to learn from each other.

Plus, to prevent students from wanting to cheat on homework, we can extend the time we allow them to complete it. Maybe students would work better if they have multiple nights to choose among options on a choice board. Home schedules can be busy, so building in some flexibility to the timeline can help reduce pressure to finish work in a hurry.

GIVE MEANINGFUL WORK

If you find students cheat on homework, they probably lack the vision for how the work is beneficial. It’s important to consider the meaningfulness and valuable of the assignment from students’ perspectives. They need to see how it is relevant to them.

In my class, I’ve learned to assign work that cannot be copied. I’ve never had luck assigning worksheets as homework because even though worksheets have value, it’s generally not obvious to teenagers. It’s nearly impossible to catch cheating on worksheets that have “right or wrong” answers. That’s not to say I don’t use worksheets. I do! But. I use them as in-class station, competition, and practice activities, not homework.

So what are examples of more effective and meaningful types of homework to assign?

• Ask students to complete a reading assignment and respond in writing .
• Have students watch a video clip and answer an oral entrance question.
• Require that students contribute to an online discussion post.
• Assign them a reflection on the day’s lesson in the form of a short project, like a one-pager or a mind map.

As you can see, these options require unique, valuable responses, thereby reducing the opportunity for students to cheat on them. The more open-ended an assignment is, the more invested students need to be to complete it well.

DIFFERENTIATE

Part of giving meaningful work involves accounting for readiness levels. Whenever we can tier assignments or build in choice, the better. A huge cause of cheating is when work is either too easy (and students are bored) or too hard (and they are frustrated). Getting to know our students as learners can help us to provide meaningful differentiation options. Plus, we can ask them!

This is what you need to be able to demonstrate the ability to do. How would you like to show me you can do it?

REDUCE THE POINT VALUE

If you’re sincerely concerned about students cheating on assignments, consider reducing the point value. Reflect on your grading system.

Are homework grades carrying so much weight that students feel the need to cheat in order to maintain an A? In a standards-based system, will the assignment be a key determining factor in whether or not students are proficient with a skill?

Each teacher has to do what works for him or her. In my classroom, homework is worth the least amount out of any category. If I assign something for which I plan on giving completion credit, the point value is even less than it typically would be. Projects, essays, and formal assessments count for much more.

CREATE AN ETHICAL CULTURE

To some extent, this part is out of educators’ hands. Much of the ethical and moral training a student receives comes from home. Still, we can do our best to create a classroom culture in which we continually talk about integrity, responsibility, honor, and the benefits of working hard. What are some specific ways can we do this?

Building Community and Honestly

• Talk to students about what it means to cheat on homework. Explain to them that there are different kinds. Many students are unaware, for instance, that the “divide and conquer (you do the first half, I’ll do the second half, and then we will trade answers)” is cheating.
• As a class, develop expectations and consequences for students who decide to take short cuts.
• Decorate your room with motivational quotes that relate to honesty and doing the right thing.
• Discuss how making a poor decision doesn’t make you a bad person. It is an opportunity to grow.
• Share with students that you care about them and their futures. The assignments you give them are intended to prepare them for success.
• Offer them many different ways to seek help from you if and when they are confused.
• Provide revision opportunities for homework assignments.
• Explain that you partner with their parents and that guardians will be notified if cheating occurs.
• Explore hypothetical situations.  What if you have a late night? Let’s pretend you don’t get home until after orchestra and Lego practices. You have three hours of homework to do. You know you can call your friend, Bob, who always has his homework done. How do you handle this situation?

EDUCATE ABOUT PLAGIARISM

Many students don’t realize that plagiarism applies to more than just essays. At the beginning of the school year, teachers have an energized group of students, fresh off of summer break. I’ve always found it’s easiest to motivate my students at this time. I capitalize on this opportunity by beginning with a plagiarism mini unit .

While much of the information we discuss is about writing, I always make sure my students know that homework can be plagiarized. Speeches can be plagiarized. Videos can be plagiarized. Anything can be plagiarized, and the repercussions for stealing someone else’s ideas (even in the form of a simple worksheet) are never worth the time saved by doing so.

In an ideal world, no one would cheat. However, teaching and learning in the 21st century is much different than it was fifty years ago. Cheating? It’s increased. Maybe because of the digital age… the differences in morals and values of our culture…  people are busier. Maybe because students don’t see how the school work they are completing relates to their lives.

No matter what the root cause, teachers need to be proactive. We need to know why students feel compelled to cheat on homework and what we can do to help them make learning for beneficial. Personally, I don’t advocate for completely eliminating homework with older students. To me, it has the potential to teach students many lessons both related to school and life. Still, the “right” answer to this issue will be different for each teacher, depending on her community, students, and culture.

STRATEGIES FOR ADDRESSING CHALLENGING BEHAVIORS IN SECONDARY

You are so right about communicating the purpose of the assignment and giving students time in class to do homework. I also use an article of the week on plagiarism. I give students points for the learning – not the doing. It makes all the difference. I tell my students why they need to learn how to do “—” for high school or college or even in life experiences. Since, they get an A or F for the effort, my students are more motivated to give it a try. No effort and they sit in my class to work with me on the assignment. Showing me the effort to learn it — asking me questions about the assignment, getting help from a peer or me, helping a peer are all ways to get full credit for the homework- even if it’s not complete. I also choose one thing from each assignment for the test which is a motivator for learning the material – not just “doing it.” Also, no one is permitted to earn a D or F on a test. Any student earning an F or D on a test is then required to do a project over the weekend or at lunch or after school with me. All of this reinforces the idea – learning is what is the goal. Giving students options to show their learning is also important. Cheating is greatly reduced when the goal is to learn and not simply earn the grade.

Thanks for sharing your unique approaches, Sandra! Learning is definitely the goal, and getting students to own their learning is key.

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School effectiveness and student cheating: Do students’ grades and moral standards matter for this relationship?

• Open access
• Published: 08 April 2019
• Volume 22 , pages 517–538, ( 2019 )

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• Joacim Ramberg   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-6913-5988 1   na1 &
• Bitte Modin   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-6606-2157 1   na1  

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Cheating is a more or less prominent feature of all educational contexts, but few studies have examined its association with aspects of school effectiveness theory. With recently collected data from upper-secondary school students and their teachers, this study aims to examine whether three aspects of school effectiveness—school leadership, teacher cooperation and consensus, and school ethos—are predictive of student’s self-reported cheating, while also taking student- and school-level sociodemographic characteristics as well as student grades and moral standards into consideration. The study is based on combined data from two surveys: one targeting students and the other targeting teachers. The data cover upper secondary schools in Stockholm and includes information from 4529 students and 1045 teachers in 46 schools. Due to the hierarchical data, multilevel modelling was applied, using two-level binary logistic regression analyses. Results show significant negative associations between all three aspects of school effectiveness and student cheating, indicating that these conditions are important to consider in the pursuit of a more ethical, legitimate and equitable education system. Our findings also indicate that the relationship between school effectiveness and student cheating is partly mediated by student grades and moral standards.

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1 Introduction

Upper secondary school has been put forward as a critical period in life for people’s moral and ethical development (McCabe and Trevino 1993 ). Although cheating in school is an essentially individual act, strongly linked to the individual’s morality and ethical compass, the inclination to cheat also depends on contextual circumstances (Day et al. 2011 ; Wowra 2007 ). Thus, previous studies have shown that both individual and contextual factors play a role in student’s tendency to cheat (McCabe et al. 2012 ).

The problem of a school’s cheating prevalence can roughly be divided into two dimensions, both of which contain elements of equity and fairness. The first dimension relates to the school’s obligation to provide as fair an assessment of each student’s performance as possible (Lundahl 2010 ). This is important in its own right, but also serves as a foundation of the school’s credibility when it comes to fostering the moral and ethical development of their students. The second dimension concerns the societal goals of equitable allocation of life opportunities, meaning that someone who cheat may take someone else’s place in the competition for higher education and future employment. This kind of injustice becomes particularly critical during upper secondary school when students compete for places in higher education with their final grades.

Research conducted within the field of school effectiveness has pointed to the importance of school contextual features for introducing adolescents into adulthood and counteracting unwanted behaviours (Granvik-Saminathen et al. 2018 ; Ramberg et al. 2018a ; Rutter and Maughan 2002 ; Teddlie and Reynolds 2000 ), but few studies have been carried out on the importance of school effectiveness for student cheating (McCabe et al. 2012 ). The existing literature is also limited regarding studies that have had the opportunity to take individual students’ moral values into consideration when examining potential external causes of student cheating (Yu et al. 2017 ).

With data that combine student and teacher information from two separate data collections performed in 2016, comprising teachers and students in 46 upper secondary schools in Stockholm, we intend to contribute to this field of research by examining whether high teacher-ratings of three features of school effectiveness (school leadership, teacher cooperation, and school ethos) is predictive of low self-reported student cheating, while controlling for a number of social and demographic background characteristics. We will also investigate the potential mediating role of students’ grades and moral standards for the studied associations.

1.1 Student cheating

There is no commonly accepted, standard definition of academic dishonesty (Schmelkin et al. 2008 ), but it usually refers to behaviours such as cheating on exams or homework tests, copying other student’s homework and assignments, unauthorized cooperation with peers, and plagiarism (Arnett et al. 2002 ), with that in common that they are related to the individual’s moral identity (Wowra, 2007 ). Among these different immoral behaviours, it has been shown that both students and teachers consider cheating on exams as the most serious breach of the rules (Bernardi et al. 2008 ). As with the concept of academic dishonesty, there is no commonly held definition of student cheating (McCabe et al. 2012 ), but several types of acts are generally included as markers of student cheating, all of which have in common that they are wrongful acts intended to improve the student’s own or others’ “apparent” performance. A definition in line with this can be found in the Swedish Higher Education Ordinance ( 2002 /2010) which states that cheating refers to the use of “prohibited aids or other methods to attempt to deceive during examinations or other forms of assessment of study performance” (chapter 10, para1). Common ways of cheating on homework tests or examinations are to swap papers/answers with peers, bring crib notes, use unauthorized equipment, look at another student’s test, let someone else look at their own, obtaining a copy of the test prior to taking it in class, taking a test for another student, or by failing to report grading errors of an exam (Bernardi et al. 2008 ; Smith et al. 2002 , 2004 ).

Numerous surveys have been conducted over the years to compile the extent of cheating at both the upper secondary and university levels, predominantly in the US. In reviews of these surveys it appears that as much as up to two thirds of college students, and even higher proportions in high school, reported some kind of cheating behaviour during their last academic year (Davis et al. 2011 ; McCabe et al. 2012 ). This picture is strengthened by findings from another study covering about 23,000 high school students (grades 9–12) in the US, where about 50 percent stated that they had cheated at least once during a test in school in the year prior to the survey (Josephson Institute 2012 ). Although research shows that cheating is not restricted to a certain country or geographical area, the number of studies in geographical contexts other than the US is much more limited (Davis et al. 2011 ; Shariffuddin and Holmes 2009 ). One of the few studies that compared the extent of cheating on exams between nations, based on 7,200 university students from 21 countries, found that the rates and beliefs about cheating differ by country, and that countries known to be the least corrupt had the lowest proportions of student cheating. Consequently, Scandinavian countries displayed a lower level of cheating than most other nations (Teixeira and Rocha 2010 ). However, to the best of our knowledge, there is no sizeable study that has examined the prevalence of academic cheating in Sweden.

1.2 Characteristics related to student cheating

1.2.1 individual characteristics.

One of the most common characteristics examined in relation to student cheating is gender. Several studies report that males are more prone to cheat and that they have more permissive attitudes towards cheating than females (e.g., Arnett et al. 2002 ; Hensley et al. 2013 ; Jereb et al. 2018 ). Other studies show that even though there seems to be a small direct effect of gender on student cheating, it is mainly a set of social mechanisms related to gender (e.g. shame, embarrassment, self-control) that account for the existing differences between males’ and females’ cheating behaviour (Gibson et al. 2008 ; McCabe et al. 2012 ; Niiya et al. 2008 ).

Another variable that has been extensively investigated in relation to student cheating is academic achievement (most often operationalized as GPAs or grades). Students with lower grades tend to be more likely to cheat than those with higher grades (e.g. Burrus et al. 2007 ; Klein et al. 2007 ; McCabe and Trevino 1997 ). Socioeconomic background (e.g. parents’ education, income and occupation), on the other hand, appears to be of less importance for student cheating according to the existing literature (Kerkvliet 1994 ; McCabe and Trevino 1997 ; Whitley 1998 ).

The relationship between migration background and student cheating is a complex issue and the literature is scarce. While research does not seem to point to any major disparity between different ethnic groups, students with a foreign language can experience greater difficulties in understanding the content of the education (Mori 2000 ), and therefore be more inclined to cheat.

As could be expected, permissive attitudes toward cheating have been found to increase the likelihood of engaging in such behaviours (Farnese et al. 2011 ; Whitley 1998 ). However, girls’ cheating behaviour seem to be more strongly affected by perceiving cheating as morally wrong (Gibson et al. 2008 ). Furthermore, students with lower stress resistance, higher risk willingness, lower work ethic and lower motivation seem to be more likely to cheat (Davis et al. 2011 ). Excessive demands from parents and personal desires to excel in school have also proved to be important motivations for student cheating (McCabe et al. 1999 ).

1.2.2 Contextual characteristics

While individual characteristics and influences from the family can increase a student’s incentives to cheat, the contextual conditions offered by the school can also be more or less favourable for acting upon such incentives (Nilsson et al. 2004 ). It is a matter of fact that students are more likely to cheat when they perceive the risk of being detected as slight, and when the consequences of potential detection are regarded as low (Bisping et al. 2008 ; Cizek 1999 ; Gire and Williams 2007 ; McCabe and Trevino 1993 ; Whitley and Keith-Spiegel 2002 ). For instance, schools with clearly formulated rules against cheating tend to have lower rates of such behaviour (McCabe and Trevino 1993 ; McCabe et al. 2001 ). The school’s ability to detect and impose penalties for students who cheat is of course also important (McCabe et al. 2012 ).

One of the most influential contextual factors for cheating is the extent to which students perceive that their peers cheat (McCabe et al. 2012 ), that is how normalized such behaviour has become at the school. Normalization of cheating is when a permissive culture is developed through a shift in the collective attitudes of the students, whereby cheating is increasingly viewed as less blameable and morally wrong the more often individual students perceive that their peers cheat (McCabe et al. 2012 ; O’Rourke et al. 2010 ). Previous research has shown that schools with a strong focus on competition and achievement tend to invoke an increased amount of cheating among its students (Anderman and Koenka 2017 ; Anderman and Midgley 2004 ), whereas schools that emphasize the value of learning itself tend to display a lower amount of cheating (Miller et al. 2007 ). Taken together, the school’s culture, or ethos, appears to have a crucial impact on students’ inclination to cheat.

1.2.3 Implications of student cheating

Cheating in school is linked to an increased risk for future unethical actions, both in further education and later working life (e.g. Carpenter et al. 2004 ; Graves 2011 ; Lucas and Friedrich 2005 ; Lawson 2004 ; Whitley 1998 ). Having developed a cheating behaviour in one social context is thus likely to spill over to another (Bowers 1964 ). Fonseca ( 2014 ) discusses the problematic consequences of student cheating in terms of two main aspects. The first concerns how ethics, morals and social trust in school become damaged through cheating, and the second concerns how the learning of an individual student is affected. Thus, student cheating means that the trust of the school as an institution for allocation of future education opportunities and positions in work life becomes weakened (Whitley and Keith-Spiegel 2002 ). The fact that cheating leads to a knowledge assessment of the student that is not correct also means that the student’s prerequisites for continued learning is negatively affected.

1.3 School effectiveness

Research on school effectiveness deals with school organizational factors and the way in which they shape student’s learning and behaviour. According to the theory of effective schools, certain contextual features are crucial for the school’s possibility of creating positive student outcomes and for counteracting negative behaviours (e.g. Grosin 2004 ; Rutter et al. 1979 ; Sellström and Bremberg 2006 ). As maintained by Scheerens ( 2016 ), there is a strong consensus within the field about which school contextual factors that are of particular importance for student outcome, namely those that are concerned with a strong and clear school leadership, development of and cooperation between teachers, and the overall school ethos. These three features of school effectiveness can be understood as hierarchically ordered, where agents in the higher level of the school structure (e.g. school leadership) has the potential to influence processes at the intermediate level (e.g. teachers and other school staff), which in turn affect conditions at the lower level (i.e. students) (Blair 2002 ).

Studies have shown that school leadership is of great importance for student outcomes (Låftman et al. 2017 ; Ramberg et al. 2018a , b ), but that the effects should be understood as indirect since they are often mediated through, for example, the teachers’ collegial work and the culture of the school as a whole (Muijs 2011 ). Teacher cooperation involves conditions for meeting and creating opportunities for communication, exchange of ideas, joint planning and collegial support, which is also a prerequisite for consensus on important educational and organizational issues (Ramberg et al. 2018b ; Vangrieken et al. 2015 ; Van Waes et al. 2016 ). The concept of school ethos, finally, refers to the norms, values and beliefs permeating the school and manifesting themselves in the way that teachers and students relate, interact and behave towards each other (Modin et al. 2017 ; Rutter et al. 1979 ). Research within the field of school effectiveness has pointed to the importance of these school contextual features for counteracting unwanted student behaviours such as bullying (Modin et al. 2017 ) and truancy (Ramberg et al. 2018a ). It seems reasonable to assume that they also have an impact on the extent of student cheating at the school.

1.4 The Swedish upper secondary school context and student cheating

The Swedish upper secondary school is mainly governed by the Education Act (SFS 2010 :800) and the Upper Secondary School Ordinance (SFS 2010 : 2039). No specific guidelines for cheating are given in these documents, besides the fact that cheating behaviour should be treated as a disciplinary matter. Procedures for dealing with student cheating and their disciplinary actions, should be developed within the frames of each school’s own rule policy. However, according to SFS ( 2010 : 2039), it appears that principals at the upper secondary level may decide to suspend a student if he or she has used unauthorized methods or otherwise tried to mislead any assessments of their performance or knowledge. Since there are no central laws or regulations concerning student cheating, it is reasonable to assume that there is a great variation between schools in rates of cheating and the ways in which these matters are handled.

The Swedish school system in general, and upper secondary school in particular, has undergone massive reforms over the past two decades, resulting in heavily economized and market-adapted changes combined with a grade system that consists of a sharp line between approved grades and failure (Lundahl et al. 2014 ; Ramberg 2015 ). In a competitive school market, failed grades often mean that individual students will face difficulties to establish themselves in the labour market. On behalf of the school, a high proportion of failed grades means that the attractiveness of the school decreases, and that teachers risk disadvantageous wage allocations. Therefore, it is not difficult to see that all involved parties in this market-oriented school system will “fight” for approved grades in order to survive. The distinction between failed and approved grades constitutes a harsh border between failure and success for both the individual student, the teacher, and the school. The pursuit for passed grades may therefore invoke a higher degree of cheating among students as well as a higher tolerance among teachers for a school culture of cheating (Fonseca 2014 ).

The aim of the present study is to examine the relationship between three teacher-rated aspects of school effectiveness—school leadership, teacher cooperation and consensus, and school ethos—and student’s self-reported cheating in upper secondary school. We hypothesize that higher ratings of these effectiveness features are related to a lower degree of student cheating, even when socio-demographic background characteristics at both the student- and at the school-level as well as individual grades and moral values have been taken into consideration in the analysis.

The following hypotheses are formulated:

The teachers’ ratings of each of the three features of school effectiveness (school leadership, teacher cooperation and school ethos) is negatively associated with degree of student cheating.

These associations remain when controlling for sociodemographic characteristics at both the student-and school-level.

Students’ self-reported grades serve as a mediator in the relationship between each of the three studied school effectiveness characteristics and student cheating.

Students’ self-reported moral values serve as a mediator in the relationship between each of the three studied school effectiveness characteristics and student cheating.

The associations between each of the three studied school effectiveness characteristics and student cheating remain also when controlling for student grades and moral values.

The study is based on data from two separate surveys, both of which were performed in 2016: the Stockholm School Survey (SSS), and the Stockholm Teacher Survey (STS). The SSS is carried out every second year by Stockholm Municipality among students in the 2nd grade of the upper secondary school (aged 17 to 18 years); henceforth called eleventh grade students (N = 8324, response rate 77.1%). All public schools are obliged to participate, whereas independent schools are invited to participate on a voluntary basis. The questionnaires are administered by teachers and filled in by the students in the classroom. The SSS covers a wide range of questions with a specific focus on alcohol, smoking, drugs and crime, but areas such as family background, personal qualities, psychological health, grades and cheating are also included. The STS was conducted by our research group, targeting all upper-secondary level teachers (grades 10–12) (N = 2443, response rate 57.9%) in Stockholm Municipality through a web-based questionnaire. The overall aim of the STS was to gather information about schools through teachers’ ratings of their working conditions, the school leadership, teacher cooperation and consensus, and school ethos, and to link these school-contextual aspects to students’ responses from the SSS. The two surveys were merged, which means that only schools who participated in both surveys were included, resulting in a study sample covering information from 6129 students and 1204 teachers across 58 schools. We have also linked school-level information from official records to our data (Swedish National Agency of Education 2016 ). Due to missing information in these official records, 12 schools (comprising 528 students) were lost. Additionally, students with missing information on any of the variables used in the analyses were excluded (n = 1072), resulting in a final study sample of 4529 eleventh grade students and 1045 upper-secondary school teachers across 46 schools.

Student data from the Stockholm School Survey were collected anonymously, and were not considered as an issue of ethical concern, according to a decision by the Regional Ethical Review Board of Stockholm (2010/241-31/5). The Stockholm Teacher Survey was approved by the Regional Ethical Review Board of Stockholm (2015/1827-31/5).

2.2 Variables

2.2.1 dependent variable.

Student cheating was created from the question: ‘Have you cheated on a homework test or an examination at school this year?’, followed by the response options ‘No’; ‘Yes, once’; ‘Yes, 2–3 times’; ‘Yes, 4–10 times’; ‘Yes, 10–20 times’ and ‘Yes, more than 20 times’. The variable was dichotomized into those who reported cheating 0–3 times vs. those who reported cheating four times or more. The reason for this relatively conservative cut-off was to make certain that we only capture serious cases of cheating with this measure.

2.2.2 Main independent variables (school-level)

The main independent variables consist of three teacher-rated dimensions of school effectiveness: school leadership, teacher cooperation and consensus, and school ethos. These dimensions were developed from three batteries of questions in the STS meant to capture the most essential theoretical components of effective schools. All items included in the three dimensions of school effectiveness are presented in Table  1 . The response alternatives for the items were: ‘Strongly agree’; ‘Agree’; ‘Neither agree nor disagree’; ‘Disagree’; and ‘Strongly disagree’. In order to check if the items were related as expected, exploratory factor analysis (EFA), followed by confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) were performed. School-level means for each of the three measures were calculated and merged with student-level data, whereupon they were z-transformed (mean value = 0, standard deviation = 1) in order to facilitate comparison between their coefficients. Values from all items were added to form an index with higher scores indicating higher teacher ratings of the dimensions of school effectiveness. As shown in Table  1 , all indices have a good or reasonably good model fit and high internal consistency.

2.2.3 Potential confounders (school-level)

At the school-level, five variables retrieved from the Swedish National Agency’s database, are adjusted for as potential confounders: proportion of students with a foreign background (i.e. born outside Sweden or having both parents born outside of Sweden) ; proportion of students with parents with post - secondary education ; students - per - teacher ratio ; and proportion of teachers with a pedagogical degree . School type, finally, refers to whether the school is public or independent.

2.2.4 Potential confounders and mediators (student-level)

Several variables at the individual level that could act as potential confounders or mediators were adjusted for in the analyses. Gender was coded as ‘boy’ (value 0) or ‘girl’ (value 1). Parental education was created from the question ‘What is the highest education your parents have?’ with the following response options to be ticked separately for the mother and the father: ‘Compulsory’; ‘Upper secondary school’; and ‘University’. The variable was coded into those who reported no parent with post-secondary education or missing information (value 0), those with one parent with post-secondary education (value 1), and those reported having two parents with post-secondary education (value 2). Migration background was measured by asking ‘How long have you lived in Sweden?’ followed by the response alternatives: ‘All my life’; ‘10 years or more’; ‘5–9 years’; and ‘less than 5 years’. The variable was coded into those who lived in Sweden their whole life (value 0), those who lived in Sweden ten years or more (value 1), and those reported living in Sweden less than ten years (value 2). Grades were measured as the summation of the student’s self-reported grades in the foundation subjects Swedish, mathematics and English from the previous term. Grades (A–F) were given numerical values (A = 5, B = 4, C = 3, D = 2, E = 1, and F or no grade = 0), resulting in an approximately normally distributed index ranging between 0 and 15. Moral index was created from the question ‘How well do the following statements describe you as a person?’ followed by the statements: ‘I lie to get benefits or to get out of doing tough things’; ‘I ignore rules that stop me from doing what I want to do’; ‘I think it’s OK to take something without asking as long as you don’t get caught’; and ‘It’s wrong to cheat at school’. Each item had four response alternatives: ‘Describes very poorly’, ‘Describes rather poorly’, ‘Describes rather well’, and ‘Describes very well’. The scores from each statement were summed into an index ranging between 4 and 16, with low values indicating high moral standards.

2.3 Statistical method and analytical strategy

Due to the hierarchical nature of the data, multilevel modelling was applied. Two-level binary logistic random intercept models were estimated. Since studies comparing Odds Ratios (OR) between logistic regression models have been shown to be problematic (Mood 2010 ), we have also performed multilevel linear probability models as sensitivity analyses. The three independent variables were highly correlated (r = .68–.80) and were therefore analyzed in separate models to avoid multicollinearity problems (Djurfeldt and Barmark 2009 ). In order to estimate the variation of student cheating between schools, we first estimated an empty model with no independent variables. The Intra Class Correlation (ICC) for binary outcomes gives approximate information about the variance that can be ascribed to the school-level (Wu et al. 2012 ).

The posed hypotheses are addressed in a series of models where the assumed confounders and mediators are successively taken into consideration. Model 1 targets hypothesis 1 by examining the associations between the three independent school effectiveness variables and student cheating. The second and third models aim to answer hypothesis 2 by exploring the possible impact of confounders at the individual- and school-level. Models 4–5, investigate the mediating role of student grades and moral standards in order to answer hypothesis 3 and 4, respectively. Model 6, finally, examines whether the studied associations remain even when student grades and moral values are controlled for. In order to assess whether the goodness of fit was significantly improved when the potential mediators were added to the models, the Likelihood Ratio Test was used.

Regarding the mediation analyses, we rely on Baron and Kenny’s ( 1986 ) four-step model for testing mediation. The first step consists of making sure that the independent variable is significantly associated with the dependent variable, and the second step of ensuring that the independent variable is significantly related to the presumed mediator. In the third step, the mediator should be significantly related to the independent variable. The fourth step, finally, consists of making sure that the previously significant relationship between the independent variable and the dependent variable decreases (or becomes non-significant) when the assumed mediator is included in the model (Baron and Kenny 1986 ). The first three steps are examined through bivariate associations, while the final step is examined in the last three models of the regression analyses.

The left-hand side of Table  2 presents descriptive statistics for all of the variables used in the analyses. About eight percent of the students in this study reported that they had cheated four or more times on a homework test or an examination during the past school year. There are slightly more girls than boys represented in the sample, and about 42 percent reported having two parents with post-secondary education, while about 25 percent reported having one parent with post-secondary education. The majority of students have lived in Sweden all of their lives, but about 17 percent report having a migration background. The mean grade in the three foundation subjects is 8.6, and the mean score on the index assessing moral values is 7. There is a substantial variation between schools in the three (unstandardized) measures of school effectiveness as indicated by their range. This is also the case for the school-level indicators of parents’ educational level and foreign background. Likewise, the average teacher density and the degree of qualified teachers differ substantially between schools. About 40 percent of the students in our sample attended an independent upper secondary school, which reflects the high proportion of independent schools in the municipality of Stockholm.

The first column of the right hand side of Table  2 presents the bivariate associations between the independent variables and the studied outcome. All variables, except students-per-teacher-ratio and percentage of teachers with a pedagogical degree at the school, are significantly associated with student cheating. These findings also confirm the first and third steps of Baron and Kenny’s ( 1986 ) model for testing mediation, namely that our main independent variables (school leadership, teacher cooperation and consensus and school ethos) as well as our hypothesized mediators (grades and moral values) are significantly associated with the studied outcome. Furthermore, the results of the bivariate analyses show a somewhat higher degree of reported cheating among students in independent schools, among boys, among students with lower parental education, and among students having lived their whole life in Sweden. The results in the two final columns of Table  2 confirm that the second step of Baron and Kenny’s criteria for testing mediation is largely fulfilled as well, namely that our three main independent variables are significantly associated with the two hypothesised mediators. The only exception is the absence of a significant association between teacher cooperation and students’ moral values. This means that we can already now conclude that there is no mediating effect of students’ moral values in the relationship between the school’s degree of teacher cooperation and student cheating.

Table  3 presents the main findings of the study in a series of five models where potential confounders (Models 2–3) and mediators (Models 4–6) at the school- and student-level are successively introduced. The empty model reveals an ICC of 0.1010, indicating that roughly 10 percent of the variation in student cheating can be attributed to conditions at the school level. As expected, higher levels of all three teacher-rated features of school effectiveness (Model 1) are associated with lower student-reported cheating. The estimate for school leadership indicates that each standard deviation increase in leadership quality is associated with a decreased odds of student cheating corresponding to OR = 0.73 ( p  =  0.003 ). The analogous estimates for teacher cooperation and school ethos are OR = 0.77 ( p  =  0.012 ) and OR = 0.63 ( p  <  0.001 ), respectively. Thus, school ethos is the strongest predictor of student cheating among the three studied school effectiveness features. This is also evident from the ICC values, where a larger drop in the estimate vis-à-vis the empty model can be seen for school ethos (ICC = 0.0391) than for school leadership (ICC = 0.0769) and teacher cooperation (ICC = 0.0804). It thus seems like quite a large part of the observed differences between schools in student cheating operate via the school’s teacher-rated ethos.

The odds ratios for all three indicators of school effectiveness remain practically unaltered when sociodemographic characteristics at both the school-level (Model 2) and student-level (Model 3) are adjusted for. Thus, even though the inclusion of these variables is associated with a further reduction of the ICC values, the adjusted odds ratios remain practically the same as in the crude model, suggesting that their confounding effect is minor. When adding grades as a potential mediator in Model 4, however, the odds ratios for student cheating decreases markedly in relation to both school leadership (OR = 0.81, p  =  0.028 ) and school ethos (OR = 0.71, p  <  0.001 ), indicating that students’ increased tendency to cheat when their grades are low serves as a mediator between these two indicators and student cheating. When it comes to the importance of teacher cooperation for student cheating, however, grades do not seem to affect the association to the same extent.

In Model 5, we replace grades by the moral index in order to explore whether the students’ moral standards might serve as a mediator between our indicators of school effectiveness and student cheating. Here too, a clear drop in odds ratios vis-à-vis Model 3 takes place for school leadership and school ethos, but not for teacher cooperation. This suggests that students’ increased tendency to cheat when their moral standards are low serves as another mediator in the association between these two features of school effectiveness and student cheating.

In Model 6, finally, we include both grades and moral index score in the model to explore the extent to which they overlap in their effect on the studied relationship. While the odds ratios for school leadership and school ethos decreases somewhat further, this is not really the case for teacher cooperation. This suggests that both grades and moral standards are important mechanisms in the association between school leadership and student cheating as well as in the association between school ethos and student cheating. While moral standards do not seem to be important for the link between teacher cooperation and student cheating, there does seem to be a small effect of grades (Model 4). Both teacher cooperation and school ethos remain with a statistically significant effect on student cheating in the final model. However, when both of the assumed mediators are controlled for, the direct effect of school leadership on student cheating is no longer significant at the 5% level. This further supports the supposition that they do serve as mediators in the studied association.

4 Discussion

This study examined whether higher levels of teacher-rated school effectiveness in terms of school leadership, teacher cooperation and consensus, and school ethos are associated with a lower degree of cheating among upper-secondary students in Stockholm, and whether grades and moral standards operate as mediators of these relationships. The results lent support to our first hypothesis by showing that each of the three studied school effectiveness indicators were significantly related to student cheating. Thus, the higher the teachers’ average ratings of their school’s effectiveness in terms of leadership, teacher cooperation and especially ethos, the less likely it is for students attending that school to cheat. These associations largely remained when sociodemographic conditions at both the student- and school-level were adjusted for, thus confirming our second hypothesis. This finding is in line with previous research showing that students’ social background is of less importance for their inclination to cheat (Kerkvliet 1994 ; McCabe and Trevino 1997 ; Whitley 1998 ).

Research within the field of effective schools have pointed to the importance of a strong and clear school leadership, collegial cooperation between teachers as well as a prosperous school ethos for counteracting negative behaviours and improving student outcomes in a variety of areas (Grosin 2004 ; Rutter et al. 1979 ; Sellström and Bremberg 2006 ). Our study adds to these findings by showing that a school’s adherence to the principles of effective schools also seem to counteract student cheating. An underlying idea of these principles is that the school leadership should provide the necessary conditions for processes at lower levels of the school structure (the classroom- and student-level) to come into force (Blair 2002 ). This involves having a clear and pronounced educational vision and a strategy where rules and consequences are clearly formulated and communicated to teachers and students. A teaching staff which is encouraged by the management to convey and enforce ethical behaviour among their students in a systematic manner would—from the perspective of effective schools—then be able to create a school ethos characterized by zero-tolerance towards cheating.

As stated previously, the concept of school ethos refers to the norms, values and beliefs permeating the school and manifesting themselves in the way that teachers and students relate, interact and behave towards each other (Rutter et al. 1979 ). It is not surprising that ethos was the strongest predictor of student cheating in this study since this could be viewed as the “end-product” of how a school is led, and thus what students actually experience in their every-day school life. If a school’s ethos is characterized by a lack of concern for ethical behaviour, cheating is likely to increase and rub off on additional students, eventually becoming a normalized behaviour. Previous studies have, for example, shown that the degree of student cheating is lower in schools where there are clear rules against and consequences of such behaviour, and where the risk of detection interest is high (Bisping et al. 2008 ; Cizek 1999 ; Gire and Williams 2007 ; McCabe and Trevino 1993 ; Whitley and Keith-Spiegel 2002 ).

Personal characteristics and circumstances can of course also affect a student’s inclination to cheat. In this study, we firstly explored whether the students’ grades and moral values acted as mediators in the studied relationship, and secondly whether our three indicators of school effectiveness were linked to student cheating regardless of student grades and moral values. Results showed a clear reduction of the school effectiveness estimates when student grades were introduced in the models, thus confirming our third hypothesis that grades serve as a mediator in the studied associations. The mediating effect was however weaker for teacher cooperation, than for school leadership and school ethos. In line with previous research in this field (e.g. Rutter and Maughan 2002 ; Sellström and Bremberg 2006 ), these results suggest that students who attend schools with a strong adherence to the principles of school effectiveness tend to receive higher grades which, in turn, leads to weaker incentives to cheat (and vice versa). That students with lower grades tend to be more inclined to cheat is also something that has been demonstrated in previous research (Burrus et al. 2007 ; Klein et al. 2007 ; McCabe and Trevino 1997 ). Our findings add to the existing literature by showing that grades in fact seem to act as a mediator in the association between school effectiveness and student cheating.

The fourth hypothesis concerned the potentially mediating role of students’ moral values in the association between school effectiveness and student cheating, and was largely confirmed as well. For teacher cooperation, however, no mediating effect of moral values could be detected in relation to student cheating. Our results nevertheless show that a school’s leadership and ethos are important for shaping the moral standards of their students, and through this, their inclination to cheat. When grades and moral values were simultaneously controlled for in the final model, the estimates for both teacher cooperation and school ethos remained statistically significant, whereas the estimate for school leadership became non-significant. This largely confirms our fifth and final hypothesis that features of school effectiveness also have an effect on student cheating regardless of the student’s personal circumstances and characteristics in terms of grades and moral values. In terms of interpretation of these findings, it seems reasonable to assume that students who cheat because they do not see any moral problems with it are more likely to express an “inherent lack of morality” (which they bring into school), whereas students who cheat despite considering it as morally wrong are more likely to have adopted this behavior in school.

Upper secondary school constitutes an important stage in life in which ethical and moral values are shaped for the future. The degree to which the school manages to convey and enforce ethical behaviour is vital for their students’ chances of developing a sound “moral compass” to guide them in their future choices and decisions, and for their prospects of becoming a trusted colleague and a good citizen along their continued life-path. Previous research has shown that immoral acts such as cheating are likely to spill over into other social contexts (Bower 1964 ) and that cheating during upper secondary school is linked to future unethical actions, both in further education and later in working life (Carpenter et al. 2004 ; Graves 2011 ; Lucas and Friedrich 2005 ; Lawson 2004 ; Whitley 1998 ).

The presence of cheating within the educational system also has equity implications. Here, the most apparent injustice is the fact that students who refrain from cheating are disfavoured vis-à-vis those who “successfully” cheat when it comes to allocation of higher education places. Besides the obvious injustice that such a state of affair involves for the non-cheating students, it also risks undermining education as an institution for fair allocation of future life opportunities. Another unjustness concerns those who actually develop a cheating behavior in school and the long-term consequences that this may entail for the individual student (Carpenter et al. 2004 ; Graves 2011 ; Lucas and Friedrich 2005 ; Lawson 2004 ; Whitley 1998 ). In our study, we found tangible differences between schools in the proportion of students who cheated (ICC = 10%). This variation was to a large extent accounted for by differing degrees of adherence to our school effectiveness indicators, especially school ethos. Thus, depending on which school a student attends, he or she will run a greater or lesser risk of developing a cheating behaviour, which could be regarded as an injustice in its own right.

Research has shown that student cheating can be activated by perceiving that many of one’s peers tend to cheat and get away with it (McCabe et al. 2012 ; O’Rourke et al. 2010 ). School environments with a strong emphasis on competition and achievement have also been found to evoke cheating behavior in the student population (Anderman and Koenka 2017 ; Anderman and Midgley 2004 ). At the structural level too, Fonseca ( 2014 ) argues that an educational system characterized by competition and market-forces is likely to increase student cheating. The present study was conducted within Stockholm’s upper secondary school market, which is characterized by far-reaching market adaptations and competition between schools, which means that studies in other contexts are needed in order to broaden the knowledge about how various features of school effectiveness are related to student cheating.

4.1 Strengths and limitations

A major strength of our study design is the combination of data from two separate sources, as well as the access to official statistics about the school’s sociodemographic composition. Since school effectiveness was measured by teachers’ ratings, and cheating was reported by the students themselves, this considerably reduces the risk bias due to common methods variance. In this study we used a conservative cut-off for student cheating (four times or more during the past school year), which could be questioned. The main reason for this decision was based on the assumption that students with low grades and/or low moral standards cheat more frequently and systematically. However, sensitivity analyses using measures of cheating with less conservative cut-offs revealed very similar results to the ones presented in this study.

As suggested in previous research (Cassady 2001 ), there is always a risk of bias in self-reported data. This may especially concern student cheating since individuals tend to underestimate their degree of socially undesirable behaviours (Kerkvliet 1994 ). However, we do not see any particular reason why such a bias would have affected the investigated relationships with our teacher-rated measures of school effectiveness. The results from this study should nevertheless be considered with some limitations in mind. First, the findings are based on eleventh grade students in Stockholm municipality, which means that generalizations to other geographical contexts and ages should be made with caution. Secondly, the study builds on cross-sectional data, preventing us from making any conclusions regarding causality. A certain amount of reverse causality may exist due to a possible selection of cheating students to schools with lower levels of adherence to school effectiveness. It would be desirable to explore this question further based on longitudinal data. Third, there are more advanced statistical ways of investigating mediating effects. The model used (Baron and Kenny 1986 ) is nevertheless a well-established tool for investigating potential mediating effects. Fourth, we are aware of the limitations of using self-reported grades from students (Cassady 2001 ). However, we have compared our data on grades with corresponding statistics retrieved from the Swedish National Agency for Education for all upper secondary students in Stockholm, and the distributions did not differ to any substantial degree.

Finally, approximately one third of the students in our sample stated that they had cheated at least once on a homework test or examination during the present school year. This is a lower proportion than reported in other studies, predominantly from the US, where as many as two thirds declared having cheated (Davis et al. 2011 ; Josephson Institute 2012 ; McCabe et al. 2012 ). The lower rate of self-reported cheating in our data may be due to a narrower definition, since we only asked about cheating on homework tests or examinations, while other studies also include cheating through, for example, plagiarism. Other studies have also found that the degree of cheating is lower in Scandinavian countries than most other nations (Teixeira and Rocha 2010 ).

4.2 Conclusions

In this study we have pointed to the importance of three school contextual characteristics for student cheating. Schools with high teacher-ratings on leadership, collegial cooperation and ethos, were found to have a lower degree of cheating among their students. We also found evidence that student grades and moral standards operate as mediators in the relation between school effectiveness and student cheating. Targeting organizational factors that strengthen these school contextual conditions is likely to lower the level of cheating among students. Reducing the level of cheating is, in turn, an important prerequisite for creating a more equitable allocation of educational opportunities, and for preventing individual students from “down-grading” their moral compass during their schooling.

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This work was financially supported by Vetenskapsrådet, Forte, Formas and Vinnova [2014-10107].

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Ramberg, J., Modin, B. School effectiveness and student cheating: Do students’ grades and moral standards matter for this relationship?. Soc Psychol Educ 22 , 517–538 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11218-019-09486-6

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How Cheating in College Hurts Students

Academic integrity is important, experts say, as plagiarism and other cheating may have severe consequences.

Getty Images | Westend61

Experts say the number of students engaging in academic dishonesty during the coronavirus pandemic is soaring.

Cheating in college is risky business loaded with potential consequences – failing classes, suspension, possible expulsion – yet it's common and perhaps more accessible than ever.

"A lot of people cheat a little," says David Pritchard, a physics professor emeritus at Massachusetts Institute of Technology who has studied academic dishonesty in online classes. "There's also a few people who cheat a lot."

Though it may be tempting and feel harmless, experts caution college students to think twice before cheating on coursework. Here's how to know what is typically considered cheating and the potential consequences.

How College Students Cheat

Cheating is a multibillion-dollar business, with some educational technology companies making money off students who use their products to break or bend academic integrity rules and others earning revenue from colleges trying to prevent academic dishonesty.

Students also use classic classroom moves like scribbling hidden notes somewhere or using technology such as smartwatches. Copying a classmate's assignment or plagiarizing parts of published works for a paper remain popular methods.

Many of those tactics appear to have been replaced by artificial intelligence and generative language models like ChatGPT and Google Bard, which offer some services like writing, editing and idea generation for free.

Pritchard notes that ChatGPT has performed well on exams in certain subjects, and the American Bar Association reported in March 2023 that it passed the Uniform Bar Exam by "a significant margin." While some professors say they're keeping an open mind about ChatGPT and similar tools, others say it's impossible to ignore the reality that students are using them to cheat.

ChatGPT "is the future of cheating," Pritchard says.

Rebecca Hamlin, a professor of legal studies and political science at the University of Massachusetts—Amherst , recently joined the university's academic honesty board and has seen cases of students caught cheating with ChatGPT. She caught 12 in her own classes during the spring 2023 semester.

“If students are genuinely interested in learning how to become writers, I’m very resistant to the idea that ChatGPT can help them," she says. “It’s really risky because it’s actually way more obvious to someone who reads really good writing all day long. I can immediately tell."

But plenty of students slip through undetected or cheat in other inconspicuous ways, she says.

Most instructors underestimate just how rampant the issue is, says Eric Anderman, a professor at The Ohio State University and interim dean at its Mansfield campus. "We think we're underestimating it because people don't want to admit to it."

Here's what academic integrity experts say college students should know about the immediate and long-term consequences of cheating.

The Consequences of Cheating in College

Regardless of the cheating method, students are only harming themselves and their learning process, experts say.

“I know that sounds really cheesy, but I kind of don’t really understand why someone is going to waste their time and money going to college if they don’t want to learn how to write," Hamlin says. "That’s probably one of the top two to three skills that you gain when you go to college."

Students also deprive themselves of a genuine feeling of achievement when they cheat, says Russell Monroe, director of academic integrity at Liberty University in Virginia.

"There’s a sense of dignity in knowing that I got a grade that I earned, whether that’s for an assignment or a class," he says. "You can look at your degree with pride knowing this is something I achieved on my own merit and didn’t have to outsource anything to anyone else or steal or plagiarize."

Some penalties can have a lasting effect and financial repercussions. They are often less severe for first-time offenders, but colleges keep records of such behavior. Students who continue to cheat and get caught risk failing a class, receiving academic suspension or being expelled from the school, which may come with a note on their transcript explaining why they were dismissed. This designation will likely make it harder to enroll at another college , experts say.

Students who fail a class due to academic dishonesty are usually allowed to retake it. If it's a class required for graduation, they don't have a choice. Either way, that means more money out of pocket, perhaps in student loans .

Failing a course also typically harms a student's GPA , particularly if they don't retake it and earn a higher grade. This could jeopardize eligibility for financial aid or scholarships and lead to academic probation .

Each school has its own policies and disciplinary measures, and professors may vary in how they address academic dishonesty. Some may handle it on their own while others may send it to a disciplinary committee. It often depends on the severity of cheating, Monroe says. For example, cheating on a discussion board assignment isn't seen as as serious as plagiarizing a dissertation or final exam paper, or cheating on a credential or certification exam, he says.

Plagiarizing on capstone course papers or other assignments tied to graduation is a particularly egregious offense that could jeopardize a student's ability to graduate, experts say.

“We are putting our stamp of approval on you to move on to the next step," Monroe says. "That next step might be graduation, but if we’re doing that based upon bad information or false information, that’s a serious problem.”

Even students who think they got away with cheating may suffer consequences, such as missing out on foundational information that they need to learn and apply in higher-level classes.

Additionally, graduates who cheated and perhaps even ended up with good grades may find themselves starting their career unprepared and lacking needed knowledge and skills. And for jobs that have a safety component, unprepared workers could put themselves and others at risk.

Then there are occasions when academic dishonesty is revealed later and torpedoes a career, sometimes in a public and humiliating way.

Know What Is and Isn't Cheating

While some students are well aware that they're cheating and see it as merely a means to an end, not all forms of academic dishonesty are intentional. In many cases, it's an accident made while under stress or when a student has procrastinated , experts say.

Sometimes students make mistakes because they aren't properly prepared to engage with college-level work. For example, improperly citing sources on a term paper can lead to charges of plagiarism.

"I think part of what happens is students aren't always taught in high school how to cite and evaluate information from the internet," Anderman says. "And I think a lot of them, when they get to college – and this is not an excuse – truly don't realize that you can't just look something up on the internet and put it in your paper, that you still have to cite it, and they get caught."

Colleges commonly use a variety of plagiarism-checking software, such as Turnitin, which flags written work that may be uncited or improperly cited. These tools help keep students honest and significantly decrease plagiarism, experts say.

Some forms of cheating, such as intentional plagiarism, buying papers online or paying someone to complete course work, should be fairly obvious, experts say. This is often referred to as "contract cheating," Monroe says, and it's an offense that can lead to expulsion from Liberty.

"It’s very difficult for us to know when that’s happening, but when we do find out, we view that very seriously because there are significant portions of your entire degree that may not have been done by the student at all," he says.

Other areas aren't as clear-cut, particularly what is permissible when it comes to collaborating with classmates, sharing information and using AI products. Monroe says Liberty doesn't ban the use of AI or tools like ChatGPT, but there are boundaries around their ethical use. Students can use these tools to edit and get inspiration, but any assignment turned in must be the student's original work.

Experts also caution against using online companies that position themselves as tutoring organizations but largely help students cheat. Colleges offer many academic resources that students can use instead, and at no extra cost.

“I would definitely encourage a student who’s facing a tough situation or feels that they can’t do their work on time to contact their professor and see if there’s some kind of alternate arrangement that can be made," Monroe says.

Many professors are willing to accept work late, he says. Liberty’s policy is to take 10% off of an assignment's overall grade if it’s late.

“We definitely prefer a timely submission of work," Monroe says, "but contact your professor. They are definitely willing to work with students within the scope that they’re allowed to. That would definitely be a better situation than turning to cheating."

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The Frugal Gene

Born To Help You Save Money

Why I Don’t Think Cheating on Homework Is Wrong

By Lily | The Frugal Gene

This post may contain affiliate links .

Disclaimer: This post probably makes me sound like a bad person x2 .

So I binged watched ‘ The Good Place ‘ over the weekend with my husband and despite the eerie similarity of characters between Chidi and my own Dork Husband… it’s still very, very good :).

^That was just about my exact reaction when I found out I was in love with Mr. Hippo .

(If you haven’t watched ‘The Good Place’ on Netflix , I strongly recommend it.)

The general premise is if you do good, you get to go to a good place; but that’s just the 1% of humans. Everyone else goes to the bad place filled with hot lava and pokey things.

The show has flashbacks of the characters doing good or bad. I had one such flashback myself. This totally hilarious show did make me question my moral point system on Earth…

OK, the main question is:  I s it wrong to do another kid’s homework for money?

Most reflexes will go “duh yeah, of course, it’s wrong.”  Now usually I’m guilt-ridden and depressive, calling myself a raindrop . But then I thought about it again and I’m like…”Nah, the end justified the mean.”

This one flashback here today, I want to defend myself properly. My favorite color has been gray since I was 13 years old because that’s typically the age when people start understanding how the world works.  I love it when life is morally conflicted. It tickles my funny bone like nothing else.

You guys can be a judge and absolutely feel free to disagree with me.

⭐  Related Reads:

• 7 Reasons You Shouldn’t Feel Embarrassed To Attend Community College
• How I Paid Off $20,000 In Student Loans Working Part-Time
• 15 Money Things Young Adults Overlook That Matter

Table of Contents

On my 8th grade “permanent record,” there’s probably a remark about how I did the homework of an idiot for a month or two…for money. My family didn’t have much to give me money wise, I understand that completely . I would sooner see aliens than an allowance.

But I wanted to save up back then so I could own some VHS tapes of my favorite 90s movies and have my own set of Dahl books. I was particularly fond of ‘Matilda’ and ‘Fantastic Mr. Fox’, both by Dahl.

I was a good student. Not the brightest but I was responsible with my school homework. More importantly – I was an excellent forger.

My parents didn’t come home from work until late so I forged their signatures on every single school document without having to bother them. In my entire school career, they never knew they had to sign a thing.

That’s the small perk of having illiterate parents . It’s not hard to fake a parent signature – I’m pretty sure most kids have attempted to do it once or at least thought about it.

It was more of a moot point though. My parents couldn’t speak, read, or write in English. There was no point in giving them the paper forms. They don’t even know grammatically correct Chinese (a lot of poor Chinese don’t know so it’s not just my parents.)

When my school sends me home with various release forms, report cards, a thousand other things to sign – I signed them all myself. My parents never had to touch a single piece of paper in my entire school life and they never knew or asked.

One day…uhhh …….huh……..you know, I don’t even remember how this dude in my class and I struck this deal but we did…

⭐  Related Reads:

• 4 Profound Things I Wish I Knew Before Growing Up
• Effective But Semi Illegal Ways To Pay Off Student Loans
• Top 5 Financial Mistakes I’ve Made In My Early 20s

Let’s call him Dash!

I recall it started in 7th-grade Biology. Dash was one of the most annoying wannabe pre-teen gangsters in the school…granted a lot of adolescents are annoying at that age but he was especially annoying.

We knew each other because we were both in the ESL (English as a Second Language) program. ESL is a special program for children who did not firmly grasp English as a primary language. I had been on American soil for 2 and a half years when I was put into ESL.

I had a hard time understanding the assignments in English class…it was like they were talking in a strange foreign tongue 😉

Also, my vision was starting to go bad during that time and I had hearing issues in one ear that were both only detected as issues much later on.

I guess I came off pretty dumb…being very very shy, half deaf, half blind, and having elementary grade English skills.

I thought I was dumb too because I didn’t understand why I couldn’t see, hear, or learn like everyone else. Hearing and vision are physiological losses you don’t notice because it’s so progressive. Eventually, they figured out my history and I was shipped to the special class.

It puzzled me why Dash was in ESL though. He’s Chinese like me but he was born here and spoke English at home too.

H e was very lazy with totally wrong school priorities. He was determined to fit in by sagging his pants as far as possible – to his calves – and trying to come off gangster to everyone else.

(Dash = Jianyu from The Good Place except Dash’s not adorable.)

He picked on me about my clothes and shoes. (…I am NOW just understanding the irony of a guy sagging his pants to his calves making fun of me for my clothes. What a world bawahaha!)

It bothered me at the time. No one likes to be ganged up on by other similar idiots for wearing ugly clothes and being poor. Who wants to be poor???

But that was 7th-grade politics and a good introduction to real life.  I was an easy target. I didn’t even have American branded hand-me-downs at the time. They were leftover clothes brought over from China.

Did you guys ever have a pink knock-off “Snoopee” shirt? ‘Cause I had one! 😉

His family must have some spare cash around because his parents bought him a lot of pricey rapper clothes. Since he was the only son, and Chinese people love sons more than daughters, he was pretty spoiled. 50 Cent was a big rapper name at the time and, to this day, I’m convinced Dash lived in 50 Cent’s closet or something.

Dash’s grades sucked, he proposed in secret that I do his homework for money.

Morally, it wouldn’t have been the right thing to do.

But I’m not a moral person 🙂 many moralities are for those who can afford it (slippery slope, I know). I label myself as realistic.

By the time he mentioned money, I was in. Not even a whiff of conscience.

✏️ Related Reads :

• Would You Survive a Financial Recession If Economic Collapse Happened?
• I Took The 30 Day No Spend Challenge & This Is What I Learned

Things Were Good…

We had about 5 classes together and 2 of those classes came with daily assignments that were easy to copy and paste. For every assignment I forged in his handwriting I was paid $2. It took me 2-3 minutes to copy my homework and make it into his handwriting so no one would be any wiser.

He applied very faint pressure in his handwriting and I copied that. He had a vague crookedness to the order of his math equations and I applied the same teetering format. No one could tell even if they tried.

For a while, things were good. No one suspected a thing. Every applicable class period, we would pass the homework up to the front as a table in groups. I just turned in Dash’s homework with mine. Dash was finally and consistently turning in “his” homework. Even his gang of “friends” wondered why he started doing his homework.

“You’re doing your homework now? Did you get into trouble with your mom?”

[Everyone laughs]

See, Dash thought he an authentic gangster reputation to keep up and that statement didn’t sit right so he announced to the whole table of his goons,

“Pff NO, I’m paying Xiao to do it. Right X?”

I sat adjacent on a large table of 6 and honestly…that should have been my lesson in not doing business with idiots.  He just ratted both of us out, that dumbass.

Yup, that’s gangster material alright.  One of the guys sitting at our desk, goes by Ricky, said to Dash, “Hmmm, isn’t that wrong?”

“What are you gonna do? You’re just mad no one is doing your homework.” “I’m going to tell.” “You’re not going to tell.” “Yes I am, I’m going to tell the teacher.” “No, you’re not.” “Yes, I am.” “No, you’re not.” “Yes, I am.”

*End of class bell rings to free me from that stimulating conversation*

“Sooo, um, I think he’s gonna tell.” – I said back. “No he’s not X, if he tells he’s getting jumped.”

• Debt and Suicide – Why I’m Proud To Be A Grown-Up Tattletale
• The 11 Perks of Growing Up Poor

Plot Twist (Not Really)

I thought I understood middle school politics; I didn’t really believe Ricky would tattle! Not that Dash changeling him helped.  I was not scared of a call home. We had a shared landline with a bunch of people in the rented house.

My parents aren’t home and they didn’t have any phone access at work. OH, and they didn’t speak English so I use to just translate whatever I wanted to them. Totally moot!

If I get detention, no one would know. Worst, I tell them I was at the library (which I would be anyway.)

The last thing, if they bring home a slip of note requiring a sign-off, I’ll forge a siggy like I do everything else already.

It turns out Ricky DID tattle. I was a bit surprised initially but later I pieced it together: EVERYBODY hates Dash.

Simple!  It turns out, people, no matter what age, is capable of hating and plotting revenge on class bullies. He wasn’t just rude to me.

Nothing Happened!

You see, our original science teacher left in the middle of the school year for a better private school district where he gets better pay, better students, better support, and fewer dum-dums like Dash interrupting class every 3.25 minutes.

For a good portion of the school year, we had substitute teachers one after another who couldn’t care less while the school scrambled to find suitable applicants.

The last one managed to stay around for almost a year (before leaving for a better private school in a better district, like most teachers).

Ms. Woods was the one that got the tattle from Ricky.  She was 23 and fresh out of college. She still had those college party girl highlights and wearing lip gloss that made her look 18.

“I heard from an anonymous tipster that you have been doing homework for Dash, for money…is that true?” “Yes…” “OK, well you know that’s not right, I can let you go this time but if this happens a second time, I will have to put this on your permanent record where colleges will see. Promise?” “Promise!” “OK, you can go back to your seat.”

Well, that was that. Nothing came of it. Anytime someone says permanent record = hahahhahhhaha.

It could be Ms. Woods being nice or she didn’t care or even more likely she didn’t have much authority as a substitute teacher.  She didn’t do anything to Dash either.  Since substitute teachers are temps, they don’t get the administrative rights as real teachers. They’re more or less… glorified babysitters .

No lesson learned! Dash went back to not doing his homework and went around asking to copy homework.  I went back to being poor.  Ricky didn’t get jumped or beat up (that I know of.)

I do recall Dash saying to Ricky right after class the next day, “You’re a rat.” “No I didn’t, I swear, I didn’t.” Ricky said back. (Even though just yesterday he swore he would tell.) “Yeah? Who else?” “I don’t know Dash, could be anyone. I didn’t do it.” Dash turns towards me, “What do you think X?” “I don’t care.”

I actually saw Ricky talk to Ms. Woods after class so…well, yeah I’m pretty sure it was him but I didn’t care enough to rat out the rat. I made enough money to get what I wanted so I’m done anyway and it was a quick end.  I don’t quite remember but I think I made about $200 🙂

Those dollars really did add up every class, every day! Wish I knew about investing back then.

⭐  Recommended Reads:

• Why ‘The Millionaire Next Door’ is a Myth to Most Millennials
• Saving Money For College Does More Than Pay Tuition

Is It Wrong?

Nah, not to me. I can see why it’s wrong, I’m not crazy. But there’s another side to it that makes it that beautiful gray that I like. Here are the big arguments of why it seems wrong.

1. Cheating IS bad! Dash didn’t deserve his grade.

That would be the biggest argument here. Dash was getting a grade he didn’t deserve. But just because he had the homework doesn’t mean he was going to ace any exams or state tests without breaking out his books. He wasn’t going to because of the aforementioned idiotic priorities.

Woods didn’t even bother reversing the assignments Dash turned in but didn’t do. Literally, 0 forks given, it was too much work for a fill in. No one cares, there are bigger problems…because…you know…it’s 7th grade. Nothing came from it.

She didn’t want to stay as a public school teacher in San Freaking Expensicisco anyway.

Dash’s slightly better 7th-grade biology grade wasn’t going to trick Harvard into accepting him.

In the end, Dash did deserve his grade because of measures like exams and classroom behavior that has no easy copy and paste genies.

Today 2018, he is still trying to pass community college at the ripe age of 27 with an ever-growing fascination with Tokyo drifting, sports cars, and bikini models…but will never finance anything more than a run down Honda… anyone know the type of Asian wannabe hoodrats I’m talking about?

At least his pants are pulled up now, kinda.

2. It was unfair to other children who did do their homework.

Nah, the kids who wanted to do their homework will have done their homework. That’s called personal responsibility. You can drop a kid into the best school but you can’t make them learn. I took no knowledge away from him because he wasn’t going to learn it. Especially if they’re determined to dress and act like a wankster. Easily influenced, easily fooled, simple-minded Dash.

It didn’t depend on Dash, or me, or anyone — and the class was not graded on a curve. I will always encourage learning but I’m not stuffing learning down the throats of those who don’t want to. Why bother?  If Dash can’t possess the mentality to push him past maturity, then let the nature of the world do its thing.

3. I robbed Dash of opportunities to learn.

First, he begged me to help him & I got paid. Freedom of choice. Second,  Dash is determined to be a gangster. His motivation was zilch except social pressure to prove his gangster-ness. If I said no because of conscience, he’d ask someone else or continue not doing his homework (or barely), and I remain empty-pocketed.

What’s the fun in that? I had a market price for a skill and now it’s middle school business.

His goal was to rid himself of knowledge he didn’t want to learn anyway.  MY goal was expanding my precious collection of Dahl books and movies. Wouldn’t you say I had my rights and opportunities to learn too and especially if I can make them happen?

4. Ricky could have gotten hurt for tattling.

Ricky was no hero, I know him enough to understand revenge disguised as a martyr.

He had ZERO moral qualms about homework trust me.

He just hated Dash like everyone else. Dash made fun of Ricky for needing a tutor because it meant he was ‘proven stupid.’ It was a bullseye on Rick’s feelings of insecurity. If a kid has a tutor = they’re stupid is the middle school logic. Little Rick has been fired for revenge ever since and he can’t stand Dash getting a possibly better grade without the work either.

No one liked Dash, he was 4 foot 10 and chubby. His fake homeboys included 2 other guys who were (somehow) even dumber and fatter. They’re all talk…because…well they’re wanksters. If you took them to Bayview (the real ghetto) they would wet their pants crying for mommy.

5. Doing it for money is especially wrong. You should have offered him tutoring instead.

Um…tell me how the heck this world worked again? I had a service, he had a problem. Profit!

The tutoring makes sense but he didn’t want to learn, that was the point. I could use my spare time to reach out and make him understand math…or I can just let the guy who picked on his peers…rot.

Like Rick, I was waiting for a kind of revenge myself. We had more in common thanks to the unification of hating Dash.

The only downside that I was caught. I could have made some more money to save up. I certainly would have appreciated that money more than Dashy boy.

Readers, do you think it’s wrong to do another person’s work for money? Is cheating on homework always bad? Have you ever done something borderline expellable in school?

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July 4, 2018 at 4:05 am

Wow this is like a thriller movie! I couldn’t wait to find out what happened at the end. I’m glad you were ok. No one has ever offered to pay me to do homework for them. They probably thought I wasn’t qualified enough or something.

$200 sounds pretty good, especially when you take into account inflation. You were just a little kid when it happened, so don’t be too hard on yourself. Every kid needs a little pocket money. I used to sell my dad and grandpa’s beer cans and bottles for like 1 cent each and just saved up all the money. Tough time!

P.S. I have forged my parents’ signatures a couple of times, and no one knew *shh*

July 9, 2018 at 9:34 am

“I used to sell my dad and grandpa’s beer cans and bottles for like 1 cent each and just saved up all the money.” Aww 🙁 Ms. FAF that’s so sad!! >_< World's difference from American children!!

July 4, 2018 at 5:01 am

So. It’s hard for me to read this without my teacher eyes. I will say that A LOT of issues like this could be and are made moot when teachers assign homework well ( you know, practice at a level that kids can actually do!). In the age of the internet when you can buy apps to solve math problems or download entire papers, I think it gets even murkier. Fun post!

July 9, 2018 at 9:38 am

Oh yes Penny! Spill your secrets!

Are substitute teachers allowed to assign different homework? That internet age was slightly before me but by the time I got into college, people were buying and sharing test answers online.

July 4, 2018 at 5:45 am

I think you could make essentially the same arguments for why selling illegal drugs is actually perfectly OK. Victims want the stuff, they are losers with little societal value with or without the drugs, you need the money, etc. Except nobody is a loser, everybody needs a hand up sometimes and participating in somebody’s slide downhill is always wrong. This isn’t some gray area conundrum, it’s just wrong. But it’s a tiny wrong. I’ve done bigger wrongs many many times, no judgement here, maybe that’s why I know it when I see it. Excellent post and you are impressive for what you’ve lived through and the trajectory of your life! Very thought provoking stuff.

July 9, 2018 at 9:40 am

Great point and I totally see that. I wonder if not doing homework is addictive like drugs are. Perhaps if I was not in a situation that needed money and I didn’t hate his guts x)

July 4, 2018 at 7:10 am

It is not like you initially made the offer to do his homework for money, he came to you. So that should lower the badness factor some.

It definitely is a moral dilemma. Interesting to imagine what if scenarios. If you didn’t do his homework and he got held back would they have motivated him to study or would he drop out first chance he got? You saw an entrepreneurial opportunity and took advantage of it. Glad you got away with it without marks on your record. In the end there were a lot worse things you could have done.

July 9, 2018 at 10:01 am

Ooooh good prose! He parents wouldn’t have let him fail. He grazed everything past Ds and Cs. I wonder if there’s such a thing as perm records. I looked it up once and I don’t think it’s real or have much weight.

July 4, 2018 at 7:26 am

That’s a good story 🙂 I like how you deep dive into all the reasons why it wasn’t wrong of you to do his homework. This could be turned into a short film with the way you wrote it lol

July 9, 2018 at 10:03 am

Haha thanks ^_^

July 4, 2018 at 7:55 am

Haha I loved this story. I agree with you. I would have done the same thing. Of course, I may have been the one to ask you. I learned a few new words here like wangster and San Freaking Expensicisco . Poor kid – you should send him your post. I felt sorry for him lol.

July 9, 2018 at 10:02 am

I hope he reads this someday but my blog is anon to my Facebook for my comfort x)

July 4, 2018 at 8:22 am

i used to get paid for assignments too. i would write early computer code 5 different ways for the baseball players and cheerleaders for 5 bucks each. i had to dumb ’em down a little. my best friend’s brother was a heavy equipment operator in his teens and i wrote a term paper for him so he could graduate. he went on to stay an equipment operator. good story, especially about if those snots went to the real hood they would wet their pants.

July 9, 2018 at 3:13 pm

Hahaha “snots” is a very good descriptor!

July 4, 2018 at 8:31 am

It might be the Hong Kong Hustler in me, but I’d say right on for your hustle at that age. Street smarts ftw. ? It’s the stuff kids do, like when we and my bro were selling sweets and converting old bike frames into fixed gears. (Just don’t ask why we allowed to wield oxyacetylene torches at 13-15)

Everyone presses an advantage somehow. The more competitive the world gets, it would stupid not to right? Some use their street smarts, some their connections, some their money, some have the right family support.

All in all. We stand on the shoulders of giants.

July 9, 2018 at 3:23 pm

“We stand on the shoulders of giants.” That’s one of my favorite phrases ^_^

I just found out what an oxyacetylene torch is….I googled it, it looks like a badass version of the flame torch thingy they use to sear sushi at sushi bars LOL!

July 4, 2018 at 9:48 am

I’m just impressed you are that good of a forger! I definitely don’t have those skills, but then again I don’t have the practice either ? The idea that you both wouldn’t get in MAJOR trouble is mind boggling to me because that is not how it would have been treated at my school, I doubt even with a substitute.

I actually had quite a few people asking me to do their homework, but I never did it for them, paid or no, but I did offer to sit with them and go through it with them, which most often they agreed to. I was never smart enough to require a tutoring fee though!

July 9, 2018 at 3:25 pm

I’m surprised too, I was surprised back then! Did you go to public school? I always chalked it up that it was public school and no one cared as much.

Ah, you’re a person person than me Angela 🙂 for sure

July 4, 2018 at 12:30 pm

So I edited student papers for a while as a side gig (way better than tutoring) mostly international students whose English wasn’t great. I wound up feeling quite conflicted because a lot needed quite a bit of work to polish up and be readable just in terms of basic spelling and grammar (not content) and I would think, am I helping them deceive the markers by giving them a false impression of their writing chops?

July 9, 2018 at 3:26 pm

I think you were helping, no? Because they can choose to review your edits and learn OR just turn it in. Interesting story!

July 4, 2018 at 3:18 pm

I loved reading this! You bring up such a touchy topic for some.

As for me, I was similar to you. I actually supplied over half of my jr. high class with test answers. The difference is I didn’t make a dime. I thought I was being altruistic for helping my fellow classmates. Anyhow, the cheating was out of hand for awhile. That is until some students that were 100% honest got upset and ratted out the class in general. The teacher changed the test on the fly and a chunk of my friends got busted that day. I, on the other hand, recognized the difference and scored a 100% on the modified test. So, I didn’t get busted then, but I did eventually get busted in chemistry 3 years later! Of course, I only got a slap on the wrist and went back to cheating all over again.

Now that I have children and am married to a high school teacher, my perspective has changed a bit. I realize that cheating teaches some important points about creativity, but it can also be detrimental if you truly want to learn a subject. So, my point is that balance is the key regardless of your moral stance.

Thanks for the entertaining story and have a great 4th!

July 9, 2018 at 3:40 pm

“I realize that cheating teaches some important points about creativity, but it can also be detrimental if you truly want to learn a subject.” Ooh good point! If you knew you COULD cheat beforehand, there’s less motivation to learn.

Love love love your tale Michael!!! I think my AP Physics class had a someone who emailed out all the test answers to the rest of the periods. When the teacher found out he made us take tests in different rooms in groups.

July 4, 2018 at 4:44 pm

OMGOSH is that photo u? If that’s stock photo then there’s a lot of similarities hehe I still remember typing up homework for a classmate in grade 6 because she was so “AMAZED” @ how fast I typed back then. #90sKids which would be laughable today of course. I think she paid me $3 and when I went home to tell my Dad he bragged to my relatives and they told him to stop re-enforcing this unethical behavior LOL

July 9, 2018 at 3:42 pm

LOL! Whaaaaaaat hahahaah that’s the most ridiculous story. Damn $3?! I was short changed!

July 4, 2018 at 5:58 pm

This made me laugh out loud and I especially loved it because of The Good Place inspiration. Such a good show!

I’m not sure I can completely get on board with it being ok to cheat on homework but it’s a minor crime and I get your motives. There’s a pretty good chance I would have done the same thing when I was in junior high. Money for new CD’s and candy was vital.

July 9, 2018 at 3:43 pm

“Money for new CD’s and candy was vital.” Hahhahah absolutely!! Thanks for making me laugh too Sarah!

July 5, 2018 at 7:43 am

And now, with this glorious blog post, a permanent record of your misdeeds will truly stand the test of time!

Do you think they will….revoke my middle school diploma and how much should I care? Baawahahahaha

July 5, 2018 at 7:49 am

I liked The Good Place too. It’s pretty funny and the plot twist at the end of season 1 was great. I don’t think it’s a big deal to cheat on homework. I let some of my friends copy my homework too. You reap what you sow. If you don’t do homework, you won’t do well on the test.

July 9, 2018 at 6:31 pm

Yes the twist!! Michael’s laugh when Elenor solved it….it gives me nightmares!!! Scary scary laugh!

July 5, 2018 at 9:18 am

OMG, this is such a fun read. And your story-telling ability is compelling AF. Can I use my Hollywood connections and adapt this into a screen play and send it over to Justin Lin to make a movie out of it? I want to call it “Better Luck Tomorrow: The Middle School Days” or maybe… “Better Lily Tomorrow”. But this move has a much better (and happier ending) than the original because the protagonist becomes the millionaire next door!!!

This post also took me back to the middle school days and the petty politics that were involved. The cool “O.G.” kids sit at one specific table. The gothics at another. The jocks, band geeks, and the list of cliques go on. The one thing that schools need to improve is “bullying”. It’s sad that it even exists. And as a new parent, it can be kind of scary.

On a personal note, I was asked a few times by fellow classmates to do their homework. But I refused. I never grew up poor, so I never needed the money. If I did grow up poor, perhaps it would have changed my thought process. I would never know. Luckily I was able to be smart enough and popular enough to avoid bullies/gangsters/wanksters/hoodrats.

P.S. Btw, why did people think sagging their pants looks fashionable and cool? It looked ridiculous to me back then, and it looks even stupider now. And I’m surprised you keep touch with Dash. Sounds like a total loser. Probably spends all of his time at Hot Import Nights trying to hit up the import models. I’m surprised Dash didn’t try to hit on Ms. Woods (she sounds like a total hottie, j/k ;)).

P.P.S. Good luck with all of your masters programs applications. And happy birthday!!!

July 9, 2018 at 6:42 pm

“Better Lily Tomorrow” Omgggg, if you pitch it you’re gonna be sooooooo rich. So rich. Stupid girl falls into another dimension, comes out somehow OK in life!!! Justin!!!!!!! Notice me senpai! LOL.

Oh I don’t keep in touch with Dash. I remember last year I login into Facebook because my friend left me a message and FB emailed me saying I had a message – then he was on the timeline and I was like ooooooooh yeah, what’s this guy doing??

*womp womp*

“Well….that makes sense.” -Me Lolololol!!

July 6, 2018 at 5:00 am

Oh man, what a tale! Sure, sure I don’t think it’s right that you helped Dash cheat, but I think any sense of accusation I feel right now is overridden by how impressed I am at your business savvy at such a young age! That’s a kid who’s going to learn how to make it in the real world, you know?

I never really had the chance to share notes in middle school, because I was a homeschooled jungle freak. But I loved the rush of maybe getting caught by living it vicariously through you!

July 9, 2018 at 6:46 pm

I wondered why Dash had money and I didn’t and I thought it was unfair – that was a goooood dose of life’s best medicine.

You were homeschooled?!? Did you like it? Have you a post on it?!?!? I wanna read!

July 10, 2018 at 2:56 am

I was! Yep, from the 3rd grade on through graduation. And I LOVED it. It allowed me to pursue topics I was passionate about, have a flexible schedule, learn how to self-motivate and actually have time to see my family (I was a professional ballet dancer and started training alootttttt at a young age and my parents felt they never got to see me! haha). There were a lot of reasons my parents decided it was best for me, and I’m so grateful they did. I recognize that it’s not for everyone, but it worked for our situation.

Wow, it seems kinda wild talking about it now … I haven’t ever written about it, but I guess I should! I’ll add it to the list 🙂

July 6, 2018 at 3:24 pm

The whole point of school is learning, and it’s clear that by paying you to do the homework Dash wasn’t learning. You learned a different lesson — how to bend the rules for profit!

I’m not judging (I’ve probably done worse), but I’m not sure that’s a good lesson to learn.

In this case it all worked out OK, and didn’t hurt anyone but that idiot Dash. That’s not always the case. Most of the time we have laws and rules to protect people from getting hurt from the world’s bullies — the ones that will absolutely ruin lives for a little money. Generally rule of law is a pretty good thing.

And what if you had been expelled? Some schools take cheating very seriously and a highly doubt your parents would have liked paying for private school.

Great story Lily!

July 12, 2018 at 9:12 am

Oooh that’s a scary thought! My mom would have understood because we were poor and she can see why a kid needs pocket change, but nope, definitely not a private school.

“Generally rule of law is a pretty good thing.” Hah definitely agree there. If it was more serious of an issue (like the SAT) I wouldn’t! Now that’s expulsion!

July 15, 2018 at 11:03 pm

It is unethical to do someone else’s homework. As a former math tutor, cheating on the homework is wrong. Most of the time, homework and test grades have a strong positive correlation. Some teachers check the actual work on both the homework and tests. If teachers were to find out that a student did well on the homework but didn’t do well on the test, then teachers will be suspicious. Especially when students get an easy A by cheating and moving up to a higher level math, they don’t have the foundation to take on more challenging problems and they will be struggling later on, just like Dash.

However, in terms of the business, as long as you’re not a student at Dash’s school and doing his homework, I think it’s completely legal and you won’t get into trouble. You just have to keep a low profile to yourself when doing these things to make money.

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10 Reasons Why Cheating Is Wrong

Talking Points for Parents to Share With Teens

Cheating has become an epidemic among teenagers. It's become so common that many teens think it's normal and they don't understand why it is wrong. Technology makes cheating easy  and it becomes harder for teachers to detect. Students use their smartphones to look up answers in class—or to text the answers to their friends. They can take someone else's work from the internet and try to pass it off as their own. There are apps to translate foreign language homework, and sometimes there are complete homework assignments posted on websites.

Some teens think they're helping their friends by doing their work for them. Others say they cheat because they feel like they're under immense academic pressure. Often, the pressure to "help" other students stems from the pressure today's teens feel to succeed. They may think their parents value achievement above all else or they may think getting into college at all costs is more important than honesty.

In 2012, 51% of teens admitted they had cheated on an exam in the past year and 32% admitted they had copied an Internet document for an assignment. An additional 55% of students surveyed said they'd lied to a teacher about something significant in the past year.

Top 10 Cheating Talking Points

Whether you suspect your teen may be doing his friends' homework for them or you're trying to be proactive in preventing any problems before they start, talk to your teen about some of the risks associated with cheating. These talking points can give you an idea of things you may want to address.

• Cheating is lying . Whether you copy off someone else's paper, or you plagiarize something you found online, you're claiming that you are responsible for the work.
• Cheating is a form of theft . Taking someone's work and calling it your own is stealing.
• Cheating is unfair to others . Students who work hard to get good grades  shouldn't have to compete with those who aren't doing their own work. Also, people will someday believe in your abilities. If your abilities are not real because you cheated, you will let those people down.
• Cheating is self-degrading . When you cheat, you are telling yourself that you do not believe in your own abilities enough to do the work on your own.
• Cheating is unfair to you . Accomplishment feels good and helps build self-esteem and self-confidence . These are two very important things to a happy successful adult.
• Cheating makes the next learning step harder . Using a simple example: if you don't learn your elements in Chemistry class you will not be able to make complex chemical equations. Therefore, to pass you will have to cheat again or start from scratch. It's easier to just learn the basics the first time.
• Cheating kills trust . Get caught cheating just once and authority figures will always have a hard time trusting you—even if you never cheat again.
• Cheating causes stress . Passing someone else's work off as your own means you'll have to be dishonest and being deceitful is inherently stressful. Keeping those secrets adds additional stress of being discovered as a cheater.
• Cheating is an insult to those who are teaching you. Knowledge is power and when someone shares knowledge with you it is a gift.
• Cheating doesn't end in high school. Cheating often becomes a shortcut. It turns into a bad habit that can follow you throughout college and your future career. Instead of being 'someone who cheated,' you're likely to become 'an ongoing cheater.'

Talking to Your Teen

Hold regular conversations with your teen about cheating. Ask questions like, "Do any of your friends cheat?" "Is cheating a big problem in your school?" or "Do you feel any pressure to cheat on your to try to get ahead?"

Listen to what your teen has to say about cheating. Ask your teen what she thinks constitutes cheating in today's digital world.

Cheating can be a little harder to define. Is it OK to use a website that translates your words into a foreign language? Is it cheating if you take a paper off the internet but put some of the sentences in your own words? Solicit your teen's opinions about these types of questions and then share your own ideas.

Keep in mind that it's important to be a good role model .   If you cheat on your taxes or you're dishonest when you're returning items to a store, your teen will learn it's OK to cheat the system. Show your teen the importance of being honest, even when it's hard, and emphasize that there are consequences for cheating .

Character Counts: Biennial report card on American youth by Josephson Institute of Ethics .

Bretag T. Challenges in addressing plagiarism in education . PLoS Med . 2013;(10)12:e1001574.  doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1001574

Korn L, Davidovitch N. The profile of academic offenders: Features of students who admit to academic dishonesty . Med Sci Monit . 2016;(22):3043-55.  doi:10.12659/MSM.898810

Ströfer S, Ufkes EG, Noordzij ML, Giebels E. Catching a deceiver in the act: Processes underlying deception in an interactive interview setting . Appl Psychophysiol Biofeedback . 2016;(41)3:349-62. doi:10.1007/s10484-016-9339-8

Barbaranelli C, Farnese ML, Tramontano C, et al. Machiavellian ways to academic cheating: A mediational and interactional model . Front Psychol . 2018;(9):695.  doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00695

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Communicating with your child: quick tips .

American Psychological Association. Beat the cheat .

By Amy Morin, LCSW Amy Morin, LCSW, is the Editor-in-Chief of Verywell Mind. She's also a psychotherapist, an international bestselling author of books on mental strength and host of The Verywell Mind Podcast. She delivered one of the most popular TEDx talks of all time.

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Common Reasons Students Cheat

Poor Time Management

The most common reason students cite for committing academic dishonesty is that they ran out of time. The good news is that this is almost always avoidable. Good time management skills are a must for success in college (as well as in life). Visit the Undergraduate Academic Advisement website  for tips on how to manage your time in college.

Stress/Overload

Another common reason students engage in dishonest behavior has to do with overload: too many homework assignments, work issues, relationship problems, COVID-19. Before you resort to behaving in an academically dishonest way, we encourage you to reach out to your professor, your TA, your academic advisor or even  UB’s counseling services .

Wanting to Help Friends

While this sounds like a good reason to do something, it in no way helps a person to be assisted in academic dishonesty. Your friends are responsible for learning what is expected of them and providing evidence of that learning to their instructor. Your unauthorized assistance falls under the “ aiding in academic dishonesty ” violation and makes both you and your friend guilty.

Fear of Failure

Students report that they resort to academic dishonesty when they feel that they won’t be able to successfully perform the task (e.g., write the computer code, compose the paper, do well on the test). Fear of failure prompts students to get unauthorized help, but the repercussions of cheating far outweigh the repercussions of failing. First, when you are caught cheating, you may fail anyway. Second, you tarnish your reputation as a trustworthy student. And third, you are establishing habits that will hurt you in the long run. When your employer or graduate program expects you to have certain knowledge based on your coursework and you don’t have that knowledge, you diminish the value of a UB education for you and your fellow alumni.

"Everyone Does it" Phenomenon

Sometimes it can feel like everyone around us is dishonest or taking shortcuts. We hear about integrity scandals on the news and in our social media feeds. Plus, sometimes we witness students cheating and seeming to get away with it. This feeling that “everyone does it” is often reported by students as a reason that they decided to be academically dishonest. The important thing to remember is that you have one reputation and you need to protect it. Once identified as someone who lacks integrity, you are no longer given the benefit of the doubt in any situation. Additionally, research shows that once you cheat, it’s easier to do it the next time and the next, paving the path for you to become genuinely dishonest in your academic pursuits.

Temptation Due to Unmonitored Environments or Weak Assignment Design

When students take assessments without anyone monitoring them, they may be tempted to access unauthorized resources because they feel like no one will know. Especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, students have been tempted to peek at online answer sites, Google a test question, or even converse with friends during a test. Because our environments may have changed does not mean that our expectations have. If you wouldn’t cheat in a classroom, don’t be tempted to cheat at home. Your personal integrity is also at stake.

Different Understanding of Academic Integrity Policies

Standards and norms for academically acceptable behavior can vary. No matter where you’re from, whether the West Coast or the far East, the standards for academic integrity at UB must be followed to further the goals of a premier research institution. Become familiar with our policies that govern academically honest behavior.

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How Do I Stop Students From Copying Each Other’s Homework Assignments?

Five steps that worked for me.

My students, like students everywhere, are smart and funny and creative and wonderful in so many ways. Also like students everywhere, they constantly seem to be looking for shortcuts on their homework. One of the bus drivers told me last year that the kids openly ask her to turn the interior lights on so they can finish copying homework before they get to school! Sigh. At least they’re motivated enough to copy, right?

This year, I made it a major goal to stop students from cheating. I put this five-step process in place, and it really cut down on the homework copying in my classroom. Here it is. 

Step 1: Check the quality of your assignments.

First of all, it’s worth taking a close look at the kind of homework you assign. If you do a lot of worksheets, you might find those work better for in-class activities. Instead, try focusing homework on in-depth writing assignments and individual written responses.

If you’re a math teacher, having kids respond in writing about how they solved a problem always works, as does having them write their own problems or exemplars for what they’ve been learning. Anything that requires student-generated content is automatically going to be harder to copy.

Step 2: Check the quantity.

Of course, this creates a lot more grading than worksheets, which led me to reflect on the amount of homework I assigned. At first, I found myself overwhelmed. I had to wonder if this was how my students felt when they looked at a night’s homework load. If there had been someone whose grading I could have copied, I probably would have done it!

The result? I assigned a lot less homework as the year went on. Put your homework to this test: If it’s not worth your time to grade carefully, it’s not worth the students’ time to do it.

Step 3: Explain the changes.

Once you’ve started assigning less homework, you’ll want to make your reasons explicit to your students. “I’m assigning less homework because I don’t want to waste your time. That means that anything I do assign is really important, and it’s important for you to actually do it on your own.” This speech went a long way with many of my students, but I had another trick up my sleeve.

Step 4: Allow time to learn and make mistakes.

You might also want to try a few get-out-of-jail-free cards when it comes to homework. My middle schoolers are still in the process of learning how to budget their time and stay organized, and sometimes they make mistakes. I gave each kid three one-day extensions that they could use over the course of the year to avoid a penalty for late homework.

There were certain assignments on which these could not be used, like rough drafts we needed to edit or group projects. It lowered the general stress level and set a culture of respect and accountability that encouraged my kids to plan ahead. For the naysayers who say, “The real world won’t give them extensions,” I would respectfully offer my disagreement. What? You’ve never posted your grades after the deadline?

Step 5: Bring the pain.

Although this cut down on copying substantially, kids will always test your limits. That’s when you move on to the final step. It works like this: Read every word of every assignment. Make sure you grade an entire class at once so you’ll know if a phrase or a creatively spelled word seems familiar, and then hunt back through 35 other papers until you find the one it’s copied from. It is important that you identify when students cheat and that your justice is swift and merciless.

I had an escalating system of consequences for cheating. First time, you split the grade. If the assignment gets a 90, each person gets a 45. Second time, each person gets a zero and a lunch detention. Third time, it’s a phone call home in addition to a zero and an after-school detention. Not a single kid made it to the third offense. They have to believe that you’re documenting this and you’ll follow through. Let them see you putting their names in your file so they know you know what offense they’re on. It is a logistical pain, but it’s effective.

So did my kids ace the standardized test because they had done their homework all year? Not to brag, but their writing scores were pretty high. And I don’t think they missed out on many valuable educational experiences when I stopped assigning worksheets. After all, they’d have just copied them anyway!

How do you stop students from cheating? Come and share  in our WeAreTeachers HELPLINE group  on Facebook. 

Plus, check out  how to give meaningful homework, even when it’s not graded ..

You Might Also Like

How to Give Meaningful Homework, Even When It’s Not Graded

“Is this going to be graded?” Oh, how we love to hear this. Continue Reading

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• Academic Dishonesty

How to Cheat on Homework

Last Updated: January 4, 2024

wikiHow is a “wiki,” similar to Wikipedia, which means that many of our articles are co-written by multiple authors. To create this article, 65 people, some anonymous, worked to edit and improve it over time. This article has been viewed 138,079 times. Learn more...

Sometimes it's just easier to not do the work. According to a recent study, 42% of freshmen at Harvard admitted to cheating on homework assignments, putting you in good company if you often feel like you've got better things to do than another worksheet. [1] X Research source Instead of going about it foolishly and copying off your friend right before class starts, get smart about your cheating. You can learn the best ways to finish off your math homework, your reading, and even cut some serious corners on your essays.

Cheating on Math or Short-Answer Homework

• First, you've got to make friends with the smartest kids in class, who always do the work correctly. It helps if you can share in the workload sometimes, alternating who does the homework and who copies, night to night. Don't be totally useless.
• The best times to copy homework are on the bus on the way home, or on the way to school. It's usually better to do it on the way home, so you can still try to actually do the homework if you need to. Never copy homework in class before class starts. Never talk about copying the answers in public, to your parents, or to other students. Keep it quiet.
• If you use this method, paraphrase. It does cause a little suspicion when two students have the exact same answer.

• To make the homework go faster, split up all the answers among the group. Have one person do the first five, another do the next five, and so on. You should be able to finish before the bus ride is over. Try to keep the group as small as possible.
• Don't make the group too big. If everyone names the first president of the United States as "George Washington Carver" on the homework, your teacher might be suspicious that something strange was happening. After you copy it, go back over it once by yourself to fix any obvious mistakes and make little changes to make it your own.

• Even just fixing the order of words in short answers can throw a teacher off the scent, if the answer is correct. Change "John Glenn was the first American in space" to "The first American in space was John Glenn."
• To stay extra covert, try to copy off of someone that your teacher doesn't think you're friends with. The teacher may be more likely to look more closely at the homework for signs of cheating if you're neighbors with someone, or if you're sitting next to someone.

• If you find your answers off the internet, make sure to paraphrase it so your teachers don't find out. Teachers are smart these days, so if you copy it directly, they could definitely find out.

• Online tutoring even exists in some places. Some college students will sometimes answer homework questions or offer assistance online, sometimes for a price. [2] X Research source If you can send copies of the questions, you might at least get some help figuring out the answer for yourself.

Reading Fast

• Skip everything but the vocab words in a textbook. The skipping-around method tends to work better with textbooks, in which the actual explanations aren't that important, but the names and the vocab words are. You can read the textbook very fast this way, and not miss much information.
• Alternatively, depending on the kind of class, it might be better to read the first and last chapter of a novel, or focus all your attention on a single small part of the book and bring it up in class, to look as if you've read the whole thing and are prepared for discussion.

• It's also easy to find a long plot synopsis online, so you can at least get a good list of the characters and the style of the novel.

• Ask your friends to summarize their 50 assigned pages (or however many it works out to be) and take good notes on the section, then copy out the notes for everyone in the group. After that, each person's work will be done. It's like reading a whole book by only reading 1/3 or a 1/2.

• It's still a good idea to do some research and figure out whether or not the movie is accurate. Lots of movies take serious liberties with the plot lines of books, and you'll likely miss the names of characters and other minor plot points that might get cut out of the movie but be important for the book.
• Good movies based on books commonly assigned for school include: Grapes of Wrath , Romeo & Juliet , Lord of the Flies,' Pride & Prejudice , Wuthering Heights , Of Mice and Men , and To Kill a Mockingbird .
• Bad movies to watch instead of reading the book include The Iliad ('don't watch 'Troy , starring Brad Pitt), Fahrenheit 451 , Catcher in the Rye , Beowulf , Romeo & Juliet , and The Great Gatsby . These are good ways to prove you haven't read the book.

• It's also a good idea to look for possible talking-points online before you even do the reading, so you can know what to look for and have a good idea of something to say in class. Participation points with no actual work.

Cheating on Essays

• Many older teachers will assign the same papers year after year, and won't keep copies of them, making it very difficult for them to remember one students paper after a year or two. Never do this if your teacher collects essays online, or saves digital copies. This makes it very easy to do a quick file search and find copied passages.
• Buying essays online is basically a scam for chumps, so don't get schemed out of your hard-earned lunch money by some enterprising con artist. If you don't know the person you're getting the essay from, write it yourself. In general, paying to cheat is a bad idea, friend, sibling, or otherwise.

• Make sure the response to the topic is still up-to-date and not incriminating. If you see opportunities to expand and make more current references, do it to bring everything together.
• Never copy-paste from online and turn it in without revising. If you do, go over the font and the size to make sure everything is uniform.
• Copying passages or whole chunks of text from online is always easy to find quickly. If you try this, you risk lots of trouble.

• Read the assignment sheet closely as you go over the copied essay, making sure that it does everything that it needs to for you to get a good grade. If it doesn't, you need to add that in. Hey, at least you didn't have to start from scratch.

Did You Know? In countries such as Bangladesh and Singapore, this is criminalized and carries severe penalties.

Expert Q&A

• Copy down friend's work the day its assigned because most people do it in class. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0
• If your homework questions are straight from a textbook, the internet will most likely have answers for them. If you are lucky, you can find a PDF of the teacher’s textbook, which has all the answers. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0

Tips from our Readers

• If your homework questions come straight from a textbook, you can often find the answers online or in a PDF version of the teacher's book. But just copying the textbook's answers word-for-word is dishonest. Use any answers you find as a guide, but explain things in your own words.
• If an assignment's got you stumped, get help ASAP instead of waiting until the last minute. Talk to your teacher, go to tutoring, or study with friends who get the material. Being proactive will leave you truly prepared, not desperately seeking shortcuts.
• With group projects, make sure everyone pulls their weight. Don't let some kids copy your work while they slack off. Set ground rules for dividing up the work and keeping each other accountable.
• If you get busted copying someone's work, don't make excuses or blame others. Own up to your mistake, take the consequences, and learn from it. Your character matters more than one assignment.
• Prioritize homework by due dates and percentage of each one's worth. It is better to fully complete a big project than rush through busy work just to check it off. Use your time wisely.
• Break up long readings into 30-45 minute chunks. Take short breaks between sessions to stay focused and absorb more than just cramming it all in one mega study blast.

• Be discreet. Don't suddenly start getting top marks, ensure you make a slow and steady transition or everyone will know you are cheating. Thanks Helpful 4 Not Helpful 0
• Some teachers understand that there isn't much they can do to prevent students from copying solutions either from friends or off the internet. Instead, well-written exams will enforce the no copying solutions policy better than the teacher can. Homework will be worth only a small portion of the grade while exams will be the main grade determiner. If you have been copying homework solutions, you may be in trouble when it comes to the exams. Thanks Helpful 2 Not Helpful 1
• Just because you aren't caught directly cheating doesn't mean that people don't know that you're cheating. News about who cheats gets around the school fast. Don't be surprised if people seem to not want to trust you anymore. Thanks Helpful 2 Not Helpful 2

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Homework cheating: is it any good?

Homework cheating is something that almost all students have at least heard mentioned. It is all the rage these days, and more and more students are jumping on the offer of a little bit of ‘cheating’ to help them make it through an assignment. But is this really good? Are there any benefits that are doing with homework cheating? Let’s look at the pros and the cons.

Pros of Homework Cheating

Of course the pros of homework cheating are the reason that so many students are taking advantage of these services. When you use homework cheats you will save a ton of time on the completion of your homework. Rather than spend time stuck on an answer and one question you can cheat and get that answer and move on the next question. Of course this also saves you a lot of headache and hassle, too, since you won’t get stressed trying to figure out what you are doing wrong.

Homework cheats enable you to take care of other assignments or duties while the homework is taken care of for you. You see, some of the homework cheats available offer the completion of the assignment in it’s entirely. So this means that you can get the paper done and out of your hair all while still earning a good grade. The amount of time leftover is amazing and one of the main reasons students uses them.

When you don’t understand an assignment the cheat is there to make it easier for you to understand. You can learn how to solve the problem while you’re there, so even more amazing benefits to come your way.

Cons of Homework Cheating

There are also cons associated with homework cheating. Those include:

• Well, it is cheating and it is unethical. No one should cheat.
• If you are caught using these cheat services you may get a 0 on your paper and a bad impression with the teacher
• You lack the chance to learn something when you use a cheat service.
• There may be fees and costs associated with the use of one of these homework cheat services, but this is all dependent upon the company or the website that you select to use.

The Bottom Line

There are pros and cons associated with using homework cheating, as you can see. Only you can make the determination of whether the pros outweigh the cons or vice versa.

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I found my husband was cheating on me through this fitness app — ‘that little weasel’.

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Her marriage had a good run. That is, until a workout app revealed that her husband was getting hot and sweaty with his mistress rather than burning calories while jogging. 

Red flag alerts ran through Megan McGee’s mind when her military hubby of four years randomly demanded “a break” from their holy matrimony in November 2020.

Searching for answers that might explain his sudden need for distance, the sleuthy blond scoured through her groom’s online activity to uncover his heart-rate-rising secrets. 

“I studied his running map on the Strava workout app and realized that he ran past, paused around, or ended at an address where a fellow Army girl lived,” McGee, 29, from Virginia, explained to The Post. “Their relationship had always given me a weird feeling and they were deployed together.”

“Discovering these maps was the clue that confirmed my suspicions about their [romantic] relationship — and the rest is history.”

And now, the betrayed bride is making TikTok history, sharing the shocking details of her marriage-ending discovery.

“I figured out my ex-husband was cheating on me through Strava,” she announced to a virtual audience of over 1.8 million internet viewers.

“Strava is a social media app where friends can follow each other and share their workouts with each other,” Mcgee said in the vid. “You can go on a run, a swim or a hike and post it to your Strava, and it will share with all of your Strava friends.”

The backstabbed belle went on to explain that workout warriors using the app are able to share a map of their exercise routes with pals, if they so choose. 

“When he first came home from deployment he wasn’t really going into to work a lot, so there were a lot of days he would go on runs,” she recalled while making chocolate chip banana bread. 

“There were times that I offered to go on runs with him, and he would make up some excuse about how he was going to run too far for me [or that] I wouldn’t be able to keep up,” added Mcgee. 

But when her unnamed hubby — who she cheekily refers to as “that little weasel” — arbitrarily decided he’d be taking a sabbatical from their wedded bliss, the millennial’s suspicions piqued. 

“This is when I started digging in and saying something bigger must be going on here,” said Mcgee.

And she was so right. 

Shortly after adopting the crack investigative skills of an FBI agent, a tech-savvy Mcgee was slammed with the ugly truth of her guy’s unfaithfulness. 

“What I ended up finding through [his] Strava running maps was that he would start his ‘run’ at our house and he would end it at her house,” said the wronged sweetheart while sharing a screenshot of her ex’s jog trail. “She lived probably a half of a mile away.”

“So while this didn’t tell me the whole story,” continued McGee, noting she’d also caught whispers of her former man’s misbehaviors from several additional sources. “It sure gave me a lot of reassurance about who he was cheating on me with and what he was doing all those times he was gone.”

And she’s far from the only lady to learn of a lover’s disloyalty via tattle-tale technology. 

“I found out [my man was cheating through] Venmo — those outlying social apps are wild,” a supportive commenter confessed beneath Mcgee’s chaotic clip. 

“I found out through our AMC account. Sooo many movie dates that I didn’t go on. Also, he was military,” penned a separate victim of adultery.

“I found out through Netflix because someone was binging Gossip Girl,” said another double-crossed damsel. 

Jessica Lowman, a digital content creator, busted her beau for having an affair after discovering a secret voice recording function in her Amazon Alexa speaker in October 2022. 

“I didn’t even know Alex stored this shizzz,” said Lowman in a viral video reveal. 

Dating expert Jana Hocking was shocked to find that a would-be inamorato she’d met online was cheating on his wife with her in December 2023. Hocking untangled the two-timing player’s messy web of deceit after noticing he’d placed privacy settings on their WhatsApp conversations. 

“If they put the disappearing messages setting on your WhatsApp chat I recommend you run,” she urged. “Your match is up to no good!.”

But rather than letting her scoundrel of an ex-husband run away scott-free, leaving her with a broken heart and bank account, Mcgee trusts that squeezing out some juicy specifics of the traumatic incident will help restore all that she’s lost. 

“I’m going to release the whole story as a series,” Mcgee said, revealing a plan to monetize her forthcoming tell-all snippets. “There are some wild details about the affair, the military, my ex-mother-in-law.”

“[I need] to get repaid for everything that was taken from me.”

She also hopes her sad saga inspires her fellow jilted gems.

“The person you marry is not the person you divorce. I married someone I loved, and I divorced ‘That little weasel,'” she told The Post. “Women [should] trust their intuition and feel confident that they will find happiness after a broken heart.”

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After a devastating breakup with a 'bad boy,' I learned a valuable lesson about self-worth that led me to my husband

• In my late 20s, I started dating a Hollywood writer who made me feel special.
• After I caught him cheating on me, I swore I'd never put up with "bad boy" behavior again.
• When I met my husband a few months later, I fell in love with his kindness and generosity.

I was in my late 20s, living in Los Angeles, trying to get acting work when I started dating a writer on a gritty cable television show. I met him through my theater company. I was drawn to his sense of humor, the way he put words on the page, and the bad boy glint in his dark brown eyes.

He was attentive and charming. At first, he made me feel beautiful and desirable. I lacked confidence ; I was in an industry that shredded what little I had, like last night's roast chicken. Dating him made me feel special.

But when he told me he couldn't take a date to an awards show and then turned up on TV with a gorgeous actress, I swallowed my hurt feelings and let him get away with it.

Instead of feeling special, I started to feel ashamed

Things got worse, but I was so desperate for love that I tolerated his excuses. When I found an unopened box of condoms beside his bed after we'd stopped using them, he told me he'd let a drunk buddy bring someone home. When my calls went to voicemail more often, he swore it was due to work.

One morning, after spending the night at my place, he mentioned he'd be out of town that weekend, but I didn't believe him. That Saturday night, my stomach in knots, I drove past his place and discovered his shiny BMW tucked into its spot in the gated parking lot.

Shaking, I pressed the number for his apartment, which I had helped him find and move into when he left his previous girlfriend.

"Who is it?" he crackled over the intercom.

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"Delivery," I answered, lowering my voice. He didn't cook and ordered food daily through Pink Dot, a Hollywood delivery service that existed long before DoorDash and GrubHub . He buzzed me in.

My heart pounded as I stepped out of the elevator. I still hoped for another excuse, an explanation that didn't end with my broken heart . Then I saw the look on his face as he held the door tight to his body.

"You can't come in. I have someone here, and I love her."

I tried to push past him, fury animating my bones. I had thought he loved me.

I didn't sleep for days, disgusted with him and with myself for being so stupid. The dishes grew moldy in the sink. I stopped answering my phone. Even drowning in heartache, a part of me recognized I was being handed an out. The man who left trash on the street for someone else to pick up was not a man whose values matched mine. The man my normally welcoming family actively disliked was not a man I'd keep bringing home.

I got clear on what I wouldn't tolerate and what I really wanted

On one of those sleepless nights, my eyes finally empty of tears, I vowed never again to tolerate this kind of relationship.

"I want a man who is generous and kind," I said aloud to myself. "I want a man who adores me, who sees me and loves me for who I am. I want to be enough."

It turned out I had already met my husband-to-be earlier that year at a birthday party. We'd sat next to each other, but I was so wrapped up in the writer that I didn't notice the handsome man to my left. When we met again months after the breakup, I didn't make the same mistake.

My husband-to-be quickly showed me he was a good man — not a 'bad boy'

On our first date , we went window shopping, and he bought me a wooden desk organizer that still sits in our office 23 years later. A few months after that, he surprised me with a trip to Canada to see my family. He was smart, funny, generous, kind, and adored me. He was exactly who I'd asked the stars for.

When the world was shut down during the pandemic, my old theater company friends reunited over Zoom. The writer was invited. I wasn't sure how I would feel seeing him again. As we all caught up, I realized I was grateful. Because of him, I learned to hold clear boundaries in a relationship . Because of him, I was able to recognize and appreciate when I met a man who, to this day, sees me, supports me, and loves me for who I am.

Watch: Having quality relationships can help you find happiness in the darkest moments

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