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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.

Charlie Wood

Juliane Bergmann

Kathy Gilsinan

Julian Chokkattu

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.

Adrienne So

David Nield

Angela Watercutter

• Our Mission

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.

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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Adolescence

Why adolescents cheat in school and what to do., when adolescents cheat in school they hurt themselves..

Posted June 27, 2009

They don't think so at the time, but when adolescents cheat in school they hurt themselves. Here's how it all works.

The psychological formula for cheating at school is simply this: cheating = sneaking + lying + stealing. You sneak to conceal what you are up to. You lie about what you have done. And you steal credit for performance you did not earn. So there are three ethical violations in one when you cheat by plagiarizing papers, copying homework, procuring answers on tests, or altering records.

Many adolescents will tell you there is nothing "wrong" with cheating. Because adolescence is a counter cultural period of growth, young people can see the adult run "system" as the enemy to oppose and also to manipulate. This is why "beating the system" is one common goal in adolescence. It shows how a young person is smarter than the ruling authorities and can get away with ignoring, getting around, or breaking rules that they impose.

Cheating in school - on homework, on papers, on tests, on records - symbolically represents this rebellious power. Today's battle between teachers and students over the various subversive uses of cell phones (and other hand held devices) in school is one arena where this opposition is currently being played out.

I have heard other adolescent rationales for cheating in addition to "beating the system." "Everybody does it sometimes." That's the majority rule rationale. "It's stupid to play by the rules when others don't because you put yourself at a disadvantage." That's the ‘keep up with competition rationale. "With so much pressure and stress from work, I need all the shortcuts I can get." That's the efficiency rationale. Then the one that really set me back was this. "My parents would rather I get dishonest A than an honest B." That's the ambitious parents' rationale.

From what I have seen, low motivated students tend to cheat the least because cheating takes more effort than simply not doing the work at all. Moderate achieving students tend to cheat to get out of doing their own work. High achieving students tend to cheat for competitive advantage as they strive to get ahead.

Teachers tend to let possible cheating go because it takes special surveillance to detect, and they avoid confronting or sanctioning a cheater because that can entail a conference with defensive and angry parents. Policing cheating can take and stir up a lot of trouble.

So how should school deal with cheating? Here I have to give a double message: accept that it will go on but take an official position against it. Accept that with all the rationales adolescent students have, many young people will perceive it as an accepted way to get out of work and to get ahead. However, set and communicate school policies and procedures to prohibit it for students to live up to. School staff must set an adult cultural norm that opposes cheating to compete with the adolescent norm that can support it.

As for encouraging students to report other students who are cheating to uphold the school honor system, there is little positive incentive for students to do so. The cultural rationales for cheating are in place, and more important, informing on another student is not likely to win friends, and may result in some social reprisal. There is no glory from turning in a peer.

The problem is, however, that the experience of growing up is a formative one. Now = later. The adolescent of today is the adult of tomorrow. Therefore, cheating one's way through school can encourage cheating one's way through life. I believe parents and teachers do have a responsibility for encouraging ethical behavior in adolescence that encourages ethical behavior in adulthood.

If getting students to police the cheating of other students is not the best option for the school, there is another. Teach students to police their own cheating behavior. Why would they want to do that? Because of the psychological costs that accompany cheating.

The interesting thing about the student rationales for cheating is why they are necessary at all. Because they are self-justifying these defenses are all evidence of how most adolescents, on some level, experience cheating as an act doing something "wrong." So by cheating, you are creating an ethical conflict within your self.

In addition, when you cheat to beat the system, you are cheating (unfairly competing) with people who are not cheating. So cheating is not only anti-authority; it is anti-peer (even your friends.) It's like the athletes who dope when playing against those who don't. Cheating puts you at an unfair advantage. The example that a lot of students can relate to is doping in sports, where athletes rely on performance enhancing drugs to elevate their play.

Then there are other costs. Cheating lowers self-esteem . It is an admission that you don't have the will or capacity it takes to meet a performance demand or challenge by dealing with it honestly and directly through your own efforts. Cheating creates ignorance. You get the answers without ever learning to work on the questions. And of course, cheating creates jeopardy. Cheaters have to live with the fear . They worry about being found out, caught, and punished.

Finally, cheating puts you in a false position. The appearance or reputation of competence and knowledge you create is very different from the secret reality only you know. This is why a cheater can feel like a fraud.

A high school counselor once told me an example of this cost. She said a student who had graduated five years before came back to her because his history had finally caught up with him. "I cheated my way through high school," he confessed, "then college, and now I'm accepted into medical school, and I don't know all that I'm supposed to know. What should I do?" The counselor's advice: "Delay your admission for one or two years to actually study what you missed, and never cheat on yourself again." And her final phrase has always stuck with me. Cheating is ultimately an offense against oneself.

So if your teenager decides to cheat at school, at least tell the young person this. "Cheating is powerfully instructive and personally harmful. Cheating to get out of doing school work or to get ahead teaches you to treat yourself like a sneak, a liar, and a thief."

For more about parenting adolescents, see my book, "SURVIVING YOUR CHILD'S ADOLESCENCE" (Wiley, 2013.) Information at: www.carlpickhardt.com

Next week's entry: To graduate college -- hold a part time job.

Carl Pickhardt Ph.D. is a psychologist in private counseling and public lecturing practice in Austin, Texas. His latest book is Holding On While Letting Go: Parenting Your Child Through the Four Freedoms of Adolescence.

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Instructors say shared homework answers are easy to pick out. (Courtesy of Kristin Dudley and Anastasia Foster)

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Cheating on homework can hurt students in long run

• By JAKE SOHN Campus Editor
• Sep 25, 2013
• Sep 25, 2013 Updated Sep 25, 2013

Whether it takes five minutes or 10 hours, everyone has homework.

Many might consider homework an integral part of the learning process through its repetition and application. Being outside the classroom to finish a homework assignment might tempt students to copy someone else’s work to save time.

Jessica Sacha, a senior in the College of Technology, said she has a lot of homework for her classes and they require both simple and thought-out answers.

“I do a lot of coding for homework and if you copy someone else’s work, the professor can easily tell,” Sacha said.

Purdue has a strict academic dishonesty policy, which includes cheating or copying homework assignments. The policy states that the consequences of cheating is up to the instructors to handle.

If an instructor concludes a student is guilty of cheating on an assignment or exam, he or she can punish the student by giving a lower or failing grade on the assignment or in the course. The Office of Dean of Students also encourages instructors to report the case for record keeping purposes and possible sanctions. These sanctions include a warning, probation, probated suspension, suspension and expulsion.

Homework assignments are meant for additional instruction and supplemental learning. But for whatever reason, students might find themselves copying their friend’s assignment to get the job done and receive the highest grade possible.

Liberal arts courses such as English and sociology may require written essays. For that reason, it is easy for professors to spot plagiarism and compare it with other students’ essays for cheating. Science, technology, engineering and mathematics courses, however, have specific answers professors are looking for. By having one possible answer for each question, this can make it easier for students to cheat and copy each other’s answers.

David Koltick, a professor of physics, said he encourages students to work together on homework assignments, but he can tell when students have been copying other students’ assignments by looking at their exam scores.

He said a student who copies others’ homework is like a violinist turning in a recording of his or her friend playing violin and claiming it as his or her own. For that very reason, he doesn’t use homework as an important discriminator in the overall grade of the student.

“The exam is like a recital for a musician,” Koltick said. “Just as a musician can make many mistakes in practice, it is the recital that determines the quality of the music. Exactly the same during a physics exam. So copying on homework in no way helps a physics student in my class any more than turning in a recording of a gifted friend playing violin useful in a recital.”

Saugata Basu, a professor in mathematics, said although it may seem like there’s always only one answer in a math problem, that’s not always the case.

“Most math questions, which asks to produce proofs, have many different correct answers that is proofs,” Basu said. “Of course, there is a well-defined notion of a ‘wrong answer’ too – corresponding to wrong proofs containing a wrong implication. But there is certainly no ‘one’ answer.”

Programs such as SafeAssign allow instructors to easily check for plagiarism and citations for every submitted paper. Electronic eyes might pick up more errors and signs of plagiarism than human eyes.

Whether it’s easy to cheat or not, Sacha said it’s important to have a personal policy about letting friends copy your work.

“I’ve never let anyone copy my homework,” Sacha said. “I never have and I never will.”

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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.

• Adolescents
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• Intrinsic goals
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The Ethicist

If My Classmates Are Going to Cheat on an Online Exam, Why Can’t I?

By Kwame Anthony Appiah

• April 7, 2020

Because of efforts to slow the spread of Covid-19, the large university I attend has, like many others, transitioned to online instruction for the foreseeable future. In-person classes are not prohibited, but the administration has strongly recommended against them. Because we are on the quarter system, our final exams are scheduled for next week, immediately before our spring break. This means that professors must choose from a number of less-than-ideal options for administering exams.

Some have given students the choice of an optional final, or canceled them altogether, basing their grade entirely on past work. Others have chosen to use an online service that monitors students while they take their tests in order to ensure that they do not cheat. The downside of this service is that it requires access to a computer with a webcam, a reliable internet connection and access to a quiet, empty room. Those requirements pose a challenge for many college students, particularly those with fewer resources — and more roommates.

In consideration of this, another popular option is to require an online exam with a request for academic honesty as the only safeguard against cheating. Based on conversations I’ve had with and heard among classmates, I think it is fair to assume that the vast majority of students will take advantage of the resources now available to them (i.e., notes, friends, the internet) in order to succeed. This will result in a much higher average performance than an in-person exam would, putting anyone who does not cheat at a disadvantage as any grading on a curve would hurt him or her.

While I know that it is dishonest to cheat and I value my integrity, I also want to maintain a high G.P.A., and it seems that those goals are in conflict with each other. I plan to take my exam for an uncurved class in accordance with academic-honesty policies, but would it be entirely unacceptable to consult my friends or notes minimally during a curved class’s final? Delaney

It’s a familiar protest: “But everyone else is doing it!” You won’t be surprised that the Ethicist takes a dim view of this argument. Cheating, being a form of dishonesty, is wrong even when rampant.

But beyond the poor choices your classmates are making, I’m concerned about the poor choices your professors are making. A setup that encourages cheating and penalizes honesty is a badly designed one. Students should not be led unnecessarily into temptation.

Why not tell your instructors, in both the curved and uncurved classes, that it makes sense to have an open-book exam? Doing this might require changing the test. But given the circumstances you describe, it may be the only responsible option.

If a professor insists on ignoring these realities, however, you should still do the honest thing. Ethics is always, in part, about what kind of person you ought to be. Even though your integrity could cost you on the curve, it has distinct advantages when it comes to looking yourself in the eye.

I’m the executive director of a small nonprofit whose employees can easily work remotely. In implementing our remote-work plan, I shared with the staff that the office isn’t 100 percent off limits: I will stop by a couple of times a week to get the mail; another person will be by from time to time to water his plants; we may need to pick up a document here and there. All of that is fine and doesn’t contradict our attempt to do the social distancing public-health officials are recommending.

But for me, working at home is very unappealing. I live in a very small house with a spouse who will also most likely be home, no private space to set up for my work and a dog that is a big barker, which will interrupt the many phone meetings I will need to conduct.

From an ethical perspective, may I work from the office alone, while everyone else works remotely? If I do so, do I need to be explicit with our team and offer it to others?

I believe that most people see remote work as an attractive option — you don’t need to dress up, can be running laundry while working, can have lunch with your spouse. Not me. May I go to the office, even though we have instituted a remote-work policy? Name Withheld

Your worry is, in essence, that you would be taking advantage of your position of authority to grant yourself a privilege. So suppose you were just another staff member. Would a fair-minded boss grant you permission to do this?

To make that determination, this boss would need to survey staff members and confirm your hunch that most people prefer to work remotely. If you were the only person who wanted to work in the office, there’d be no worries either about unfairness or about social exposure. Even if a couple of you wanted to work in the office — assuming that your state hasn’t ordered nonessential workers to stay at home and that you’d be getting to work in a way (by car, say) that risked no further exposure — you each might be able to maintain distancing on the occasions when you were both in the building. Under those circumstances, what you have in mind could be just fine: There would be no harm in doing what a reasonable boss would agree to your doing. You’ll need to be transparent, then, and make sure that your assumptions are warranted. But as long as your use of the office is something you can defend to your staff in this sort of way, they shouldn’t regard it as unfair.

My partner and I are both employed and have two children in a day care center. Our oldest attends four days a week, and our youngest attends two days a week. My partner works four days a week as a registered nurse at a clinic, and I am employed full time at a higher-education institution as a director.

Recently, in response to the coronavirus, my employer required all nonessential employees to work remotely until further notice. In addition to a number of other directives, the governor of our state encouraged day care centers to stay open.

We are in a fortunate position to suffer no significant financial consequence keeping our children at home while I work remotely. Admittedly, I would not be as productive in this situation as I could otherwise be, but my employer is understanding. However, even if we choose to keep our children at home, we will continue to be charged weekly tuition from the day care center so long as it remains open.

My partner and I have debated continuing to take our children to day care. Is it selfish to send your children to day care if you can easily keep them at home? Are we selfish to focus on “getting our money’s worth” for each week? Are families with the means to stay at home with children obligated to do so for the public good, even if it means forfeiting fees for something they’re not using? James E., Minneapolis

Your partner is a nurse and so should be in a position to assess whether the kids’ going to day care poses risks to them and to others, including you. Public-health experts, I will note, tend to be more concerned with the prospect of children’s spreading infection than falling ill with it. If getting sick isn’t a big problem for most kids, though, having sick parents definitely is. So do your best to maintain social distancing for their sake as well as yours. And that probably means keeping them home. You think that having kids underfoot will reduce your productivity. You might consider how your productivity will be affected if you come down with Covid-19.

As for your sunk costs? You should forget about getting value for money, given that you’re clearly in a position to put that aside. Even if you don’t send your kids to the center, you’ll be supporting a place that is relied upon by parents who don’t have the luxury of deciding to keep their kids at home. In this respect, you’re making another social contribution, beyond the one you’d make by social distancing. More we-thinking and less me-thinking is one thing that’s needed from all of us right now.

Kwame Anthony Appiah teaches philosophy at N.Y.U. His books include “Cosmopolitanism,” “The Honor Code” and “The Lies That Bind: Rethinking Identity.” To submit a query: Send an email to [email protected]; or send mail to The Ethicist, The New York Times Magazine, 620 Eighth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10018. (Include a daytime phone number.)

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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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Why Cheating in School is Wrong: 15 Reasons and Consequences

Cheating in School Wrong

In recent times, students have been engaging in cheating, especially in colleges and universities.

However, it is something you should consider not doing. In this guide, we explore all the reasons why cheating in school is wrong and the ethical questions on why you should try to avoid it.

The issue of cheating is diverse, but its main motivation comes from the desire for better grades. There is also a high burden of work.

Students who use our homework help service note that the burden of the assignments is too much. Check our homework help service and learn how to do it better.

However, others earn higher grades and escape the hard work of passing tests fairly. Let us discuss why this could land you in trouble.

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Why Cheating in School is Wrong

1. cheating hampers progress.

The main reason why we learn is usually to build in the future. When we are learning in various institutions, we obtain several basics. These basics are what we apply in the future to solve the problems we encounter.

If you cheat, you will not know these basics. You will have two options. Either to continue cheating or start learning newly. This becomes a stumbling block to any progress you want to make.

Every student, regardless of their study level, should know that when cheating, you are not learning lessons or skills that could be important later in life.

2. Cheating is not Different from Stealing and Lying

The instructor always expects that every piece of work you hand in was completed through your effort.

When you present the work as your own and know that you cheated, that is lying.

By doing this, you will always take credit for the wrong purposes and may feel guilty.

Cheating becomes stealing when you hand in assignments to your instructor as your own and it belongs to someone else or was done by someone else.

3. Cheating is Unfair to Others

When you cheat, you do not deserve any plaudit. You may feel good after cheating and even get a better grade, but your recognition will be unfair.

When you think of it, it is very unfair to cheat in school and get better grades than your fellow students who studied hard and worked to achieve what they have achieved.

The students also feel bad if they notice. They did everything right and you just found a mechanism to surpass them. It is usually very frustrating when you play by the rules and someone just decides to cheat.

4. Cheating causes Stress

Students think that cheating is easy. It is not. The psychological torture you put yourself into can cause stress. When you decide to cheat, you constantly worry about being caught.

Consequences of cheating may land you into must cross your mind. Whether it’s your parents’ reaction or the disciplinary actions of your school. You even come up with a fake story that you will use to cover up for your actions when caught.

You will always feel insecure if you suspect somebody knows about your cheating and might report you to the administration. All these thoughts are too much to hold into and may eventually cause stress.

5. Cheating in school is unfair to you

The pleasure comes from knowing you completed an assignment or a test independently. You will feel good. Lack of confidence is one of the effects of cheating in college, making it feel unfair to yourself.

You will also build self-confidence in every academic work you do and build your self-esteem too. On the other hand, it feels bad to cheat.

In addition, you may score a high grade on your assignment, but deep down, you will know that you do not deserve it.

When you cheat, you doubt your abilities. You will never find out if you can make it on your own.

6. Cheating Becomes a Habit

When you cheat, you will most probably get a high grade. This will always give you the motivation to cheat again and again.

If you start cheating early in your academics, it becomes a habit and will follow you to high school, colleges, universities, and even in your career. It just becomes a part of you and spreads in everything you do in life.

When you become a cheating addict, it is very unlikely that you will know what is acceptable behavior. Cheating is a demonstration that you disregard others.

7. Eventually, Cheating leads to Course Failure

Success is usually hard to achieve but cheating offers a way out. When you cheat, you usually forego the hard work that every learner must be involved in to succeed.

Hard work instills traits in you that are important in the future. These traits include sacrifice, dedication, persistence, diligence, trustworthiness, and honesty.

It is usually very hard to achieve your goals in the future without these traits. When you are caught cheating in an examination, you fail that examination or even get expelled.

At the same time, failure and bad behavior at school may hinder you from getting a good job in the future.

8. Cheating in College kills Trust

Everyone in institutions is opposed to cheating. You will completely ruin people’s trust in you if you are caught cheating.

The number of times doesn’t matter. One incident of cheating ruins trust.

You may opt never to cheat again but it will be very hard to regain your trust.

Everyone will have a hard time trying to trust you. Even when you submit your work to the instructors, they will always be suspicious and check it thoroughly before giving it back to you.

When people who have witnessed you cheating hear about you cheating again, their opinions will always be compromised, even if you are honest.

9. Cheating is Disrespectful

Cheating is a form of disrespect to our instructors. Instructors sacrifice a lot to see their students succeed. They work very hard, spend a lot of time with students, share knowledge with them, and treat students as their children.

Remember that all this effort is put in because they intend to see their students succeed in academics, careers, and life.

When you get involved in cheating, you have disregarded and disrespected all the instructor’s efforts to ensure you succeeded genuinely. Cheating is also disrespecting your fellow students.

10. Cheating is Embarrassing

Have you ever thought of how people will treat you when you get caught cheating? Your actions are always responsible for how those around you treat you.

Cheating expresses you as incompetent, disrespectful, unintelligent, selfish, lazy, and a person who cannot be trusted. You will feel embarrassed when those around you disregard you.

When you cheat, many institutions are likely to expel you. Think of the embarrassment that this can cause you. Cheating instances are always recorded.

Imagine being barred from reporting to a college and returning home because you cheated in your examinations. You will be seriously embarrassed if you cheat on a test.

11. Cheating makes the next Learning step Harder

When you cheat, you don’t learn and understand the basics. When you cheat in an introduction test, you will find it hard to understand the next topic of study.

This will lead you to cheat again. When you cheat in the final examinations at any level of study, you will find it harder to understand even the simplest concepts in the next level.

For example, when you cheat in your senior examinations and you are admitted to a college to do a course, chances are you will not succeed in this course because it will exhaust your capabilities. Unless you decide to cheat again.

12. In higher education, you can be Sued for Cheating

When you get to a college or university, one of the first things your instructors teach you is always to present original work.

Cheating and presenting work that is not yours can land you in trouble. You can be sued in court for cheating on a paper.

You are accused of copyright infringement. Only the owner of the work can accuse you of copyright infringement.

You must pay the owner for using his work without permission if proven guilty.

13. Cheating in school is a ‘Broken Window.’

The broken window theory dictates that petty acts that show disobedience and instances of not being civilized can cause much more serious crimes in the future.

When small crimes go unnoticed and unpunished, it seems no one is watching. Academic cheating can be easily classified as a broken window. When young students get away with academic dishonesty, they may assume that no one cares.

This can easily lead them to accept that no one will notice when they commit a more serious offense because no one cares.

14. Cheating in college undermines learning

Cheating usually disrupts learning. When a student is given an assignment and gives it to another student to do it for him, he will not learn what the instructor intended him to learn from the test.

Normally when exams are near, students are supposed to learn and revise for the exam. When the student knows he will carry a book to the exam room and copy the exam, he will not learn nor revise the topics involved.

At the same time, when cheating is a shortcut to passing an examination, the students disregard learning activities. While getting good grades is one of the reasons why students cheat, it undermines the learning process.

15. Cheating Devalues Diplomas and Degrees

We should not only look at cheating in schools using the students’ perspective alone. Some schools, mostly colleges and universities, help their students cheat in school to gain credibility and rise through the ranks of top institutions.

This becomes very tricky when it becomes known to the public that the institutions cheat. All graduates from these institutions will suffer.

Their degrees and diplomas become less valuable. They can be fired from their current jobs. Unemployed people will also experience difficulties when trying to secure jobs.

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Ethical Questions about Cheating in Colleges

How do non-cheating students perceive it.

Institutions should be concerned about how non-cheating students view cheating. Most students may feel comfortable not reporting those involved in cheating. They see it as normal. Some fear intimidation from others if they report those involved in cheating.

Have Institutions Failed to Enforce Moral Values of Academic Integrity

The importance of curbing academic dishonesty must be considered if all approaches to curb it are to be developed. Morals such as respect, honesty, and self-discipline must be enforced in all institutions.

Are Students Trained in Making Ethical Decisions in Schools?

It is very obvious for a student trained to make ethical decisions to avoid cheating in examinations. Students who tend to cheat will probably engage in misbehavior or make other unethical decisions.

A study on cheating behavior showed that students who cheated in the experimental test are likelier to engage in other behavior that violates school policies. This proves that cheating is part and parcel of moral issues that educational institutions should address.

Institutions should set up seminars to teach students how to make the right decisions and enhance their academic skills.

A Universal Honor Code in Universities and Colleges

We might strive for academic integrity each day of our life but if the disciplinary actions depend on the instructor, we can never progress. Some instructors may favor some students over others.

Some instructors can even be bribed. This means that no action will be taken. The honor code should provide a unison action that is to be taken against anyone involved in cheating in all institutions.

Watch this video to learn more about this.

With over 10 years in academia and academic assistance, Alicia Smart is the epitome of excellence in the writing industry. She is our managing editor and is in charge of the writing operations at Grade Bees.

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Is Chegg Cheating? In These 5 Situations, Yes

Is Chegg cheating? In many cases, the answer is yes. Chegg is cheating if you use Chegg Study in college to complete homework, answer quiz questions, or answer exam questions.

With that summary statement out of the way, we’re going to explore Chegg Study and other Chegg services, as well as detail several levels of cheating with Chegg.

You can also check out our comprehensive 5,000-word review of Chegg’s services . If there’s anything you want to know about check, there’s a good chance you’ll find the answer in that article.

What is Chegg Anyway?

So what is Chegg? The answer to that question has actually changed quite a bit over the years. At its core though, Chegg is an educational technology company. They make money by using technology to offer various services to students.

Back when Chegg launched in 2000, its offerings were simple: an online scholarship search function, online matching for internships, and advice for getting into college. At the time, Chegg was just another startup launched by three students at Iowa State University.

The service that launched Chegg’s success was only inspired later, by Netflix. When Chegg started renting out textbooks, they struck a gold mine that turned them from just another startup into a successful nationwide company.

This textbook rental service was at the core of Chegg’s success and growth. Chegg first started renting out textbooks in 2007, and by 2013 they were listed on the New York Stock Exchange as a publicly-owned corporation.

So what does this have with cheating? Well, nothing. If you’d asked “Is Chegg cheating?” a few years ago, the answer would have been a clear no.

The Chegg cheating accusations have only sprung up in response to an entirely different area of Chegg’s business which they launched later—a subscription service called Chegg Study.

What is Chegg Study?

Chegg Study led to skyrocketing revenue for the EdTech giant, and also came with its fair share of controversy. But what is Chegg Study? In short, Chegg Study is a subscription service that helps students with college.

Digging in further, Chegg Study is divided into textbook answers and answers to students’ questions.

On the textbook answers side, the service is what it sounds like. You look up your course textbooks, find the appropriate question, and read Chegg’s answer. The Chegg answers also include step-by-step instructions to complete each problem.

Then there are the student question and answers. Subscribers can provide a question or problem to Chegg, and expect an answer back within 24 hours, and sometimes in as little as 15 minutes!

Chegg Study subscribers can also view questions and answers from all other Chegg subscribers. Because of Chegg’s popularity, there is now a huge database of answered questions, so in many cases students can find the answers without even having to wait 15 minutes.

How is Chegg Study possible? According to Forbes , Chegg employs over 70,000 advanced degree-holders in India, so there’s always someone standing ready to answer students questions in math, engineering, the sciences, and pretty much any other academic area you can think of.

You may already understand where the Chegg cheating accusations are coming from, but we’ll spell it out for you very clearly in the next section.

Is Chegg Cheating? 5 Ways College Students Cheat With Chegg

When people ask, “Is Chegg cheating?”, they’re most likely referring to Chegg Study. Yes, there are peripheral subscription services like Chegg Math Solver and Chegg Writing. However, it’s Chegg Study that’s at the core of the controversy and the core of Chegg’s revenue growth.

As we stated at the beginning of this article, using Chegg Study to answer questions on homework, quizzes, tests, and exams is cheating.

Every university that we know of has a student code of conduct that all freshmen have to sign, and using Chegg Study to complete college work violates those codes of conduct.

What are the consequences of cheating with Chegg? Well, that question deserves a more nuanced answer, so we’re going to outline five ways that college students cheat with Chegg.

1. Checking Homework

The most tame form of cheating with Chegg is when students do the homework themselves and then use Chegg to check the answers.

In this scenario, students are still actually learning the material, but it is still cheating. Why? Because students would have missed at least a handful of questions over the semester, and with Chegg Study it’s possible to get 100% on the course homework.

Because using Chegg Study to check homework improves students’ grades, it is still a form of cheating. Students caught doing this could still face disciplinary action from their college or university.

The chances of getting caught are much lower, and students at least are learning the course material, but checking homework with Chegg does violate all the code of conduct agreements we’ve seen.

2. Doing Homework

The second level of cheating with Chegg is using Chegg Study to do the homework, and not spending any time trying to figure questions out personally.

This second level comes with much more significant downsides for students. To be specific:

• Students don’t learn the content if they aren’t doing any of the homework themselves, which will make any future courses in the subject even more difficult
• Students often get crushed by quizzes and exams, hurting their grades
• When a student aces homework but fails exams, it’s pretty clear to professors that the student is cheating. In these cases, professors are much more likely to seek proof of cheating which can lead to severe disciplinary action.

In short, this common practice known as chegging can lead to some very bad student outcomes. Students trying to breeze through entire courses with Chegg Study won’t learn nearly as much, and have a high likelihood of being investigated by professors.

3. Submitting Homework Questions to Chegg Study

When a professor does suspect a student of cheating, they or their university can contact Chegg. According to anecdotal evidence, Chegg has cooperated with universities and professors at some level.

Chegg evidence may include such things as the IP address of the account that asked a particular question on Chegg Study. In these cases, it’s much easier for the university to discipline a student if they have proof that the student posted a homework question on Chegg.

In short, submitting homework questions increases the risks of disciplinary action, compared to just reading answers to questions that others submitted.

Students who submit questions to Chegg Study aren’t necessarily cheating any more than those in our second category. They just have a significantly higher chance of getting caught and disciplined.

4. Convincing Other Students to Use Chegg

In our full Chegg review , we also explore the question of whether it’s illegal to cheat in college with Chegg.

One law firm suggested that many instances of college cheating are not prosecuted—they are simply disciplined by the university (expelled, etc.). Students are more likely to be prosecuted in cases of bribery of fraud, where the university can demonstrate that it was negatively impacted as an institution.

As you can see, convincing a group of classmates to cheat with Chegg could be a much more serious offense than simply cheating alone. In these cases, students may be disciplined more strictly by universities, and the possibility of legal prosecution also comes into play.

5. Answering Quiz and Exam Questions with Chegg Study

Chegg Study’s popularity happened to take off during the Covid-19 pandemic. Correlation is not causation, but we will say there are anecdotal reports of students using Chegg to answer quiz and exam questions.

Many of these instances relate to virtual quizzes and exams, with various levels of remote proctoring. As proctoring technology and practices have improved, it’s become harder for students to cheat (with Chegg or otherwise).

According to one story we shared in our full Chegg review, some students have even attempted to use Chegg during exam bathroom breaks.

As you can imagine, cheating on quizzes and exams ups the ante even further in terms of cheating in college, and can result in some of the strongest disciplinary actions from professors and universities.

Is Chegg Cheating? The Conclusion

Chegg offers services that aren’t remotely related to cheating, such as its textbook rental services.

Even with Chegg Study, it is possible to use the service without cheating. For example, it wouldn’t be cheating if a student was going through a textbook personally or asking questions unrelated to their college coursework.

However, it’s clear that some Chegg Study subscribers are using the service to answer homework problems, and more in some cases.

Just as its always been, getting someone else to do college coursework is cheating, and that’s how some students are using Chegg Study.

If you’ve enjoyed this article, we’ve got a lot more content on colleges, scholarships, and more. You can check out our rankings of the best accredited online college programs in America , or our step-by-step guide on how to write a great scholarship essay .

Thanks for visiting, and we wish you the best in your educational and career journey!

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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 138,815 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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