FREE ESSAY ON FOCUS ON ETHICS

FOCUS ON ETHICS

Tuesday, February 15, 2000 
Focus on Ethics Can Curb Cheating, Colleges Find
Behavior: Academic dishonesty is rampant, but students will respond to higher standards
of integrity, a study shows.
By KENNETH R. WEISS, Times Education Writer
Copyright 2000 Los Angeles Times 
DAVIS, Calif.--Grappling for ways to halt the spread of plagiarism and other cheating in
college, professors often get stuck on the idea that it's too late to change students'
behavior by the time they reach college. 
But a growing number of campuses, backed by new research, are out to prove otherwise.
Student behavior is affected by the communities we build, said Gary Pavela, the
University of Maryland's director of judicial programs and student ethical conduct.
Students cheat in high school in part because the think everyone else does. But students
can change their ways if colleges clearly demand honesty, engage students in ethical
issues and put them in charge of enforcement, said Pavela and his colleagues at such
schools as UC Davis and Kansas State University, which are in the vanguard of a new
movement to change the academic culture.
A new large-scale study suggests they may be right.
Although a startling 68% of college students admitted in an anonymous survey last fall
that they engaged in some form of serious cheating, self-reported cheating was 10
percentage points lower on campuses that simply make a big fuss about academic integrity.
The rates dipped even lower at colleges with formal honor codes.
The survey results, which are to be released this week, are the first indication that
anti-cheating campaigns are making inroads at the large public universities where many
professors fear a spreading epidemic of academic dishonesty.
The results directly challenge the broad view that a kid's ethical views at age 17 or 18
are set by their parents for good or ill, Pavela said.
Administrators and student leaders have cribbed ideas from smaller colleges with
traditional honor codes and modified them to work on large campuses.
At UC Davis, the topic of academic integrity is everywhere, brought up by the students
themselves. As final exams approach each term, students give their peers free cards
stamped, Honesty is the only policy, and free No. 2 pencils with the inscription: Fill in
your own bubble or be in trouble.
Older students do skits to show incoming freshmen what can happen if they violate the
code of academic conduct. Professors and their teaching assistants regularly turn in
undergraduates for the smallest of infractions.
In case students somehow miss the point, every Wednesday the campus newspaper's judicial
report reveals all the embarrassing details--except for names--of what one sophomore
calls a parade of unbelievably stupid acts of plagiarism, improper collaboration and
wandering eyes.
All this attention on cheating seems to make a difference.
I would never want to cheat here--it's just too scary, said Tina Valenzuela, a UC Davis
senior who wants to go to veterinary school. Just the fact that if you get caught, you'd
read about it in the paper.
At UC Davis, only 31% of students reported that they got the questions or answers from
someone else who had already taken a test before they did--one of the most common forms
of cheating.
By comparison, on campuses that place less emphasis on academic integrity or ignore the
issue altogether, 54% of students reported getting questions or answers.
A skeptic might ask if students at schools with honor codes are simply less likely to
admit--even anonymously--that they have violated the rules. Donald L. McCabe, the Rutgers
University management professor who conducted the newest study, part of a decade of
research on the subject of cheating, thinks not.
Lower cheating rates at honor code schools are validated by surveys of faculty and by
students who have attended both kinds of institutions, McCabe said. 
McCabe's latest survey, which last fall collected the responses of 2,100 students and
1,000 faculty members at 21 campuses across the country, showed that:
* Nationwide, most forms of cheating remain at or near record levels.
* Men admit to more cheating than women, fraternity and sorority members more than
nonmembers; students with lower grade-point averages say they cheat more than those with
high GPAs.
* Students pursuing degrees in journalism and communications, business and engineering
reported cheating more than those in the sciences, social sciences or humanities.
* Only 9.7% of students reported plagiarizing a paper in any way using the Internet,
suggesting that such cheating is not as rampant as some fear.
* Nearly 88% of faculty reported that they observed some form of serious cheating, yet
32% never did anything about it.
When asked why they ignored the problem, professors routinely told McCabe that they
feared they wouldn't be backed by administrators and could end up facing legal
liability.
A typical fear, he said, is expressed this way: I accuse someone of cheating and the next
thing I know I'm sitting in the administration building with the student, the student's
parents and the family lawyer.
Robert Redinbo, professor of electrical and computer engineering at UC Davis, said that
such hassles often dissuade professors at other campuses from turning in students. It's a
lot of paperwork and committees and headaches, so they don't do it.
By contrast, at UC Davis, where the administration makes it easy to report cheating,
faculty members turn in three times more students for cheating than at any other UC
campus, said Jeanne Wilson, director of student judicial affairs.
Unlike traditional honor code schools that automatically expel students for cheating, UC
Davis offers milder forms of punishment for students who own up to their mistakes in
counseling session with judicial offers. Punishment can be suspension or probation with
chores such as writing a paper on why students shouldn't cheat and performing community
service to spread the word to their peers.
The escalating problem of cheating isn't unique to college. In fact, it's one of the few
things that most students seem to master in high school, if not earlier.
A record 80% of the nation's brightest high school seniors admitted cheating, according
to Who's Who Among American High School Students.
For many it's a measure of high school bravado, a game of us-against-them: What can
thrill-seeking teenagers get away with under the noses of teachers who are either too
clueless or battle-weary to care?
The psychology shifts in college--or at least it can, McCabe said. Although McCabe
believes every school has a contingent of hard-core cheaters and strict non-cheaters on
the margins, the vast majority of students, he said, make up their minds after they get
to college.
If they see widespread cheating, students feel compelled to join in to make sure their
grades do not suffer from an inflated curve, he said. If they sense that cheating is rare
and socially unacceptable and that they are competing on a level playing field, they are
less likely to do it.
That's where honor codes can make a big difference, McCabe said.
Schools with traditional honor codes, such as Princeton, Rice and the University of
Virginia, have some of the lowest rates of cheating, surveys show.
Under traditional honor codes, students sign a pledge that they will not cheat and, in
return, professors do not monitor exams. A violation of this trust often means
expulsion.
Students say they appreciate the trust and freedom of unproctored or take-home exams and
are thus more willing to meet higher expectations.
Yet only about 100 of the nation's 3,500 colleges and universities have such traditional
honor codes. Many others were casualties of the student movement in the 1960s.
Suddenly, though, a resurgence seems to be underway. The University of Miami, as well as
Georgetown, George Washington and Colgate universities have adopted honor codes in recent
years, and the University of Mississippi and the University of San Diego are headed that
way too.
You can only get so far with better faculty enforcement, said Pat Drinan, dean of the
college of arts and sciences at the University of San Diego. If you want to make a
significant difference in cheating rates, you have to change the culture and move toward
an honor code.
The Center for Academic Integrity at Duke University, founded by McCabe in 1992, now has
more than 200 member colleges and universities. Its annual meetings swell every year with
more students, faculty and administrators pursuing honor codes.
Cheating generally runs higher on larger campuses, making exams without proctors
impractical for classes that enroll 100 students or more.
So places like UC Davis, which has 25,000 students, continue to monitor exams but also
embrace aspects of an honor code that seem to work: putting students in charge of
inspiring their peers not to cheat and disciplining those who do.
Under UC Davis' modified honor code, the student-run Campus Judicial Board decides the
fate of students in the thorniest cheating cases. The board members--and often the
students who come before them--also become campus cheerleaders for academic honesty.
The university takes pride in catching people early on and turning them around, said John
McCann, an engineering student. I know because I was one of those cases.
McCann was caught two years ago lifting another student's homework because he couldn't
figure out some problems.
I knew I made a mistake and I admitted it, he said. I had to take my punches. Initially
threatened with suspension for one academic quarter, McCann ended up on probation with
public service.
McCann, now a graduate student and teaching assistant, has found himself turning in
undergraduates for copying each other's homework.
In my classes, McCann said, I make an announcement: 'You do not cheat. Even if I don't
catch you, you won't be able to pretend you know the material. In industry, you cannot
pretend. If you don't know what you are doing, you will get fired.' 
Beginning Monday, Judicial Board members will hold seminars and hand out T-shirts and
other freebies during the campus' Integrity Week. De-Stress Day comes closer to finals,
with free ice cream and a chance to dunk an administrator into a tank of water.
People say, 'I'm not normally the kind of person who cheats, but I was so stressed out,' 
said P.J. Haley, a sophomore on the Campus Judicial Board. We say, the point is not to
stress out so much . . . and do the right thing.