Cheating: "But Everybody's Doing It"

By Gay Jervey

From Reader's Digest

Digital Deception

The Kansas State University Junior was desperate. Already on academic probation after stumbling through a shaky sophomore year while battling a severe case of asthma, he was about to flunk political science for missing two exams. Another F could mean suspension, which would put at risk the college degree he'd always counted on. He couldn't take that chance. Instead, he took a different one.

Thanks to a part-time job in the university's information-technology department, the young man -- a born-and-bred Midwesterner who loved reading and played trumpet in his high school band -- had access to his professor's online grade book. With a few quick keystrokes, he was able to give himself passing scores for the tests he hadn't taken. He wasn't clever enough, though, to cover his tracks. He was soon caught and suspended -- and has been racked with guilt ever since.

"There is no excuse or justification for my actions," he wrote to the university's Honor Council in the wake of the spring 2005 episode. (He prefers to remain anonymous.) The reason for his transgression, he added, was simple: "I did what I did out of panic."

While this student and his professors say the incident resulted from a momentary lapse in judgment, the sad fact is that, in a broader sense, it's hardly an isolated act. There's plenty to suggest that academic cheating is epidemic in the country's high schools and colleges. Consider a few examples: nine business students at the University of Maryland caught receiving text-messaged answers on their cell phones during an accounting exam; a Texas teen criminally charged for selling stolen test answers -- allegedly swiped via a keystroke-decoding device affixed to a teacher's computer -- to fellow students; seven Kansas State students in one class accused of plagiarizing papers off the Internet.

Beyond the anecdotes, experts point to a stream of data -- much of it from students themselves -- that indicates cheating is rampant. A report last June by Rutgers University professor Donald McCabe for The Center for Academic Integrity showed 70 percent of students at 60 colleges admitting to some cheating within the previous year; one in four admitted to engaging in serious cheating (copying from another student, using concealed notes, or helping someone else cheat). McCabe's high school findings were similarly grim: Of 18,000 high school students surveyed across the country over the past four years, 70 percent of those in public schools admitted to at least one case of serious test cheating; about six in ten admitted to some form of plagiarism. Just under half of all private school students acknowledged similar lapses.

A recent Gallup survey reinforced those findings. Polling one group of 13- to 17-year-olds in 2003 and another in 2004, Gallup reported that 65 percent cite "a great deal" or a "fair amount" of cheating in their schools. About half said they'd cheated on a test themselves at some point. Also in 2004, the Josephson Institute of Ethics -- a Los Angeles nonprofit aimed at boosting personal and organizational ethics -- released the results of a survey of 24,763 high school students; 62 percent admitted cheating on exams.

Cheating isn't new. As long as there have been rules, there have been people intent on breaking them. What's alarming now, says Institute founder Michael Josephson, is how widespread and blatant the practice has become.

"People who cheated were in the minority, and they kept it a secret, even from their friends," he says. "Now they are the majority, and they are bold about it. Today, if you ask kids about cheating, you will get such cavalier attitudes that the statistics are almost secondary."

Kansas State professor Phil Anderson agrees: "Many of our students have the attitude of 'I'll do whatever I have to do to get ahead.' It's endemic."

Success at Any Cost

Josephson, Anderson and others grappling with the issue say two forces are behind the erosion in ethics. First, advances in technology -- chiefly the Internet and portable digital devices -- have made cheating easier. A bigger factor, though, is the way bad behavior across society -- ballplayers popping steroids, business executives cooking corporate books, journalists fabricating quotes, even teachers faking test scores to make schools look good -- signals that nothing is out of bounds when success is at stake.

Says David Callahan, author of The Cheating Culture: "It's the normalization of cheating. Everybody's doing it. And if you don't, you feel like a chump."

The pressure to succeed that drives some to cheat starts early, says Tomas Rua, a senior at Friends Seminary, a New York City private school.

"Everything that you do and work for is to maximize your potential," he says. "And many people feel driven to use any recourse that they can to get that grade. There is a lot of hysteria about college, and you start hearing about it in the middle school."

Emily Broerman, a senior at North High School in Evansville, Indiana, echoes Rua's comments: "I would say that I see cheating every day. You see a lot of 'Succeed at any cost.'"

Daniel,* a student at Turlock High School in California's Central Valley, certainly takes that attitude: "If I want to get the better grade, I'm going to cheat to get it. No question. Anyway, in the real world you do whatever you have to do to get the better job."

Daniel says that, like many of his friends, he's lifted material from the Internet and passed it off as his own, received test answers via text messages, and even brought old-fashioned crib sheets in to exams.

"I have cheated since the seventh grade," he claims. "I am competitive, so I'm always trying to find a better way of cheating."

Turlock principal Dana Trevethan says Daniel's comments capture the brazen attitude of some students. "He's a good kid, but he's competitive," she says. "And cutthroat should be his middle name."

* Some names have been changed.

Where Are the Parents?

It would be hard to understate technology's role in the current wave of cheating. Students flock to online term-paper mills that sell reports on virtually any topic -- often with bibliographies and appropriate formatting. They use camera phones to send and transmit pictures of tests. Their MP3 players can hold digitized notes. Their graphing calculators can store formulas necessary to solve math problems.

"There is something about the anonymous quality of both the Internet and instant messaging," says Maria Fahey, who chairs the English department at Friends Seminary. "It's fast and quick and allows you to be in total denial about what you're doing."

Jason Stevens, an assistant professor of educational psychology at the University of Connecticut, links it to today's "grab-and-go" culture, "whether it's downloading music or papers, or cutting and pasting sentences and paragraphs."

For some, the line between right and wrong gets blurred. "I think technology in a way masks the factor of guilt," agrees Jonathan Cross, a senior at Robinson Secondary School in Fairfax County, Virginia. "It used to be that if someone were to cheat, there'd be two of us sitting next to each other passing a note, or me looking at someone else's sheet, very blatant and obvious -- very clear and well-defined cheating. Now people try to hide that guilt by using different forms of technology."

Technological advances may explain the "how" behind today's cheating epidemic. As for the "why"?

"Education has become a commodity to help us gain the material wealth and status that is so prized and paraded in our culture," says Stevens. "The larger message for adolescents is that it's much more important and valuable to be well-off financially than it is to be a moral person."

When that message takes hold, Michael Josephson says, the implications are dire.

"What we're doing is training the next generation of corporate pirates," he says. "If you think that what went on with Enron or WorldCom is bad, just wait. What's missing is some of this righteous indignation and moral outrage, plus a little genuine fear."

What's also missing, say educators, are the voices of parents who can go overboard in providing homework help to their children, but fall short when it comes to clearly articulating the importance of following the rules.

"One of the really big changes that we've seen in the last 20 years is that in the past if students got caught cheating, they would be ashamed. And their parents would be really ticked off at them," says University of San Diego professor Larry Hinman. "Now the parents are, if anything, angry at the institution for doing something that might blot their kids' records."

Says Dana Trevethan: "I have never heard a parent of a student caught cheating say, 'I am totally humiliated. We don't accept or condone this kind of behavior at home.'"

Author David Callahan says parents must be explicit in talking with kids about cheating: "A lot of parents don't do it because they are caught up in it themselves or just working too hard. We hear so often that we should talk to kids about sex, smoking, drunk driving, but do we ever hear about talking to kids about integrity?"

An Honest Effort

It's not all grim. Some schools have banned cell phones, cameras and other gadgets during school hours. Honor codes have been reinvigorated. And teachers are using technology to turn the tables on cheaters.

A number of institutions now rely on turnitin.com, a website that lets teachers check students' written work for signs of plagiarism. John Barrie, the site's founder, says the company gets more than 50,000 papers per day. About one-third aren't original.

Perhaps most encouraging is the way some kids are taking a stand against cheaters. Megan Schisser, a senior at Robinson Secondary School, is one of them.

Last spring, after studying intensely for an advanced history final, she was pleased when she got an A. Unfortunately, some students in her class had copied down the questions and sent them to friends who were to take the test later. So everyone had to retake the exam. This time, Megan got a B. She and some friends were so upset, they decided to do something. "Our purpose was to say that there are those of us who are doing the best we can, and we're not cheating," she says. "And it is okay not to cheat."

The group formed an honor council, and in November introduced a series of video clips on the school's closed-circuit TV show. Using the Twisted Sister hit "We're Not Gonna Take It" as their theme, the spots discuss the importance of honor and end with a simple tagline, "Robinson Honor Council: Saving Robinson One Cheater At A Time."

It's a message that could play in classrooms across the country.