Everyone says that academic cheating is wrong and it will get students in trouble. If that is the case, why do students do it?
A study conducted in 1963 showed that when the professor clearly told the students not to work together, to work alone, 11% of the students disobeyed the professor and worked together with another student. When this study was conducted again in 1993, 43% of the students disobeyed the professor while under the same circumstances.
A 2002 survey of 12,000 high school students showed that 74% of those students admitted to cheating in the last year.
In today’s society students are pressured to have good grades throughout their entire high school career, if they do not, it could put their college career in jeopardy. Many of the high school classes are difficult and confusing, many times to the point that students either do not understand it at all or they do not want to do it. So they cheat.
They pay others to do their homework, or they take another students homework and copy it. Students are expected to remember everything for one test, an entire chapter, or an entire quarter for one test. In the case of finals, an entire semester. Tests are worth so many points that many students can not afford to get a bad grade on it, so they ask their friends to give them answers to it, or to take a picture of the test.
Students cheat for many different reasons. Some cheat because they are afraid they may fail the class. Some cheat in fear of being “average”, this is mainly the students who feel the need to excel. Some students cheat because they simply do not have time for the homework assigned due to sports or extracurricular activities. Some students do it just because others do it and do not think they should put forth the effort that others are not.
“The real world is terrible,” a college student who prefers to only go by Joe said, “People will take other peoples material and pass it on as theirs. I’m numb to it already. I’ll cheat to get by.”
It is people like Joe who encourage the younger generation to cheat. What does cheating get you? A good grade that will only matter for a semester? Maybe. But what will it get you later in life? Cheating will only get you a good grade, and maybe a job for a short time. You will not know what you need to know to do your job if you cheat the whole time and learn nothing. An easy fix to this problem is do not cheat. Study, learn, and succeed.
Then we go back to the students who try to work without cheating, but can not due to the amount of homework assigned, or the difficulty of the homework assigned. Some believe that if you can not do your homework while doing sports or extracurricular activities, then you should not participate in sports or extracurricular activities. That may work for some students, but for others, sports or those extracurricular activities is a part of school and a part of their lives. They need it. Those sports and extracurricular activities can help the student get into college. So how do we fix the cheating on homework problem? Easy, less homework. Students do not need 12 hours of school work.
To help the students who are pressured to have good grades constantly, lift the pressure off their shoulders. Do not push them so hard, allow them to work the way need and at the speed they can.
Cheating is not going to get students anywhere, most of the time the student will get caught, and receive a bad grade, most likely a worse grade than what they would have received if they had not cheated. So study, lessen the amount of homework, and lift the pressure, and there will not be as much cheating in schools.