Academic Dishonesty: A Blight on Integrity.
Several years ago I asked students in my senior seminar course about their options regarding cheating on campus. This question was largely in response to stories appearing in the popular press about paper mills (companies that write term papers for students) and websites advertising to take online courses for students. I was not prepared for my students’ responses. The two take home points from our conversation were:
Cheating is prevalent on campus.
Cheating is relatively easy to do without getting caught.
These two points caused me to shift my line of research and start focusing on academic integrity in higher education.
It is important to note that cheating (in all forms – in relationships, in business, on taxes, etc.) is not new. In fact, this behavior has been around for millennia. It should also be noted that cheating specifically in higher education is not a new phenomenon either - although the way this behavior manifests itself has evolved over time. One of the first comprehensive studies in this area revealed that three quarters of students cheated at least once during their college career (Bowers, 1964). This behavior appears to be on the increase in both scope and severity (McCabe & Trevino, 1997; McCabe, Trevino, & Butterfield, 2001).
In extreme forms, academic dishonesty involves students purchasing term papers from paper mills or paying a company to take an entire online class (Barlett, 2009; Dante, 2010; Tilsely, 2012). This is troubling for many reasons, not the least of which is the fact that as many as 7.1 million individuals (almost a third of all college and university students) are currently enrolled in online courses (Allen & Seaman, 2014).
Findings from our first research project revealed that at least one “cheating company” which advertised its services online was effective in completing high quality original academic course work for students. Not only did the cheating company avoid detection, but it also earned an “A” for the student enrolled in the course (Malesky, Baley, & Crow, 2016). This project was discussed in two articles published by The Chronical of Higher Education (In a Fake Online Class With Students Paid to Cheat, Could Professors Catch the Culprits? & The New Cheating Economy). Our research in this area is ongoing.
Members of our research lab will be posting on this blog approximately every two weeks. The posts will address findings from our research as well as findings from other researchers in the area of academic integrity. We will also touch on stories appearing in the popular press. Please contact me at malesky@wcu.edu if you are interested in writing a featured guest post for our blog.
Thanks for your interest in this very important issue facing higher education!
Alvin Malesky
Department Head, Western Carolina University
References:
Allen, I. E. & J. Seaman. January 2014. “Grade Change: Tracking Online Education in the United States.” http://www.onli nelearningsurvey.com/reports/gradechange.pdfhttp://www. onlinelearningsurvey.com/reports/gradechange.pdf
Barlett, T. March 2009. “Cheating Goes Global as Essay Mills Multiply.” The Chronicle of Higher Education. http://chronicle.com/article/Cheating-Goes-Global-as-Essay/32817/
Bowers, W. J. 1964. Students’ Dishonesty and Its Control in College. New York: Bureau of Applied Social Research, Columbia University.
Dante, E. November 2010. “The Shadow Scholar.” The Chronicle of Higher Education. http://chronicle.com/article/The-Shadow-Scholar/125329/
Malesky, L.A., Baley, J.** & Crow, R. (2016). Academic dishonesty: Assessing the threat of cheating companies to online education. College Teaching. DOI: 10.1080/875675555.2015.1133558
McCabe, D. L. & Trevino, L. K 1997. “Individual and Contextual Influences on Academic Dishonesty: A Multicampus Investigation.” Research in Higher Education 38: 379–96.
McCabe, D. L., L. K. Trevino, & K. D. Butterfield. 2001. “Cheating in Academic Institutions: A Decade of Research.” Ethics & Behavior 11: 219–32.
Tilsley, A. September 21 2012. “Sites Offering to Take Courses for a Fee Pose Risk to Online Ed. Inside Higher Ed. Accessed July 11 2014. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/09/21/sites-offering-take-courses-fee-pose-risk-online-ed, U.S. Department of Education. June 2014. “Enrollment in Distance