I’ve come across with an article by Professor Michael Bishop, in which he discusses academic fraud. Bishop states that cheating is quite widespread among university students and generally ignored by faculty members and administrators.
The thoughts in the article do not seem either novel or striking, except the idea the author puts forth before he comes up with a solution to the matter of academic dishonesty:
“We work very hard to be a place that sends competent people into the world. But we do not work nearly as hard to be a place that sends ethical people into the world. Is this really a wise combination?”
Bishop advocates the idea that a university should produce people endowed not only with abilities but also with moral integrity.
If you’re only talking about cheating, then moral integrity is obviously essential - you cannot accurately claim you are sending competent people into the world if you cannot trust the systems in place to verify their competence. If it means forcing people to submit to the hive mind on social issues then that is obviously dangerous.
I agree. A university shouldn’t feel obligated to enforce an ethical standard over issues like whether you’re cheating on your girlfriend or cheating on your taxes. But a university should act to stop cheating when it involves students cheating over tests.
Academic dishonesty includes both cheating and plagiarizing, both of which are quite widespread.
Students who graduate by cheating or plagiarizing don’t think they have committed theft and never regard themselves as frauds. Their lack of academic integrity is strongly related to their lack of general integrity, the “greed-driven society in which a university diploma is seen as the fastest way to make a buck”, and the placid educational environment where faculty members and administrators find it more comfortable to ignore academic dishonesty.
When combating academic dishonesty, one must refer to the wrongfulness of theft and fraud in general. How can a university representative invoke academic integrity and ignore one’s general moral conduct? Can a professor say, for instance: “It doesn’t matter if you resort to trickery, deception, swindle and imposture at work or at home as long as you don’t cheat or plagiarize at school.”?
Plagiarism is dealt with through products such as TurnItIn.com at many universities today. While not a perfect system, it helps. I have had to have a meeting with a student who submitted a copy & paste paper (paragraphs copied from multiple sources). It was not fun, and the entire process took up 3-5 hours of my time for that one paper. Luckily this student was an outlier in the class.
Cheating on homework and exams is more difficult to catch, prove and prosecute. You have to have a smoking gun combined with a body to get it through the university - that can take up a lot of a professor’s time, and the university works to make a fair, yet lengthy process. That is why some faculty find themselves probably looking the other way unless it is blatant.
Yes. The answer to the thread’s title question is closely related to the answer to the question, “how much would it cost universities to learn about and deal with student dishonesty?”
(I’m assuming, here, that ‘should universities care about dishonesty’ actually means something along the lines of ‘should universities do something about dishonesty.’)
I went to a school with a very serious honor code. Because of this we had self-proctored exams, tossed our wallets and books on a random table on our way into the dining hall, and never locked our doors. I wish I could still live like that.
In the real world, I deal with what I call “cheaters” every day. I am sure they plagiarized and cheated at university. In the corporate world, they cheat on expense reports, plagiarize colleagues work (more accurately, steal colleagues work, pass it off as their own, and leverage it to gain advancement), will fuck over a colleague in a heartbeat, treat partners and/or customers like crap, etc.
YEs, they should be weeded out in University just like failing a chemistry 1 weed out course.
Of course something should be done about academic dishonesty. The article I’ve mentioned in the OP argues for a number of actions. One important key to the problem is to show students the importance of honesty and make them embrace moral values. The author urges that universities focus on producing not only competent graduates but also ethical people. Strangely enough, I don’t see much enthusiasm about Bishop’s proposal that students should be imbued with the idea that theft and fraud are always wrong, not only at school but also at home, at work, or anywhere else.
I disagree. I think it is obviously dangerous to condone with chronic dishonesty and not teach students that theft and fraud are always wrong.
Going after academic thieves and frauds is an expensive, time-consuming and cumbersome effort. Wouldn’t it be more efficient for the university to promote a culture of honor and integrity and persuade students that being honest is more rewarding than being a thief or a fraud?
The fact that certain school faculty and administrators care about creating a moral environment and manage to put it into practice shows that Bishop’s idea that university should produce not only competent graduates but also ethical people is a feasible one. And I doubt that your school’s honor code included any ‘dangerous’ conduct recommendations.
I think this is the alternative to Professor Michael Bishop’s proposal. Whenever universities fail to produce not only competent graduates but also ethical people, homes and workplaces will be populated with thieves and frauds, venal people who pursue their goals at the expense of their families, co-workers, clients and the society in general.
It seems to me that people who would like to promote in a society based on correctness would be happy if universities worked hard to persuade students to become ethical people (while getting rid of the dishonest ones) whereas people who prefer to advance in a dog-eat-dog world are happy with universities that condone academic dishonesty.
I may be wrong, of course, but I don’t understand what can be dangerous about convincing students that theft and fraud is wrong, no matter the situation.
I was not talking about theft and fraud, which are matters of law, I was talking about opinions. I do not know whether Michael Bishop is one of those people who would abuse his position of power to sanction people for disagreeing about, say, whether the victim of illegal surveillance should be fired for what he said in private, but I know there are people who would do that under the guise of “encouraging moral integrity.”
I don’t think there is a way to teach students not to cheat. It comes down to the likelihood of getting caught vs the reward from success. If three students are on the verge of failing out and must pass a test to stay in school the odds of them getting caught must be nearly 100% either for them passing or for them getting caught for them to take the test honestly. Since they are failing the odds of passing aren’t in their favor then it will comedown to the odds of getting caught.
I know a lot of really smart kids that cheated in order to survive my college, failure wasn’t an option but the school needed ~40% to fail. These kids were smart enough to figure out a way to cheat but couldn’t pass the test honestly. From a school perspective making the test easier dilutes the brand so their only recourse is to make it impossible to cheat and to increase the penalties for cheating such that the barely passing student wont cheat to improve their grade.
No, but they can say "It’s my business to do all that I can to prevent and punish cheating and plagiarism here, to protect not only the value of what we do here, but also to protect you from yourself: cheating here is, in the long run, cheating yourself as much as anyone else you persuade to employ you on the basis of qualifications obtained by cheating. But in any other aspect of your lives, you’re a grown-up now and responsible for your own decisions and the consequences if you choose to be dishonest there too. "
It’s clear that you took time and care with your post, and I want to assure you that my reply is not intended to be flippant or dismissive, but: with regard to the highlighted remarks —
How would you go about accomplishing these recommendations? What would be the specific and concrete means by which you would do so?