When word processing technology and the internet were relatively new, a speaker told the North Florida Writers in Jacksonville said, “I had a major paper due in one course, so I went online downloaded this and that, and, bam, I had a 15-page paper done in 15 minutes.”

I was groaning inside because he was bragging about how he plagiarized. In my classes, he would have had the paper bounced back, even if he didn’t tell me how he “wrote” his paper.

An alert instructor simply needs to build in restrictions or defaults to head off plagiarism. If the topics are open ended (e.g., “Imagery/Symbolism in Faulkner’s ‘A Rose for Emily’”), then probably about 25% of a class would attempt to download a paper.

The instructor can tweak the topics by, say, requiring the students to compare and conrast two stories on robots (Ray Bradbury’s “I Sing the Body Electric” and the film “A.I.”). I’ll omit the other defaults.

The best way to warn students that you are serious about plagiarism is to let them know that, even if it only takes 15 minutes for them to download and format a paper, it will only take two to five minutes for me to type in a couple sentences into Turnitin.com or Google and find out if there’s a match.

Howard Denson, retired professor English-humanities
Florida State College at Jacksonville

Since when are phones allowed in class? I confiscate electronic devices that are turned on during class. The simple way to deal with photos of tests and texting for answers is to not allow phones to be present during class. As for dowloading papers or quoting websites, there are several programs that can search for you. My school uses Turnitin.com; although I am sure there are many others. Turnitin provides a percent of the paper that is likely plagerized and will give the sources of the likely plagerism. It’s pretty cool. As for using a phone to warn about a pop quiz, that’s a tough one. Maybe professors need to have pop quizzes in different sections on different days so that students can’t warn eachother.

In addition to the techniques I have seen above, I give a zero for the work in question. If the student continues I refer that student for academic misconduct to the college.

I teach some on-line classes and specifically look for cheating. My First Day Handout says that they will not be warned and the first inkling they will have is when they see their Academic F when final grades are turned in.

I’d like to convince the school to give an FC (failed for cheating) the first time, not permit them to take another course from that instructor (I teach some required courses) and their transcript be marked “Expelled for Cheating”, if they’re foolish enough to do it again.

Mr. Gary Pandolfi provided some excellent recommendations. Technology is a wonderful tool that helps all of us, however it can also be used to take short cuts. I believe it is not what you can memorize but information that you have acquired through formal or informal education and that you can apply to daily activities that prove more worthwhile. Even a monkey or giraffe can be taught to repeat an act, but itn takes someone with knowledge to create a unique action.

I tell my students (large lecture class of ~250 students) that I am in the educational profession and not a police officer. I try to discourage the notion of cheating by telling my students to imagine that their future heart surgeon cheated his/her way through medical school. I tell them that they can use a simple $5 calculator on certain exams. Anyone seen with a cell phone or a programmable calculator will fail the exam with a 0. Bottom line, a student will know whether they cheated and the professors probably will not. I have more important things to worry about because those students surely will fail in life.

I have been a professor at the University of Maryland for 37 years, and I teach biochemistry classes. I have taught classes at all levels, both graduate and undergraduate. Very early on, I confronted the problem of cheating.

My solution was very simple. I would present an examination to the students that demanded substantive responses to what was covered in lecture and all the reading assignments. The examination was quite long, and the only students who could get a good score would be those that were able to complete this long examination with substantive answers.

There was no way that another student, even if poised over the shoulder of a gifted student, could possibly copy those answers into his paper. Communication with a confederate over a cell phone would be hopeless. There is little possibility that the person on the other end could possibly know the answers, and searching the internet would take so much time, that the exam would be over before anything came in.

The only way to get a good score on my examination would be for the student to immediately start writing from within their own understanding, and the only way to possibly complete the examination would be to continue this throughout the allotted time. Someone who depended on a confederate on the other end of a cell phone would be totally devastated. Access to the internet would be useless.

This is such a simple thing to address that it is a joke to talk about it. Anyone who teaches a class for which examinations could be answered through surreptitious web searches and connections over cell phones would be a joke. Perhaps such teachers exist, but I am not one of them.

I could not disagree more strongly with Paul B. The attitude of the instructor will influence the attitude of the students. To say you have “more important things to worry about” is to diminish the significance of cheating and perpetuate the attitude that it does not matter. Why do students think that cheating is okay? Because their instructors do not seem to care. It reminds me of citizens who will not take a stand in their community because they do not want to “get involved.” True, they are “not police officers,” but we all have a responsibility to make our community (including the university) a better place, especially if we are in a position of authority. Professors who do not aggressively discourage and prosecute cheating are PART OF THE PROBLEM, not part of the solution.

Second, in a large class, graded on a curve, cheating is stealing from fellow students. This is a social justice issue. If Joe gets a 90% because he cheated and Rebecca gets 88% through her hard work, Rebecca will be penalized in her grade because of Joe’s unethical behavior. Universities are places where the next generation of leaders is shaped. Creating an inherently unfair system, that penalizes people who are ethical (because you “have better things to worry about”) will cultivate cynicism and lead some good students to abandon ethics.

Finally, it may take a long time before “those students surely will fail in life.” Some students cheat their way through high-school, and then cheat their way through college, more so if instructors turn a blind eye. Again, this is terribly unfair to the honest students, who may not gain admittance to the college or graduate school of their choice. Perhaps cheating will be more difficult in medical or graduate school, but recent scandals in the financial and political arenas amply illustrate, that cheaters may make it to the top. How might things have been different if every teacher and professor along the way had impressed upon them that in THIS class, you will not advance through cheating?

“5. 48% warn friends about a pop quiz with a phone call or text message”

How is that cheating? You’ll have to count me with the students for this one.

Many students view pop quizzes as fundamentally unfair. If you cannot get the students to agree that pop quizzes are fair, then you will have a hard time to get them to behave ethically.

I never give pop quizzes myself. All my quizzes are at the end of class. If students are missing, I ask their friends to call to them and remind them. That’s a good use of cellphones in a classroom.

I also use blackboard for my exams along with the respondus lock down browser. Students can only access the exams using this browser which prohibits opening any other browser, e-mail, screen shots, or printing. Before using respondus, I had students who would e-mail themselves their notes and tab back and forth from their notes to the exam. I also scramble the questions and answers and only allow one question to show at a time. I do not allow any books, cell phones, pencils, papers, or purses in the testing labs. It has helped with the previous cheating mentioned, but I am sure some student will eventually find a way around it. If they spent as much time studying as trying to cheat they would do fine on their exams.

All of my class quizzes and exams are open book, open notes, open electronics devices, etc. (just no working with someone else). I believe that engineering courses require “thinking” to solve problems and students need all resources available to them, just like if they were in their future engineering jobs. This method also allows me to give them more difficult quizzes and exams than would otherwise be possible with the “normal” restrictions. Of course, this method works for technical/engineering courses, and may not be applicable to those requiring research papers.

I agree with Carol W. For Paul B: You can assume the “presumption of innocence” all you want but you’re not being realistic with today’s students. After all, it’s often the parent’s of these ‘kids’ who are part of the problem by NOT teaching them morals, responsibility and honesty. Instead, they’re busy buying them new BMW’s to bribe them to ‘do well’ whether they like it or not. Ironically, when their kids mess up by failing a test or caught cheating, the parents respond by insulting the professor, “my super kid would never do such a thing! You must be a bad teacher.” Whatever happened to the “don’t get in trouble at school because you’ll get it even worse when you get home!”? If the parents aren’t willing to teach their kids – and the professors “have more important things to worry about”, then where are these young people going to learn ANYTHING? This is exactly what’s wrong with today’s youth – no consequences and who cares!?

Administrators are afraid of student grievances and lawsuits. Consequently, faculty are reluctant to pursue all the paperwork and risk required (at my big state university, at least) to bring plagiarism or cheating charges. The protocol is to meet repeatedly with the student to work out some compromise, but if that fails, an administrator has to judge the case as an “impartial” party. If faculty are going to use “Turnitin” to identify copied papers, students must be warned in advance on the syllabus; otherwise, the professor may not act against the plagiarized paper because the student didn’t have “fair warning.” (Also because Turnitin keeps copies of the student papers). Faculty are not allowed to simply flunk the cheater, at least not while giving that as the reason.

Unfortunately, I’ve witnessed students cheating while helping to proctor an exam, not even being sneaky about it through any technology. When I pointed out to the course prof the student STANDING up shamelessly looking over another’s shoulder at the answers and copying them, this prof neither said nor did anything except tell me to leave him alone, later telling me that it’s “too much hassle” to argue about it. I have a colleague who got reprimanded by the college dean, telling her she needed “more proof” if she was to “accuse” this student of cheating despite seeing it herself AND having other students in the class bear witness to the act AND having the necessary documents that together were undeniable; but it wasn’t enough. Instead, the student tried to claim sexual harassment and threatened a law suit, so the board folded, not interested in how ludicrous the claim, but rather envisioning the impending legal fees. They told this yet untenured prof it “wouldn’t be good for her future” and to “drop it.”

When the school doesn’t support the profs in trying to control these problems, when students feel like they can challenge your rules because they know how difficult it is to actually follow through on enforcing them, when you’re not allowed to dismiss students from your class anymore for conduct unbecoming, then why not cheat…or “help” others?? Students may not know your subject, but they’re not stupid and will manipulate a broken system. Where in our corporate, hyper-capitalist society to we encourage honesty and integrity outside of education, and even there I could provide several examples to the contrary. Exploiting workers in developing countries? Polluting the environment for all to extract capital gain for a few? Where “money talks” and “it’s not what you know, it’s who you know”? Why on Earth would our young people think that cheating is NOT the way to win when all you see around you is exploitation and greed? As they say, “it’s a no-brainer…”

I work in France and am astounded by the number of students who copy information straight off the web and become angry when you give them a zero. The truly unfortunate thing about it is that many of the profs here do nothing about plagiarism – they give a mark because if they fail the student the professor is required to continue to develop new exams for the student until either the student passes or the professor simply gives up and passes the student. Students pay for their grande ecole degree – some earn it and some do not. It is truly unfortunate that the parents scream if you fail their child and the system has responded by not failing the child. Some students want to learn and are great students, others pay for the degree earned with the minimum pass of 50% and allowed to continue in their degree with 35% or less in some courses.

I’ve been teaching for 30 years now, at research universities, private universities and community colleges. My policy regarding cheating is spelled out in my syllabus and discussed in class. First, no phones or electrical devices at all are allowed on or near the desk…they leave their belongings on the floor near the wall. Second, a first offence of cheating will do three things, and F on the Assignment, and F in the class, and removal from my class. I will also turn in their name to the administration which will then be entered into their permanent record. I don’t mess around, nor do I “give breaks” or “have a heart”. You cheat in my class, you fail. Period. The moral fiber of students will not be helped if we “don’t have time to worry about cheating”.

As a student I feel like a lot of students justify cheating by looking at the real world application. When we’re supposed to be applying the information we learn from school we will still have this access to technology, resources and other people. We can ask any of them later so why not be able to ask them now?

I don’t agree with claiming other people’s work as your own and I think turnitin.com is a great way to scare students into doing the work on their own if they’re considering other options. Essay’s should be original thought and properly source the ideas and research of others, but as far as general “fact tests”, why not?

Ban cell phones form the class room. HELLO !

If RM and Carol W et al actually read and thought about my original post they would see that I try to prevent cheating in a LARGE lecture room (250 students). What I won’t do is assume that my students are criminals before they commit a crime. It is my impression that some of you do this, which is sad. I sense a kind of glee goes into catching someone. I find it to be a repulsive attitude and approach to education. My goal is to train the future scientific stars of the world and I treat them as such. My glee, indeed my whole reason for taking a position at a research university and not a research institute where I wouldn’t teach undergrads, is my desire to turn young people onto the thrill of science. All students should be treated like respectable and honest citizens until there is evidence to prove otherwise. I bet students love professors that assume they are guilty when they haven’t done anything wrong. I wouldn’t know, I never had a professor like that. Believe it or not, my students like me because I treat them like adults, but and they know that comes with adult responsibilities. Go ahead, strike fear into your students with your negative approaches. I would have never pursued education as a profession if my role models put so much effort into pursuing the flunkies rather than the rising stars. Being a cop is not part of my job. Education through teaching and research is my job. Go ahead, continue to attack my dissenting viewpoint. That is what Fox News does to those that disagree with their viewpoints.

I’ve said for the last two years (as long as I’ve been teaching) that cheating, particularly plagiarism, should not simply result in a F on a student’s transcript but perhaps a FP that indicates their offense and the real reason for the grade. The article is right on when it comes to students’ perspectives on this issue. They truly don’t believe there’s anything wrong with their actions. I think the internet and particularly wikis contribute to a generation of people who view information and ideas as public property. I immediately fail my own students for blatant plagiarizism, but it is worth discussing the varying standards on the issue. Americans feel a stronger sense of ownership over their ideas where in other areas of the world ideas are considered publicly shared property, Europe included. Where is the line between the rhetorical act of appropriation and plagiarism? I don’t have a concrete answer, but neither would I want to forbid my students use of the former, which is a legitimate rhetorical act employed by published authors, reporters, musicians, etc. There’s a perfect example in one chapter of Chuck Klosterman’s Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs when he begins the chapter with the lyrics of Metallica’s “One” (or maybe it’s “And Justice for All,” I forget) without quotation marks, italics, or any other indication that the words are not his own. But he does this with the understanding that his audience knows this. In an “academic” essay, many instructors would chastise Chuck in some way for plagiarizing. As for other forms of cheating, the act of memorization for the purpose of test-taking has no logical purpose. In the “real” world, individuals can and do look up information, collaborate with others, or otherwise find the information they need to complete a personal or work-related task. Why, then, does academia insist that students memorize information as a means of demonstrating knowledge. Wouldn’t open book/open notes/internet access/ collaborative tests that pose analytical questions prove much more successful in teaching students how to collaborate ethically with the ideas of others, to weigh those ideas, build on them, and practically apply those ideas based on critical analysis?

Paul: What’s next, comparing my teaching awards (many) versus yours? Perhaps I have won teaching awards BECAUSE I insist on honesty and good students respect that. You are one of the reasons educators have to work so hard in the face of Fox News and other conservative organizations. When did disagreement become unacceptable in our society? Is your next post going to accuse me of being racist too? My goodness.

RM: Why would I accuse you of racism, your post indicates nothing of the sort. However, you are the one that said in a previous post in response to mine, and I quote “Instructors at my school that turn a blind eye towards cheaters make it harder for the rest of us.” The implication is that I turn a blind eye to cheaters. This WAS an accusation and is simply not true. Nowhere in any of my posts do I even suggest that I turn a blind eye to cheating. Different viewpoints (philosophies in this case) on an issue is fine; however, I took offense to your personal attack of my point of view and replied in kind. This has escalated far enough. Congratulations on your teaching awards, I am sure they are justly deserved. So as to head off further escalation, I am NOT being sarcastic.

As a student, I have to say, I’m rather appalled by the immaturity you teachers and professors are showing. So you’ve won awards. Congratulations. That has nothing to do with the issue at hand. The fact of the matter is, students have cheated throughout the history of time. Even in the Bible, people were cheating. I can promise you that some of your colleagues are still cheating to this day. If you think that is false, you are rather naive.

Now, cheating is obviously wrong. It is the easy way out, and it helps no one in the end. But for professors to automatically take a Gestapo position and assume that every single student in their classroom is going to cheat? That’s not only absurd, but it is flat-out insulting to the students. For those Americans of us on this forum, we live in a country in which citizens are innocent until proven guilty. Yet for some reason, professors like to think that that is not the case on campus. Just because we are students does not mean we will cheat. Just because we have a cell phone in our pocket does not mean it is being used to transmit answers or test questions to some other student hidden in a dark room. Technology is shifting every day, but the majority of us use these tools for convenience and not cheating.

Those professors who stalk about the classroom, eyeballing every student to see if they are leaning to far to their right or if their eyes are anywhere but glued to the sheet before them are not only untrusting of their students, they are distracting. There is a great deal of pressure on the college level to do as well as possible on each and every exam, particularly those classes in which each exam makes up 25% or more of your grade. Having someone watching you is an added pressure and takes your attention away from the test itself. Not to mention, some of the methods you have discussed to deter cheating are inconvenient for a student. Say I am taking a Scantron test and my pencil tip snaps. If my bag is located on the other side of the room, I have to disturb the rest of the students just to get another pencil. How is that fair to my fellow classmates?

And to say that most students who cheat see nothing wrong with their actions is ludicrous. Everyone knows cheating is wrong. It has been drilled into our heads (by people like you) since kindergarten. But you speak of failing students who plagiarize, and I know that many students are unsure of what exactly constitutes plagiarism. That is why I am deeply grateful to my professors who ask us to utilize tools in which we can submit a written piece, and it will scour the Internet for similar phrase words. These tools show students how similar their work is to another’s, and it actually shows us a need to use our own words.

Finally, I have to say this: cheating is wrong, of course, but to automatically fail a student and report them for a first offense is, in my opinion, not wrong. Fail them for the assignment, of course, but talk to them. Sit down with them and discuss what they did, find out why they did it. For all you know, there is some deeper issue in this student’s life, some stress that led them to do something they never would have considered otherwise. To jump to reporting them, something that could follow them around for the rest of their lives, is hasty. Yes, cheating is wrong, and yes, they deserve to fail that assignment, but five years after graduation, your exam should not be the most important thing in that student’s life. Cheating may have been one stupid decision, and it should not necessarily follow that person. Cheating should be handled on a case-by-case basis. After all, we are all entitled to our day in court.

Yes, some students cheat. Always have, always will. It is wrong, of course it is. But I have to say, I think it is a shame that professors, the people from whom we are supposed to learn, those people whom are supposed to be on our side, are so blatantly prejudiced against us. Professors like Paul B have the right idea: make it clear to students that cheating is wrong and will not be tolerated, and leave it at that. Don’t treat us like we are criminals, because we are not. I would hope the majority of professors joined the teaching profession because they love to teach and mold students’ minds, and not because they enjoy catching cheaters. Sadly, the latter seems to be the case for most of you.

A lot has been said about the presumption of innocence. The presumption of innocence is relevant to prosecution. It is not relevant to prevention. Do you leave your car or house unlocked because you presume everyone is innocent? Further, using a site like Turnitin.com would make no sense if we assume every student is innocent. This is an untenable position.

Let’s not pretend. We need to not have our heads in the sand. Believing something because it makes you feel good, despite evidence to the contrary is irrational. Let’s take a look at some actual data:

In the U.S., 56% of middle school students and 70% of high school students have cheated.
Wilfried Decoo, Crisis on Campus: Confronting Academic Misconduct (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2002), 23.

A 2007 AP article (Higher Education Sees Rise in Dishonesty) stated:

“A study published last fall by Donald McCabe, a Rutgers professor who has studied cheating for decades, and two co-authors found 56 percent of MBA students admitted cheating, along with 54 percent of graduate students in engineering, 48 percent in education, and 45 percent in law.

McCabe emphasizes the difficulties of measuring trends in cheating, but the undergraduate numbers at the same 32 universities he studied appear even worse: 74 percent of business students, and 68 percent in nonbusiness fields admitted to some form of cheating.”

“I think the … more frightening figure is the fact that 20 (percent) to 25 percent admit to five or more (instances of cheating),” said Tim Dodd, executive director of the Center for Academic Integrity, which is based at Duke. “The fact that we have a quarter of more of our students admitting they’ve engaged in serial cheating does not inspire a lot of confidence about the credibility of their degrees.”

Finally, I think Nancy L’s story illustrates why it is important to address cheating as soon as the behavior arises, instead of passing the student along. It would be interesting to know who the student was that was NOT admitted to CalTech because the cheater took his place. There are limited numbers of students admitted to graduate schools. Is it right that a student did NOT get in because a cheater was admitted? Also, CalTech invested time, energy and funds in a student who never should have been there. What a waste. He should have been set straight years before.

This whole thing is, ultimately, a question of pedagogy. Cheating on exams is only possible if there are exams. The idea of classrooms full of students taking tests and exams seems like one possible approach to education at the elementary and middle-school levels, but in my view students have outgrown that approach by the time they’re 16. Why treat adults as if they were kids? If someone is really interested in learning, then s/he doesn’t need to be herded or browbeaten into memorizing data. At the college where I work, there are no courses and every student designs her/his own curriculum, with input and oversight from faculty. This way, they’re free to study what they want to study and they’re respected as adults who are truly passionate about learning. As for cheating, students are expelled for plagiarism on the first offense, no exceptions. We also don’t award letter grades since they’re spectacularly uninformative regarding a student’s actual progress.
This whole discussion amounts to an indictment of a pedagogy that treats adult learners as nothing but a bunch of refractory fourth-graders, and in which students respond by pursuing ideas with actions, instead of thoughts.

Interesting discussion.

Some observations in teaching undergrads and grads at an R1 University for 18 years.

[*] When possible, far better to design homework, exams so that cheating is more or less impossible.

[*]

I, too, teach high school and I have taught at a community college. I do not believe that the problem begins in elementary and high school. I do think the way we react to the situation in elementary and middle school and high school has contributed to the problem. Teachers often want the zero to hold, but are not backed by administration–especially if the “parents” of said child has an important status in the community! Or we are “made” to give a retake test, etc. because we don’t want the child to have a damaged gpa from one poor decision. I say let the zero remain the zero–if I am late on my electric bill payment, I will have to pay the late fee regardless of the reason. We aren’t helping the kiddos learn the lesson by giving them a “redo”–shucks, they got more time to study or do the assignment in the first place? What kind of lesson is that? Even if there is a reduction in points, the likelihood is that reduction is far greater than the original score would have been–even without the cheating.

We have to either be willing to teach the lesson and stand by it like that strong oak tree in the yard, or be willing to sway like that willow tree in the yard and not complain when it becomes damaged by the swaying.

I don’t have the resources to “check” for plagiarism for every assignment, but I get damned tired of colleagues who cut and paste quizzes from PinkMonkey or SparksNotes, etc. I was in a classroom once where the “teacher”–who had been gone for 2 days and had assigned the students to read the first 6 chapters of To Kill a Mockingbird–told the kids that Scout was the name of the dog in the novel! She was serious and I was shocked and appalled. Did any of those kids read that book from that point onward? If the teacher isn’t willing to do the work, the kids will pick up on it and run with it…just like we adults do. I will continue to speed on an expressway until I get a ticket, then I will let off the accelerator for a while.

Here are some sticking points that we all must consider:

-Students who are adept at texting can do so without ever removing the hand or phone from the pocket. Make sure that hands and backpacks and purses and coat pockets are not accessible.

-Follow the College board policy–if they are the grand masters of testing, why not mimic their punishment? No technology allowed in the room-except for the approved calculators. No score for the test if the student is perceived as cheating.

-Yes, the internet is a valuable tool for time saving efforts for everyone-TEACHERS included! Once the students realize that the assignment you gave is from a website, they will look for EVERYTHING on that website and see what you are doing next…even reading those test answers. We need to look at those ideas, and morph them into something that is uniquely ours. I teach literature and many of my questions connect literature that I know they have previously been assigned “Romeo & Juliet” to the literature we are covering “The Great Gatsby”…I pull sentences from the literature we are studying for specific questions. I looks for symbolism within the novel–not check Sparks to see what it says.

I do believe that I earn my paycheck and I make the students think. I cannot control if my students come from a home where rules are firm or where rules are meant to be challenged or where rules are meant to be bent…but I can define what my rules mean and have the integrity to stick to them.

Grades are perceived to be the bottom line, but rarely do grades reflect what students really know. For some students they reflect merely the ability to take tests and to cram information into short-term memory. Multi-media projects, community awareness displays, what-I-learned-and-how-I-used-it presentatios, are all great ways to engage students with their education and help them apply what they learned to solve problems and to make connections to the world around them. Presenting assessments as opportunities to show what they know and what they think are the most genuine and memorable kinds of evaluation experiences for students, and very difficult to fake.

I can see that Brenda’s replay is to take exception to my remarks. It is outstanding that she can be an example to others. But I would suggest she extend her example to other who do not hold such high standards, rather than take exception.

Many good ideas here — many I already do, and more to mull.

But here’s one: Recently, I had to deal with an incredibly blatant case of plagiarism on a test. I raised it in the next class (when the students did not yet know whom I had caught, as I had not yet returned the tests). I raised it in the context of their next component in the course, the term paper. I told them how easy it was to catch the case of plagiarism, that I am not soooo old that I don’t know how to use the Internet, etc. . . .

And then I told them about how many times I have been plagiarized, including by so-called scholars — and I told them how much it hurts, not only on principle but because so many family members also had sacrificed so much for mom to do her diss., do her books, etc. Interesting to see the reaction of students. The room was the quietest it ever has been, and several said afterward that they finally realized that plagiarism is stealing, as they related it to thefts they had in their lives.

Tell them how it hurts — the author, or the other student who studied hard, etc. It doesn’t seem to bother many students that they are engaging in the petty evil that erodes their own moral base. But tell them how it hurts others. Sometimes, that just may get through, too.

i’m 15, and curently going to be in the 10th grade. these statistics are wrong. they need to be higher. we cheat all the time! phones are not allowed in school, but at any one time theres an average of 2 kids texting at one point and probably wont get caught. and it extends far beyond papers we copied an pasted from the internet( we find our information from a couple of sites and just re-word it. yeah, it’ll take 15-20 minutes but its a sure winner). google- answers every worksheet question you give us, there are websites that not only give the answer to math problems, but show the work. so there is no possible way for you to tell if were cheating. can you really blame us? look at it from our point of view, you could bust your hump for an A and learn useless material, or you can take the fast and easy way with the same result

I’m a college student and I agree with Zander Tramp, why Bust your hump to get an A when it’s so easy to find it online. According to rule 34 of the internet, “It exists” (a side note, while generally referred to for porn, it applies to anything) Anything you can think of, already exists on the internet, so spend a week or two writing a paper, or spend 1-2 days getting it offline and re-wording it. Why bother with the hard way? It doesn’t matter how the job gets done, just so long as it does get done.
As for someones comment that cheaters will fail in life, I read something on the CBS website that said those most likely to cheat are those who are most intelligent and creative. I personally pride myself on my resourcefulness, so I feel I fall in that category. And as for “It hurts others” If they make money off of your work, sure, but if you’ve already turned it in, and its old, and we’re only using it to pass a class or get a good grade, then who does it honestly hurt? If you’re that sensitive then the world should have already eaten you alive. Grow up America, in order to play with the big dogs of the world you have to act just like them, and guess what? Huge companies like Enron, the S&L companies, and even members of congress cheat in one way or another, so you really think theres an advantage to trying to stop cheating? It only forces us to find better ways of not getting caught.

~HAX~

I’m a college student receiving my master’s in mechanical engineering. How can you all be proud of cheating? What happens when you begin your career? You will be inept at what you do and ultimately get fired from your profession when the company with whom you were hired from realizes you are not qualified for the position. In addition, have you given any thoughts to your professors whom are experts in the areas of study you are trying to become knowledge savvy in? They are here to guide us and to prepare us for what lies ahead of us – beyond the security of the classroom; beyond the security of a place you CANNOT cheat your way through. The next time you decide to cheat, think about this: will cheating now help prepare me to succeed when I graduate? If you can truly answer yes to that question, by all means cheat away. However, I bet, if you are truly honest with yourself, the answer is no. Please stop cheating. We need educated lawyers, doctors, scientists, etc. in our future and we won’t attain them by having those people be the one’s who cheated their way through college learning not a single thing except sly ways to go about manipulating the system. That’s something you can be proud of, huh? Please, stop.