Cheating: new face, old number
by Yana Litovsky
Features | 11/12/02
Posted online at 2:35 AM EST on 11/12/02
According to Brandeis professors, cheat-sheet use, prior knowledge of exam questions, peeking over your neighbors shoulder, un-cited material and unauthorized collaboration occur all over campus in glaring contradiction to our officially ingrained motto of "truth even onto its innermost parts." According to a recent article from the New York Times, these are on the rise in many universities around the country. The trend is blamed on a dulled sense of academic integrity and a weaker approach both to prevention and punishment.
The article cites a 2001-2002 survey conducted by Duke University's Center for Academic Integrity. It reported that 27 percent of students admitted to frequently falsifying laboratory data, 41 percent to frequent plagiarism, 30 percent to cheating during exams and 60 percent to unauthorized collaboration.
The most recent cheating phenomenon, however, is cutting and pasting from the Internet, which according to the survey, rose 31 percent over the past two years. Students who participated in this study, however, said they felt that their punishments for doing this would not be severe.
The response of institutions like Cornell University, Duke University, Colgate University and the University of Virginia has been to rework their standards of academic integrity, particularly in the form of an honor code.
Honor codes, as adapted by Duke, will eliminate heavy proctoring of exams, but in turn will require students to report any observed instances of cheating under threat of punishment. And, according to Dean of Student Development and Judicial Education Lori Tenser the standard punishment in an honor code is suspension.
As there is no upward trend in cheating and no consensus on the merits of an honor code, Tenser said Brandeis is not planning to implement one. Rather, the University refers both the students and the faculty of each department to Section 5 of the Rights and Responsibilities Handbook, which defines both cheating and student responsibilities, but leaves it up to instructors to clarify and uphold their individual policies.
The article cites a 2001-2002 survey conducted by Duke University's Center for Academic Integrity. It reported that 27 percent of students admitted to frequently falsifying laboratory data, 41 percent to frequent plagiarism, 30 percent to cheating during exams and 60 percent to unauthorized collaboration.
The most recent cheating phenomenon, however, is cutting and pasting from the Internet, which according to the survey, rose 31 percent over the past two years. Students who participated in this study, however, said they felt that their punishments for doing this would not be severe.
The response of institutions like Cornell University, Duke University, Colgate University and the University of Virginia has been to rework their standards of academic integrity, particularly in the form of an honor code.
Honor codes, as adapted by Duke, will eliminate heavy proctoring of exams, but in turn will require students to report any observed instances of cheating under threat of punishment. And, according to Dean of Student Development and Judicial Education Lori Tenser the standard punishment in an honor code is suspension.
As there is no upward trend in cheating and no consensus on the merits of an honor code, Tenser said Brandeis is not planning to implement one. Rather, the University refers both the students and the faculty of each department to Section 5 of the Rights and Responsibilities Handbook, which defines both cheating and student responsibilities, but leaves it up to instructors to clarify and uphold their individual policies.
