students cheat on assignments and exams

• Our Mission

Why Students Cheat—and What to Do About It

A teacher seeks answers from researchers and psychologists. 

“Why did you cheat in high school?” I posed the question to a dozen former students.

“I wanted good grades and I didn’t want to work,” said Sonya, who graduates from college in June. [The students’ names in this article have been changed to protect their privacy.]

My current students were less candid than Sonya. To excuse her plagiarized Cannery Row essay, Erin, a ninth-grader with straight As, complained vaguely and unconvincingly of overwhelming stress. When he was caught copying a review of the documentary Hypernormalism , Jeremy, a senior, stood by his “hard work” and said my accusation hurt his feelings.

Cases like the much-publicized ( and enduring ) 2012 cheating scandal at high-achieving Stuyvesant High School in New York City confirm that academic dishonesty is rampant and touches even the most prestigious of schools. The data confirms this as well. A 2012 Josephson Institute’s Center for Youth Ethics report revealed that more than half of high school students admitted to cheating on a test, while 74 percent reported copying their friends’ homework. And a survey of 70,000 high school students across the United States between 2002 and 2015 found that 58 percent had plagiarized papers, while 95 percent admitted to cheating in some capacity.

So why do students cheat—and how do we stop them?

According to researchers and psychologists, the real reasons vary just as much as my students’ explanations. But educators can still learn to identify motivations for student cheating and think critically about solutions to keep even the most audacious cheaters in their classrooms from doing it again.

Rationalizing It


First, know that students realize cheating is wrong—they simply see themselves as moral in spite of it.

“They cheat just enough to maintain a self-concept as honest people. They make their behavior an exception to a general rule,” said Dr. David Rettinger , professor at the University of Mary Washington and executive director of the Center for Honor, Leadership, and Service, a campus organization dedicated to integrity.

According to Rettinger and other researchers, students who cheat can still see themselves as principled people by rationalizing cheating for reasons they see as legitimate.

Some do it when they don’t see the value of work they’re assigned, such as drill-and-kill homework assignments, or when they perceive an overemphasis on teaching content linked to high-stakes tests.

“There was no critical thinking, and teachers seemed pressured to squish it into their curriculum,” said Javier, a former student and recent liberal arts college graduate. “They questioned you on material that was never covered in class, and if you failed the test, it was progressively harder to pass the next time around.”

But students also rationalize cheating on assignments they see as having value.

High-achieving students who feel pressured to attain perfection (and Ivy League acceptances) may turn to cheating as a way to find an edge on the competition or to keep a single bad test score from sabotaging months of hard work. At Stuyvesant, for example, students and teachers identified the cutthroat environment as a factor in the rampant dishonesty that plagued the school.

And research has found that students who receive praise for being smart—as opposed to praise for effort and progress—are more inclined to exaggerate their performance and to cheat on assignments , likely because they are carrying the burden of lofty expectations.

A Developmental Stage

When it comes to risk management, adolescent students are bullish. Research has found that teenagers are biologically predisposed to be more tolerant of unknown outcomes and less bothered by stated risks than their older peers.

“In high school, they’re risk takers developmentally, and can’t see the consequences of immediate actions,” Rettinger says. “Even delayed consequences are remote to them.”

While cheating may not be a thrill ride, students already inclined to rebel against curfews and dabble in illicit substances have a certain comfort level with being reckless. They’re willing to gamble when they think they can keep up the ruse—and more inclined to believe they can get away with it.

Cheating also appears to be almost contagious among young people—and may even serve as a kind of social adhesive, at least in environments where it is widely accepted.  A study of military academy students from 1959 to 2002 revealed that students in communities where cheating is tolerated easily cave in to peer pressure, finding it harder not to cheat out of fear of losing social status if they don’t.

Michael, a former student, explained that while he didn’t need to help classmates cheat, he felt “unable to say no.” Once he started, he couldn’t stop.

Technology Facilitates and Normalizes It

With smartphones and Alexa at their fingertips, today’s students have easy access to quick answers and content they can reproduce for exams and papers.  Studies show that technology has made cheating in school easier, more convenient, and harder to catch than ever before.

To Liz Ruff, an English teacher at Garfield High School in Los Angeles, students’ use of social media can erode their understanding of authenticity and intellectual property. Because students are used to reposting images, repurposing memes, and watching parody videos, they “see ownership as nebulous,” she said.

As a result, while they may want to avoid penalties for plagiarism, they may not see it as wrong or even know that they’re doing it.

This confirms what Donald McCabe, a Rutgers University Business School professor,  reported in his 2012 book ; he found that more than 60 percent of surveyed students who had cheated considered digital plagiarism to be “trivial”—effectively, students believed it was not actually cheating at all.

Strategies for Reducing Cheating

Even moral students need help acting morally, said  Dr. Jason M. Stephens , who researches academic motivation and moral development in adolescents at the University of Auckland’s School of Learning, Development, and Professional Practice. According to Stephens, teachers are uniquely positioned to infuse students with a sense of responsibility and help them overcome the rationalizations that enable them to think cheating is OK.

1. Turn down the pressure cooker. Students are less likely to cheat on work in which they feel invested. A multiple-choice assessment tempts would-be cheaters, while a unique, multiphase writing project measuring competencies can make cheating much harder and less enticing. Repetitive homework assignments are also a culprit, according to research , so teachers should look at creating take-home assignments that encourage students to think critically and expand on class discussions. Teachers could also give students one free pass on a homework assignment each quarter, for example, or let them drop their lowest score on an assignment.

2. Be thoughtful about your language.   Research indicates that using the language of fixed mindsets , like praising children for being smart as opposed to praising them for effort and progress , is both demotivating and increases cheating. When delivering feedback, researchers suggest using phrases focused on effort like, “You made really great progress on this paper” or “This is excellent work, but there are still a few areas where you can grow.”

3. Create student honor councils. Give students the opportunity to enforce honor codes or write their own classroom/school bylaws through honor councils so they can develop a full understanding of how cheating affects themselves and others. At Fredericksburg Academy, high school students elect two Honor Council members per grade. These students teach the Honor Code to fifth graders, who, in turn, explain it to younger elementary school students to help establish a student-driven culture of integrity. Students also write a pledge of authenticity on every assignment. And if there is an honor code transgression, the council gathers to discuss possible consequences. 

4. Use metacognition. Research shows that metacognition, a process sometimes described as “ thinking about thinking ,” can help students process their motivations, goals, and actions. With my ninth graders, I use a centuries-old resource to discuss moral quandaries: the play Macbeth . Before they meet the infamous Thane of Glamis, they role-play as medical school applicants, soccer players, and politicians, deciding if they’d cheat, injure, or lie to achieve goals. I push students to consider the steps they take to get the outcomes they desire. Why do we tend to act in the ways we do? What will we do to get what we want? And how will doing those things change who we are? Every tragedy is about us, I say, not just, as in Macbeth’s case, about a man who succumbs to “vaulting ambition.”

5. Bring honesty right into the curriculum. Teachers can weave a discussion of ethical behavior into curriculum. Ruff and many other teachers have been inspired to teach media literacy to help students understand digital plagiarism and navigate the widespread availability of secondary sources online, using guidance from organizations like Common Sense Media .

There are complicated psychological dynamics at play when students cheat, according to experts and researchers. While enforcing rules and consequences is important, knowing what’s really motivating students to cheat can help you foster integrity in the classroom instead of just penalizing the cheating.

The Real Roots of Student Cheating

Let's address the mixed messages we are sending to young people..

Updated September 28, 2023 | Reviewed by Ray Parker

• Why Education Is Important
• Find a Child Therapist
• Cheating is rampant, yet young people consistently affirm honesty and the belief that cheating is wrong.
• This discrepancy arises, in part, from the tension students perceive between honesty and the terms of success.
• In an integrated environment, achievement and the real world are not seen as at odds with honesty.

The release of ChatGPT has high school and college teachers wringing their hands. A Columbia University undergraduate rubbed it in our face last May with an opinion piece in the Chronicle of Higher Education titled I’m a Student. You Have No Idea How Much We’re Using ChatGPT.

He goes on to detail how students use the program to “do the lion’s share of the thinking,” while passing off the work as their own. Catching the deception , he insists, is impossible.

As if students needed more ways to cheat. Every survey of students, whether high school or college, has found that cheating is “rampant,” “epidemic,” “commonplace, and practically expected,” to use a few of the terms with which researchers have described the scope of academic dishonesty.

In a 2010 study by the Josephson Institute, for example, 59 percent of the 43,000 high school students admitted to cheating on a test in the past year. According to a 2012 white paper, Cheat or Be Cheated? prepared by Challenge Success, 80 percent admitted to copying another student’s homework. The other studies summarized in the paper found self-reports of past-year cheating by high school students in the 70 percent to 80 percent range and higher.

At colleges, the situation is only marginally better. Studies consistently put the level of self-reported cheating among undergraduates between 50 percent and 70 percent depending in part on what behaviors are included. 1

The sad fact is that cheating is widespread.

Commitment to Honesty

Yet, when asked, most young people affirm the moral value of honesty and the belief that cheating is wrong. For example, in a survey of more than 3,000 teens conducted by my colleagues at the University of Virginia, the great majority (83 percent) indicated that to become “honest—someone who doesn’t lie or cheat,” was very important, if not essential to them.

On a long list of traits and qualities, they ranked honesty just below “hard-working” and “reliable and dependent,” and far ahead of traits like being “ambitious,” “a leader ,” and “popular.” When asked directly about cheating, only 6 percent thought it was rarely or never wrong.

Other studies find similar commitments, as do experimental studies by psychologists. In experiments, researchers manipulate the salience of moral beliefs concerning cheating by, for example, inserting moral reminders into the test situation to gauge their effect. Although students often regard some forms of cheating, such as doing homework together when they are expected to do it alone, as trivial, the studies find that young people view cheating in general, along with specific forms of dishonesty, such as copying off another person’s test, as wrong.

They find that young people strongly care to think of themselves as honest and temper their cheating behavior accordingly. 2

The Discrepancy Between Belief and Behavior

Bottom line: Kids whose ideal is to be honest and who know cheating is wrong also routinely cheat in school.

What accounts for this discrepancy? In the psychological and educational literature, researchers typically focus on personal and situational factors that work to override students’ commitment to do the right thing.

These factors include the force of different motives to cheat, such as the desire to avoid failure, and the self-serving rationalizations that students use to excuse their behavior, like minimizing responsibility—“everyone is doing it”—or dismissing their actions because “no one is hurt.”

While these explanations have obvious merit—we all know the gap between our ideals and our actions—I want to suggest another possibility: Perhaps the inconsistency also reflects the mixed messages to which young people (all of us, in fact) are constantly subjected.

Mixed Messages

Consider the story that young people hear about success. What student hasn’t been told doing well includes such things as getting good grades, going to a good college, living up to their potential, aiming high, and letting go of “limiting beliefs” that stand in their way? Schools, not to mention parents, media, and employers, all, in various ways, communicate these expectations and portray them as integral to the good in life.

They tell young people that these are the standards they should meet, the yardsticks by which they should measure themselves.

In my interviews and discussions with young people, it is clear they have absorbed these powerful messages and feel held to answer, to themselves and others, for how they are measuring up. Falling short, as they understand and feel it, is highly distressful.

At the same time, they are regularly exposed to the idea that success involves a trade-off with honesty and that cheating behavior, though regrettable, is “real life.” These words are from a student on a survey administered at an elite high school. “People,” he continued, “who are rich and successful lie and cheat every day.”

In this thinking, he is far from alone. In a 2012 Josephson Institute survey of 23,000 high school students, 57 percent agreed that “in the real world, successful people do what they have to do to win, even if others consider it cheating.” 3

Putting these together, another high school student told a researcher: “Grades are everything. You have to realize it’s the only possible way to get into a good college and you resort to any means necessary.”

In a 2021 survey of college students by College Pulse, the single biggest reason given for cheating, endorsed by 72 percent of the respondents, was “pressure to do well.”

What we see here are two goods—educational success and honesty—pitted against each other. When the two collide, the call to be successful is likely to be the far more immediate and tangible imperative.

A young person’s very future appears to hang in the balance. And, when asked in surveys , youths often perceive both their parents’ and teachers’ priorities to be more focused on getting “good grades in my classes,” than on character qualities, such as being a “caring community member.”

In noting the mixed messages, my point is not to offer another excuse for bad behavior. But some of the messages just don’t mix, placing young people in a difficult bind. Answering the expectations placed on them can be at odds with being an honest person. In the trade-off, cheating takes on a certain logic.

The proposed remedies to academic dishonesty typically focus on parents and schools. One commonly recommended strategy is to do more to promote student integrity. That seems obvious. Yet, as we saw, students already believe in honesty and the wrongness of (most) cheating. It’s not clear how more teaching on that point would make much of a difference.

Integrity, though, has another meaning, in addition to the personal qualities of being honest and of strong moral principles. Integrity is also the “quality or state of being whole or undivided.” In this second sense, we can speak of social life itself as having integrity.

It is “whole or undivided” when the different contexts of everyday life are integrated in such a way that norms, values, and expectations are fairly consistent and tend to reinforce each other—and when messages about what it means to be a good, accomplished person are not mixed but harmonious.

While social integrity rooted in ethical principles does not guarantee personal integrity, it is not hard to see how that foundation would make a major difference. Rather than confronting students with trade-offs that incentivize “any means necessary,” they would receive positive, consistent reinforcement to speak and act truthfully.

Talk of personal integrity is all for the good. But as pervasive cheating suggests, more is needed. We must also work to shape an integrated environment in which achievement and the “real world” are not set in opposition to honesty.

1. Liora Pedhazur Schmelkin, et al. “A Multidimensional Scaling of College Students’ Perceptions of Academic Dishonesty.” The Journal of Higher Education 79 (2008): 587–607.

2. See, for example, the studies in Christian B. Miller, Character and Moral Psychology. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014, Ch. 3.

3. Josephson Institute. The 2012 Report Card on the Ethics of American Youth (Installment 1: Honesty and Integrity). Josephson Institute of Ethics, 2012.

Joseph E. Davis is Research Professor of Sociology and Director of the Picturing the Human Colloquy of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia.

• Find a Therapist
• Find a Treatment Center
• Find a Psychiatrist
• Find a Support Group
• Find Online Therapy
• United States
• Brooklyn, NY
• Chicago, IL
• Houston, TX
• Los Angeles, CA
• New York, NY
• Portland, OR
• San Diego, CA
• San Francisco, CA
• Seattle, WA
• Washington, DC
• Asperger's
• Bipolar Disorder
• Chronic Pain
• Eating Disorders
• Passive Aggression
• Personality
• Goal Setting
• Positive Psychology
• Stopping Smoking
• Low Sexual Desire
• Relationships
• Child Development
• Self Tests NEW
• Therapy Center
• Diagnosis Dictionary
• Types of Therapy

At any moment, someone’s aggravating behavior or our own bad luck can set us off on an emotional spiral that could derail our entire day. Here’s how we can face triggers with less reactivity and get on with our lives.

• Emotional Intelligence
• Gaslighting
• Affective Forecasting
• Neuroscience

• Office of Academic Integrity >
• About Academic Integrity >

Common Reasons Students Cheat

Poor Time Management

The most common reason students cite for committing academic dishonesty is that they ran out of time. The good news is that this is almost always avoidable. Good time management skills are a must for success in college (as well as in life). Visit the Undergraduate Academic Advisement website  for tips on how to manage your time in college.

Stress/Overload

Another common reason students engage in dishonest behavior has to do with overload: too many homework assignments, work issues, relationship problems, COVID-19. Before you resort to behaving in an academically dishonest way, we encourage you to reach out to your professor, your TA, your academic advisor or even  UB’s counseling services .

Wanting to Help Friends

While this sounds like a good reason to do something, it in no way helps a person to be assisted in academic dishonesty. Your friends are responsible for learning what is expected of them and providing evidence of that learning to their instructor. Your unauthorized assistance falls under the “ aiding in academic dishonesty ” violation and makes both you and your friend guilty.

Fear of Failure

Students report that they resort to academic dishonesty when they feel that they won’t be able to successfully perform the task (e.g., write the computer code, compose the paper, do well on the test). Fear of failure prompts students to get unauthorized help, but the repercussions of cheating far outweigh the repercussions of failing. First, when you are caught cheating, you may fail anyway. Second, you tarnish your reputation as a trustworthy student. And third, you are establishing habits that will hurt you in the long run. When your employer or graduate program expects you to have certain knowledge based on your coursework and you don’t have that knowledge, you diminish the value of a UB education for you and your fellow alumni.

"Everyone Does it" Phenomenon

Sometimes it can feel like everyone around us is dishonest or taking shortcuts. We hear about integrity scandals on the news and in our social media feeds. Plus, sometimes we witness students cheating and seeming to get away with it. This feeling that “everyone does it” is often reported by students as a reason that they decided to be academically dishonest. The important thing to remember is that you have one reputation and you need to protect it. Once identified as someone who lacks integrity, you are no longer given the benefit of the doubt in any situation. Additionally, research shows that once you cheat, it’s easier to do it the next time and the next, paving the path for you to become genuinely dishonest in your academic pursuits.

Temptation Due to Unmonitored Environments or Weak Assignment Design

When students take assessments without anyone monitoring them, they may be tempted to access unauthorized resources because they feel like no one will know. Especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, students have been tempted to peek at online answer sites, Google a test question, or even converse with friends during a test. Because our environments may have changed does not mean that our expectations have. If you wouldn’t cheat in a classroom, don’t be tempted to cheat at home. Your personal integrity is also at stake.

Different Understanding of Academic Integrity Policies

Standards and norms for academically acceptable behavior can vary. No matter where you’re from, whether the West Coast or the far East, the standards for academic integrity at UB must be followed to further the goals of a premier research institution. Become familiar with our policies that govern academically honest behavior.

Research into cheating at the college and university began in 1990 by Dr. Donald McCabe, one of the founders of ICAI. This research continues today, spearheaded by ICAI and its members.

McCabe’s original research and subsequent follow-up studies show that more than 60 percent of university students freely admit to cheating in some form.

In March 2020, ICAI researchers tested an updated version of the McCabe survey with 840 students across multiple college campuses. This work showed the following rates of key cheating behaviors:

• Cheated in any way on an exam

• Getting someone else to do your academic work (e.g. essay, exam, assignment) and submitting it as your own.

• Using unauthorized electronic resources (e.g. articles, Wikipedia, YouTube) for a paper, project, homework or other assignments.

• Working together on an assignment with other students when the instructor asked for individual work.

• Paraphrasing or copying a few sentences or more from any source without citing it in a paper or assignment you submitted.

*This includes data from 5 institutions including a private university, two large public universities, a small public university, and a small private liberal arts college

Rettinger, et al. (2020) in prep

Cheating in High School

McCabe also conducted surveys of over 70,000 high school students at over 24 high schools in the United States. This work demonstrated that 64 percent of students admitted to cheating on a test, 58 percent admitted to plagiarism and 95 percent said they participated in some form of cheating, whether it was on a test, plagiarism or copying homework.

More about Don McCabe’s surveys and statistics, including sources for these statistics, is available in his excellent book Cheating in College .

Why Do Students Cheat?

• Posted July 19, 2016
• By Zachary Goldman

In March, Usable Knowledge published an article on ethical collaboration , which explored researchers’ ideas about how to develop classrooms and schools where collaboration is nurtured but cheating is avoided. The piece offers several explanations for why students cheat and provides powerful ideas about how to create ethical communities. The article left me wondering how students themselves might respond to these ideas, and whether their experiences with cheating reflected the researchers’ understanding. In other words, how are young people “reading the world,” to quote Paulo Freire , when it comes to questions of cheating, and what might we learn from their perspectives?

I worked with Gretchen Brion-Meisels to investigate these questions by talking to two classrooms of students from Massachusetts and Texas about their experiences with cheating. We asked these youth informants to connect their own insights and ideas about cheating with the ideas described in " Ethical Collaboration ." They wrote from a range of perspectives, grappling with what constitutes cheating, why people cheat, how people cheat, and when cheating might be ethically acceptable. In doing so, they provide us with additional insights into why students cheat and how schools might better foster ethical collaboration.

Why Students Cheat

Students critiqued both the individual decision-making of peers and the school-based structures that encourage cheating. For example, Julio (Massachusetts) wrote, “Teachers care about cheating because its not fair [that] students get good grades [but] didn't follow the teacher's rules.” His perspective represents one set of ideas that we heard, which suggests that cheating is an unethical decision caused by personal misjudgment. Umna (Massachusetts) echoed this idea, noting that “cheating is … not using the evidence in your head and only using the evidence that’s from someone else’s head.”

Other students focused on external factors that might make their peers feel pressured to cheat. For example, Michima (Massachusetts) wrote, “Peer pressure makes students cheat. Sometimes they have a reason to cheat like feeling [like] they need to be the smartest kid in class.” Kayla (Massachusetts) agreed, noting, “Some people cheat because they want to seem cooler than their friends or try to impress their friends. Students cheat because they think if they cheat all the time they’re going to get smarter.” In addition to pressure from peers, students spoke about pressure from adults, pressure related to standardized testing, and the demands of competing responsibilities.

When Cheating is Acceptable

Students noted a few types of extenuating circumstances, including high stakes moments. For example, Alejandra (Texas) wrote, “The times I had cheated [were] when I was failing a class, and if I failed the final I would repeat the class. And I hated that class and I didn’t want to retake it again.” Here, she identifies allegiance to a parallel ethical value: Graduating from high school. In this case, while cheating might be wrong, it is an acceptable means to a higher-level goal.

Encouraging an Ethical School Community

Several of the older students with whom we spoke were able to offer us ideas about how schools might create more ethical communities. Sam (Texas) wrote, “A school where cheating isn't necessary would be centered around individualization and learning. Students would learn information and be tested on the information. From there the teachers would assess students' progress with this information, new material would be created to help individual students with what they don't understand. This way of teaching wouldn't be based on time crunching every lesson, but more about helping a student understand a concept.”

Sam provides a vision for the type of school climate in which collaboration, not cheating, would be most encouraged. Kaith (Texas), added to this vision, writing, “In my own opinion students wouldn’t find the need to cheat if they knew that they had the right undivided attention towards them from their teachers and actually showed them that they care about their learning. So a school where cheating wasn’t necessary would be amazing for both teachers and students because teachers would be actually getting new things into our brains and us as students would be not only attentive of our teachers but also in fact learning.”

Both of these visions echo a big idea from “ Ethical Collaboration ”: The importance of reducing the pressure to achieve. Across students’ comments, we heard about how self-imposed pressure, peer pressure, and pressure from adults can encourage cheating.

Where Student Opinions Diverge from Research

The ways in which students spoke about support differed from the descriptions in “ Ethical Collaboration .” The researchers explain that, to reduce cheating, students need “vertical support,” or standards, guidelines, and models of ethical behavior. This implies that students need support understanding what is ethical. However, our youth informants describe a type of vertical support that centers on listening and responding to students’ needs. They want teachers to enable ethical behavior through holistic support of individual learning styles and goals. Similarly, researchers describe “horizontal support” as creating “a school environment where students know, and can persuade their peers, that no one benefits from cheating,” again implying that students need help understanding the ethics of cheating. Our youth informants led us to believe instead that the type of horizontal support needed may be one where collective success is seen as more important than individual competition.

Why Youth Voices Matter, and How to Help Them Be Heard

Our purpose in reaching out to youth respondents was to better understand whether the research perspectives on cheating offered in “ Ethical Collaboration ” mirrored the lived experiences of young people. This blog post is only a small step in that direction; young peoples’ perspectives vary widely across geographic, demographic, developmental, and contextual dimensions, and we do not mean to imply that these youth informants speak for all youth. However, our brief conversations suggest that asking youth about their lived experiences can benefit the way that educators understand school structures.

Too often, though, students are cut out of conversations about school policies and culture. They rarely even have access to information on current educational research, partially because they are not the intended audience of such work. To expand opportunities for student voice, we need to create spaces — either online or in schools — where students can research a current topic that interests them. Then they can collect information, craft arguments they want to make, and deliver their messages. Educators can create the spaces for this youth-driven work in schools, communities, and even policy settings — helping to support young people as both knowledge creators and knowledge consumers. 

Additional Resources

• Read “ Student Voice in Educational Research and Reform ” [PDF] by Alison Cook-Sather.
• Read “ The Significance of Students ” [PDF] by Dana L. Mitra.
• Read “ Beyond School Spirit ” by Emily J. Ozer and Dana Wright.

Related Articles

Fighting for Change: Estefania Rodriguez, L&T'16

Notes from ferguson, part of the conversation: rachel hanebutt, mbe'16.

• Teaching Tips

Cheating: Preventing and Dealing with Academic Dishonesty

Someday it will happen to you. A student will turn in such an excellent, well-written paper that you seriously doubt its authenticity. Or, during a test, you will look up and find a student copying from another student. The sinking feeling that immediately weighs in on you could be overwhelming as you realize you must decide how to deal with a suspected or actual case of cheating.

If it hasn’t happened to you yet, either you are new at the game, you have your head in the sand, or you have been incredibly lucky. Or, perhaps you have created a situation in which cheating is unlikely. Studies show that about 40 percent of students cheat in a given term.

An Ounce of Prevention

Communicate Policies on Cheating

My institution requests all instructors to state their policy on cheating in the syllabus. Believe it or not, students have argued that they should not be punished for cheating because they were never told they couldn’t do it. State clearly when students may cooperate and when they must work independently. Students who have been encouraged to use programmable calculators in math courses may naturally expect that they can use them in your class. (Many calculators permit considerable amounts of text to be stored in their memories. Either design the test so that calculators are not necessary, or insist that they push the erase button to delete text memory.)

Relate With Your Students: Avoid Adversarial Relationships

Students may cheat because they feel alienated from the system. Let your students know that you respect them and expect the best from them. I believe students are less likely to cheat if they feel they know and like the instructor. Learning and using students’ names in class may have a beneficial side effect of reducing cheating.

Teach Students What Plagiarism Is So They Can Avoid Doing It

The nature of cheating depends on the assignment. Written assignments run the risk of plagiarism. Some instructors may be surprised to learn that students sometimes plagiarize unintentionally because they do not know enough about what constitutes scholarship. Before giving written assignments, it is a good idea to discuss how to credit other people’s work. Some departments promulgate written guidelines on plagiarism.

We will discuss later what to do when you suspect cheating. But one technique that is particularly suited to written assignments is to ask a student whom you suspect of plagiarism to explain something in the paper in other words. More sophisticated techniques include blanking out key words and asking the student to fill in the spaces.

Structure Writing Assignments So Students Cannot Use Others’ Work

Having informed students what plagiarism is, you should structure the timing of the assignment in such a way that plagiarism becomes less likely. Several weeks before the final paper is due ask the students for a statement of their topic. Next ask for a preliminary list of references that they intend to consult. Then have them turn in a tentative outline. Any changes you may suggest at these stages will make it more difficult for them to turn in a paper previously prepared by someone else. The only clear case of plagiarism I have experienced occurred with a student who had missed several weeks of class and skipped these stages. Your guidelines should suggest that they keep all drafts of their work, notes, printouts of computer searches, etc. They should photocopy the first page of every article or book cited in their reference list. This way they can’t cite papers they haven’t at least laid eyes on. Some faculty also inform students that they keep a record of all papers written, or the papers themselves, for the preceding five years.

Take Control of the Test Situation

Arrange the classroom situation to suit the nature of the test. You may want students to sit in every other seat, take assigned seats to break up groups of would-be cheaters, or leave the front row open for latecomers, etc. Some instructors number all tests and have students leave completed tests face down on the desk. Then they may be picked up in order, and papers of suspected cheaters can be compared for similarities. (Be aware that papers can be similar if students study together. But hearing boards that review suspected cases of cheating can be skeptical of purely statistical evidence.)

I require students to reverse baseball caps because the bill makes it harder for you to monitor their gaze. (I do not ask for their removal: A student may be taking chemotherapy, or just having a bad hair day.)

You should resist their complaints to the contrary and efforts to put you on the defensive. You do not need to explain why they should follow your instructions. You may instruct a student who is behaving suspiciously to sit elsewhere without making an accusation or justifying yourself.

Opinions vary on how faculty members should dress. But) make a point to dress in a businesslike manner on test day because I believe it is important to convey to students that they should take the situation seriously and the professor’s appearance can make the point without making them uncomfortable.

How you manage the testing situation depends on factors such as the type of test, class size and whether you reuse the same test for different classes or across semesters. Because I seldom reuse tests, for example, I generally do not need to count the booklets as) pass them out, nor do I need to recover them. But once a student has left the room, I do not permit that student to reenter. In large classes, I use alternate forms of the exam (e.g., same items appear in three different orders) so that a student looking at a classmate’s answer sheet is not helped by doing so. Simply changing the order of pages is not nearly as effective as scrambling items within pages.

If your class is large enough that you don’t know all students, require them to show picture ID and sign their test (as well as print their name on the test). Be sure to have additional proctors in large classes. I try to have help in classes larger than 75, about one for every additional 100 students.

Be Prepared

After teaching for 30 years I thought) knew all the tricks students used. Then one term I was confronted by two new ones. So I sat down and compiled a list of over 40 different ways to cheat, and about the same number of ways to prevent cheating. I am sure there are more. My point is that we need to keep a very large number of variables and contingencies in mind on test day.

For example, what would you do if you entered your classroom and saw “Professor X’s test has been canceled” written on the blackboard and many of the students had left? Suppose the fire alarm goes off in the middle of the test. Suppose students go to leave the test and find the doors locked by computer. Then, when you use the emergency phone to call campus security you are advised that the only way to unlock them is to pull the fire alarm. Imagine running out of test booklets because the secretary miscounted. All of these have happened in my experience.

During the test, the student can cheat in two basic ways: refer to contraband materials or get help from another person. I have already mentioned the use of programmable calculators. Students occasionally wear earphone tape recorders to tests. I require them to give me the cassette. Less technologically sophisticated but effective is hiding written material under clothing, which is awkward to prove for obvious reasons.

A student receiving help from neighbors is probably harder to detect. Folklore tells of the “power wedge,” whereby a group of students arranges itself in the pattern of geese in flight with the one who knows the material in the lead position. Signaling methods can be ingenious; the “M&M” method indicates the correct alternative by the color of the candy. A simpler method is to point to the question with the pencil as if studying it and touching left ear for “a,” knee for “b,” etc. Be on the lookout for students who appear to be doing an impression of a third base coach.

One of the most clever methods includes a student bringing a friend who is not in the course to sit next to him or her. The friend takes an exam and works on it as if a registered student. The actual student copies the answers from the ringer. When they are done, the ringer can either walk away and leave the test at the seat or turn it in with a fake name. Alternatively, the ringer can walk out with the test, which could also wind up in a fraternity file.

When a Student Cheats

Know and Follow Your Institution’s Procedures

My institution has a written set of guidelines on dealing with cheating. Be familiar with your institution’s policies and know what steps are available to you before an incident arises. Have the student(s) read the guidelines so they become familiar with the alternatives and processes set forth.

Settling Matters Informally

Generally, you should first try to settle the matter informally. But you and the student need to know how to proceed if the student denies the charge, or refuses to accept your proposed penalty. If you are lucky enough to settle the matter informally, be sure to get the student to sign a statement admitting the offense and accepting the penalty. You should file this statement for possible future use and send a copy to the department chair or the dean. This student may be a repeat offender requiring more serious action.

Settling Matters Formally

Some cheating incidents will require resolution through formal institutional processes. Be aware of deadlines and what information must be submitted. Write memos to your file on incidents of cheating that you witness. Write down details of the case such as who sat next to the student. Have TAs or proctors write statements on what they witnessed. Get signed statements from all parties, including the student, if he or she confesses. In brief, keep a paper trail.

The Legal System and Cheating

We live in a litigious society and many situations that were once dealt with informally now wind up in court. The best way to avoid lawsuit is to know and abide by your institution’s policies and procedures. Many faculty look the other way when they see cheating because they believe that it is necessary to have evidence that would stand up in a court of law, or they believe the procedures are too bureaucratic and they do not want to deal with them.

Courts will generally not get involved in a case if the student has been accorded due process, which is a less stringent criterion that having to follow legal rules of evidence and procedure. Due process has been accorded when the student has had an adequate opportunity to be heard, established institutional rules and procedures have been followed, the student has been assumed innocent until proven guilty, and the burden of proof has been placed on the institution.

Keep a Sense of Humor

Finally, do not take yourself too seriously. One instructor was trying to get the last stragglers to turn in their final exams. He announced that he would not accept any more papers after a certain time. Still, one student kept on working. When she ignored his final ultimatum, he refused to accept her paper. She walked up to the desk, looked him in the eye, and said, “Do you know who I am?” Thinking that she might be the daughter of a trustee, he warily said, “No.” Whereupon, she slipped her paper into the middle of the pile, squared it up, and strolled out. Sometimes there is nothing we can do.

APS regularly opens certain online articles for discussion on our website. Effective February 2021, you must be a logged-in APS member to post comments. By posting a comment, you agree to our Community Guidelines and the display of your profile information, including your name and affiliation. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations present in article comments are those of the writers and do not necessarily reflect the views of APS or the article’s author. For more information, please see our Community Guidelines .

Please login with your APS account to comment.

About the Author

Donald McBurney received his PhD from Brown University in 1964 and has proctored exams and read term papers for more than 30 years, first at the University of Tennessee, and now at the University of Pittsburgh where he is professor of Psychology. He works in sensory processes and perception, specializing in psychophysical work on taste and smell. He is the author or coauthor of three textbooks, Introduction to Sensation/Perception (2nd ed.), Prentice-Hall, 1984; Research Methods (3rd ed.), Brooks/Cole, 1994, and How to Think Like a Psychologist, Prentice-Hall (forthcoming).

Reflecting on More than a Decade of Teaching Current Directions : Some Greatest Hits and Thanks to David Myers

Nathan DeWall and other Teaching Current Directions contributors express their gratitude for social psychologist David G. Myers and his lifelong commitment to psychological science.

There’s No Ghost in the Machine: How AI Changes Our Views of Ourselves

Teaching: Try these classroom activities to clarify the myths and realities of artificial-intelligence capabilities.

Empirical Evidence Is My Love Language 

Teaching: The idea of love languages has become hugely popular and the term itself is pervasive in popular culture. This article provides teaching materials to encourage students to think critically about psychological science and popular self-help advice.

Privacy Overview

• Free Speech

Shades of Gray on Student Cheating

By  Melissa Ezarik

You have / 5 articles left. Sign up for a free account or log in.

Getty E+ / baona

How acceptable is it to use study websites, or Google, to find answers to test or homework questions? What about using unapproved technology or tools to assist in an online exam? And would it be OK to give credit to another team member on a group project even if that person did not participate?

These are a few ways the latest Student Voice survey , conducted in mid- to late October by Inside Higher Ed and College Pulse with support from Kaplan, explored the nuances of academic integrity and what students view as unethical.

Kathy Baron, an education journalist and host of The Score , a podcast about cheating in higher education that launched in October, recalls an Obama-era Department of Education leader remarking that one either has academic integrity or doesn’t, with no middle ground. But when she interviews students, she finds, “It’s not that clear to them. They do see gradations.”

For example, more than half of the Student Voice respondents see googling during homework as at least somewhat acceptable. And nearly half say it’s at least somewhat acceptable to use study websites. “People will talk about chegging like they do about googling,” says Karen Symms Gallagher, who spent 20 years as dean of the University of Southern California Rossier School of Education and is now a senior research faculty member there.

When David Rettinger, president emeritus of the International Center for Academic Integrity (ICAI), looked over the Student Voice data, he was drawn to the numbers that showed how much students realize certain actions would be considered cheating. “Some of [the unacceptable responses] are a little lighter for sure, but students generally would describe these behaviors as unacceptable,” says Rettinger, a professor of psychological science and director of academic integrity programs at the University of Mary Washington. “Their institutions talk about these things, and students know what they’re supposed to do, yet students cheat a fair bit.”

He can imagine a stressed-out student saying, “I know it’s unacceptable, mostly I don’t do it, but in this situation I’m going to do something I generally don’t believe in.”

“That poses a problem for us as administrators,” he adds.

What’s acceptable to students may be seen differently by professors and administrators. When Warren Frisina, dean of the Rabinowitz Honors College at Hofstra University, was working on development of the institution’s Academic Honor Code (affirmed by faculty, student government and the president in 2012 and announced the following year), students and faculty members were asked similar questions as in the Student Voice survey.

“We found that students and faculty lined up on just about everything except for students helping one another do homework,” he says. “That was an interesting divergence. In students’ minds, if you’re in your dorm working on homework and your roommate is, too, it seemed not only appropriate but a good idea to allow the other person to help you or to help the person. It’s not about sending in the same work, but faculty tended to assume that students knew they weren’t allowed to consult with anybody.”

[block:block=176]

One Oregon public university respondent to the Student Voice survey noted that professors’ expectations aren’t always clear or fair. “On the homework, I feel like it doesn’t matter as much. If you don’t know how to do it, and knowing the answer helps you figure out the process and learn, then I think you should be able to [look it up]. It’s not like we spend time in class going over the homework, and the tutoring centers aren’t always helpful,” the student wrote.

Besides specifics about what constitutes cheating, the survey asked about how fairly students believe their institutions handle cheating, with more than eight in 10 of the full sample agreeing at least somewhat that it’s fair. With this student perspective on academic integrity, campus leaders can be better equipped to develop policy and practice around reporting suspected cheating, managing those accusations and determining consequences.

Searching for Answers

Student perceptions of the most basic online tool, the search engine, are split pretty evenly by those who think it’s ethically acceptable to use to get answers and those who don’t. Filtered to include only students who say their college officials often or very often communicate about academic integrity and cheating in some way (n=600), only 10 percent more students think googling on homework is unacceptable. When looking only at students who say their institution has very clear policies around academic integrity and cheating (n=1,100), the percentage finding it unacceptable is just slightly higher.

Both these findings suggest that perhaps messaging should include expectations about the use of search engines. Or, maybe education helps, but it does not move the needle on ethical behaviors very much.

One respondent, from a private college in New York, wrote that “learning should not be about memorization, so it should be okay on … assignments to discuss with others, use notes and use the internet. Rarely does one need to know information in a vacuum.” (The student goes on to note that “cheating is only considered cheating because it is explicitly not allowed, not because it is actually an unethical behavior.”)

Renee Pfeifer-Luckett, director of learning technology development for the University of Wisconsin system’s Office of Learning and Information Technology Services, points out that googling is an important workplace soft skill, particularly because of the need to confirm the accuracy of information. Pfeifer-Luckett, who has presented on learning tech tools used to ensure academic honesty, adds, “That’s a skill I use thousands of times a week.”

Students are also split on the use of study websites to find answers for homework or test questions—although such websites have gotten a lot of criticism from higher ed professionals. The responses about whether they are OK to use don’t vary much by those whose colleges address academic integrity frequently or by those who say their institution’s policies around cheating are very clear.

Baron recently interviewed a journalism student struggling with calculus who used study websites but also went to the tutoring center almost daily. “She just wanted to do well and understand it,” Baron says.

“Chegg has become really popular recently for problem solving,” says Pamela Vallejos, a biochemistry major at Hofstra who serves with six other undergraduates (plus faculty and staff) on the institution’s Honor Board. “I have friends who use it if they don’t understand something and need help. But it’s really up to the student how they use it. A lot of students don’t even realize it’s an easy way to catch a student cheating.”

Online exams appear to be seen as more sacred by students, with the majority of survey respondents saying that using unapproved technology or tools in exams is very unacceptable and only 17 percent seeing it as somewhat or very acceptable. “I think what you’re seeing is that the vast majority of students don’t cheat on exams most of the time,” says Rettinger.

Pulling Their Weight

As Vallejos says she has experienced firsthand , some students will get away with doing less or even no work on a group project.

There are certainly those “free riders,” says Alexander Matros, a professor of economics at the University of South Carolina who conducted research on cheating in the early part of the pandemic . And then there are those “who try to be perfect so they have finished the task and don’t care about contributions from everybody.”

When Pfeifer-Luckett used to teach marketing, figuring out how to design group work was challenging. One strategy involved splitting up all the marketing majors and dividing others by major, keeping general business, accounting and human resources program students in different groups. “I’d put one of each of those flavored students together,” she says. Other strategies included lots of check-ins and having the group members rate each other at the end. “But I never found a real effective way to make groups run efficiently,” she admits.

Getting Accused

The percentage of Student Voice respondents who say they have turned in a fellow student for cheating can be shown on one hand, and just a few others say they’ve been accused of either cheating or plagiarism. (A September survey by Online Plagiarism Checker , representing English-speaking students worldwide, showed similar findings in how many students have ever reported cheating.)

Vallejos found herself on the receiving end of an informal accusation early in the pandemic when she was back home in South America—trying to continue her studies while in quarantine in a farm area without Wi-Fi. “The only connection I had was through my phone,” she says, and that became a big problem when she was asked to take a quiz over Zoom. “The cellular only lasted five to 10 minutes, and it wasn’t strong enough to not look choppy. In my professor’s eyes, it was an intention of trying to cheat. He didn’t understand, and I ended up dropping the class.”

Experts focused on academic integrity cite a number of reasons for the low numbers of those reported for cheating. Professors may underreport because they don’t trust the systems the institution has in place to manage an accusation, or they may worry the institution will be too hard on students, Rettinger explains. Others feel that nothing will be done and they don’t want to be undermined, or waste their time.

Professors may also not want to admit students are cheating in their classes because “they see it as a reflection on them,” says Symms Gallagher.

Sitting on the Hofstra Honor Board, Vallejos has seen just how much goes into making an accusation and has come to believe some professors are afraid to report. Then there are professors who are “tired of students cheating” and will seemingly “do anything to find something to report,” she says.

When Hofstra put its Honor Code in place, one goal was to increase the number of reports, Frisina says, adding that the goal was realized early on. Still, many professors want to manage the situation themselves. “They just want to do the right thing for the kid in front of them,” he explains.

What’s the most common reason for reluctance to report? In Rettinger’s experience, it’s simply not having enough evidence.

Eren Bilen, a professor in the department of data analytics at Dickinson College who worked with Matros on the study about cheating in the pandemic, says it must be “undeniable that a student cheated. And the only way to get such evidence when an exam is given online is to be there with the student. If using a Zoom call and something is fishy, that’s not clear evidence.” Without proof, students can’t be issued consequences.

Yet not reporting creates inequities. “If faculty handle cheating in their own way, it’s not fair to students,” says Rettinger. “An institutional system protects students’ rights if done well.”

When Christopher Small, an academic resources and technology operations specialist at Southern New Hampshire University, used to teach at another institution, plagiarism was particularly challenging because an institutionwide system did not exist. “I just had to deal with it all and write a letter to the dean, explaining the severity level,” he says. “It was on the instructor to decide punitive measures.”

Being Heard

At Hofstra, the Honor Board’s job is “the care and feeding of the Honor Code,” says Frisina. That includes forming a committee of board members to hear incidents.

“I’ve attended one, and it was an interesting experience,” says Vallejos. “It was good to hear both sides, the professor and the student. It opens your eyes.”

Flowcharts posted on Hofstra’s Honor Code website visualize the academic dishonesty procedures for undergraduate and graduate students, which Frisina says helps both students and professors to have a clear understanding of the steps.

Rettinger, who sits in on many of the student-run hearings at Mary Washington, says “emotions run the gamut.” Some students feel disappointed in themselves, and “some students are defiant—it’s the everybody-else’s-fault-but-mine approach,” he adds. Rettinger sees a lot of students who fear for the future, too. “Those of us who run these processes want to take that part out, building a process that’s not punitive but educational.”

Students are still held accountable, though, Rettinger adds. “It’s important to think of the student that didn’t cheat on an assignment. When a student cheats, their actions have implications for everyone in the class.”

Systems where students run the entire process, including appeals, are very rare, to his knowledge. “No one knows the answer to this question, but there are probably fewer than 100 student-run systems in the U.S.—probably far fewer, but I’m being safe,” he says. Students have a substantive voice at additional colleges. But in terms of institutions like that outside the United States, Rettinger says, “there are probably close to zero, or a handful at most.”

At Mary Washington, the council includes five representatives from each of the four undergraduate classes, plus graduate school members and a president elected by the entire student body.

Facing the Consequences

At most colleges and universities, accusations of cheating either get ignored or result in punitive consequences, says Tricia Bertram Gallant, director of the academic integrity office at the University of California, San Diego, and a former board member of ICAI.

Some have implemented restorative justice approaches to formally get the accused and the accuser talking, and healing. Others, like SNHU, says Small, “try to turn the language and culture away from punitive charges to what academic integrity does for you.”

More coverage on the Student Voice academic integrity survey: How Students See Cheating, and How Colleges Can Contain It

At UCSD, it’s all about that teachable moment. “The reaction to cheating doesn’t need to be punitive, especially the first time,” says Bertram Gallant.

Students must reflect on the experience, talking about contributing factors. Then most complete an academic integrity seminar and learn how to make better ethical decisions.

Those facing suspension for cheating get an additional quarter during which an integrity peer mentor helps them work on whatever might be causing issues. Provided no more violations come up, the suspension gets canceled. The idea for students, says Bertram Gallant, is “to prove you want to be a member of this community that upholds academic integrity.”

Supporting Dissertation Writers Through the Silent Struggle

While we want Ph.D.

Share This Article

More from free speech.

OCR Chides Lafayette College for Dismissing Anti-Israel Posts as ‘Free Speech Issue’

The latest Title VI resolution agreement sheds light on how colleges are being asked to handle complaints about onlin

Better Speech Policies Start With Campus Buy-In

To prepare for the next speech crisis, colleges should seek campuswide consensus on institutional values, Karl K.

Protecting Free Speech, Promoting Free Inquiry

Rajiv Vinnakota offers recommendations for campus leaders as they prepare for student protests to resume this fall.

• Become a Member
• Sign up for Newsletters
• Learning & Assessment
• Diversity & Equity
• Career Development
• Labor & Unionization
• Shared Governance
• Academic Freedom
• Books & Publishing
• Financial Aid
• Residential Life
• Physical & Mental Health
• Race & Ethnicity
• Sex & Gender
• Socioeconomics
• Traditional-Age
• Adult & Post-Traditional
• Teaching & Learning
• Artificial Intelligence
• Digital Publishing
• Data Analytics
• Administrative Tech
• Alternative Credentials
• Financial Health
• Cost-Cutting
• Revenue Strategies
• Academic Programs
• Physical Campuses
• Mergers & Collaboration
• Fundraising
• Research Universities
• Regional Public Universities
• Community Colleges
• Private Nonprofit Colleges
• Minority-Serving Institutions
• Religious Colleges
• Women's Colleges
• Specialized Colleges
• For-Profit Colleges
• Executive Leadership
• Trustees & Regents
• State Oversight
• Accreditation
• Politics & Elections
• Supreme Court
• Student Aid Policy
• Science & Research Policy
• State Policy
• Colleges & Localities
• Employee Satisfaction
• Remote & Flexible Work
• Staff Issues
• Study Abroad
• International Students in U.S.
• U.S. Colleges in the World
• Intellectual Affairs
• Seeking a Faculty Job
• Advancing in the Faculty
• Seeking an Administrative Job
• Advancing as an Administrator
• Beyond Transfer
• Call to Action
• Confessions of a Community College Dean
• Higher Ed Gamma
• Higher Ed Policy
• Just Explain It to Me!
• Just Visiting
• Law, Policy—and IT?
• Leadership & StratEDgy
• Leadership in Higher Education
• Learning Innovation
• Online: Trending Now
• Resident Scholar
• University of Venus
• Student Voice
• Academic Life
• Health & Wellness
• The College Experience
• Life After College
• Academic Minute
• Weekly Wisdom
• Reports & Data
• Quick Takes
• Advertising & Marketing
• Consulting Services
• Data & Insights
• Hiring & Jobs
• Event Partnerships

4 /5 Articles remaining this month.

Sign up for a free account or log in.

• Sign Up, It’s FREE

In order to continue enjoying our site, we ask that you confirm your identity as a human. Thank you very much for your cooperation.

• Skip to main content
• Keyboard shortcuts for audio player

Reports Of Cheating At Colleges Soar During The Pandemic

Mariam Aly, an assistant professor at Columbia University, has tried everything to keep her students from cheating. In her cognitive neuroscience class, she gives her students a week to complete an open-book exam. And, as part of that exam, the nearly 180 students in the class have to sign an honor code.

But they're still cheating. And dealing with student misconduct, she says, is the worst part of her job. "It's just awkward and painful for everybody involved," Aly says. "And it's really hard to blame them for it. You do feel disappointed and frustrated."

Her students are facing unprecedented levels of stress and uncertainty, she says, and she gets that. "I didn't go to school during a pandemic."

As college moved online in the COVID-19 crisis, many universities are reporting increases, sometimes dramatic ones, in academic misconduct. At Virginia Commonwealth University, reports of academic misconduct soared during the 2020-21 school year, to 1,077 — more than three times the previous year's number. At the University of Georgia, cases more than doubled; from 228 in the fall of 2019 to more than 600 last fall. And, at The Ohio State University, reported incidents of cheating were up more than 50% over the year before.

But while students may have had new and different opportunities for cutting corners in the online learning environment, it's unclear how much cheating actually increased. Some educators note that there are other factors at play, such as an increased ability to identify misconduct.

"There was probably increased cheating because there were more temptations and opportunities and stress and pressure. And, faculty were probably detecting it more," says Tricia Bertram Gallant, who researches academic integrity at the University of California, San Diego. "It's easier to catch in the virtual world, in many ways, than it is in the in-person world."

When collaboration morphs into cheating

When colleges shut down or restricted in-person access, students were taking exams in their bedrooms, with unfettered access to cellphones and other technology. This, educators say, spurred cheating to take on new and different forms.

One student at Middle Tennessee State University used his smart speaker to find answers during an exam, according to Michael Baily, the school's director of academic integrity. California State University, Los Angeles, had a large-scale cheating scandal early on in the pandemic, after one student alleged that her peers were sharing exam answers through a GroupMe chat.

Unauthorized collaboration was a big factor in reports of misconduct at Virginia Commonwealth, says Karen Belanger, the university's director of student conduct and academic integrity. "They were so desperate to connect that they were using — or in some courses being encouraged to create — group chats," she says. "Those chats then became a place where they may talk about homework or talk about exam questions."

Students were confused about what was permitted and what wasn't during an exam, Belanger adds. "Sometimes, people just lost track of where the guardrails were in the virtual environment."'

Faculty at the University of Georgia gave more open-book exams during the pandemic. Some students then turned to third-party study sites to complete those exams, which is considered a misconduct violation, explains Phillip Griffeth, the school's director of academic honesty.

"There was a miscommunication. Some students might have saw 'open-book, open-note' as 'open-Internet, open-resources,' " Griffeth explains.

Ohio State also saw a large increase in cases where students shared information during the exam or used unauthorized materials, according to an annual report from the school's committee on academic misconduct.

Schools, including the University of Georgia and Ohio State, are now trying to educate students on what constitutes an academic misconduct violation.

"The university is taking several steps to enhance the resources available related to academic integrity so that students continue to be fully aware of expectations and to support instructors in dealing with this issue," an Ohio State spokesman wrote to NPR.

When cheating feels like the only option

Annie Stearns will be a sophomore this fall at St. Mary's College of California, where misconduct reports doubled last fall over the previous year. During the pandemic, the challenges of learning online were entwined with social isolation and additional family responsibilities, she says.

On top of that, tutoring services and academic resources scaled back or moved online. Some students, facing Zoom burnout, stopped asking for help altogether.

"If you're in class, and then you have to go to office hours, that's another Zoom meeting. And if you have to go to the writing center, that's another Zoom meeting," Stearns explains. "People would get too overwhelmed with being on video calls and just opt out."

Stearns, who logged onto classes from her family's home last year, faced the pressures of online classes herself, but she sits on her school's academic honor council. For other students, she says, cheating can feel like the only option.

"We're going through such an unprecedented time that (cheating is) bound to happen," Stearns says. "They prefer to take the shortcut and risk getting caught, than have an email conversation with their professor because they're too ashamed to be like, 'I need assistance.' "

More cheating? Or just better tracking?

Many factors are at play in the rise in reports of cheating and misconduct, and, in interviews with NPR, experts across the higher education spectrum say they aren't at all certain whether, or how much, cheating actually increased.

"Just because there's an increase in reports of academic misconduct doesn't mean that there's more cheating occurring," says James Orr, a board member of the International Center for Academic Integrity. "In the online environment, I think that faculty across the country are more vigilant in looking for academic misconduct."

Data from before the pandemic showed similar rates of cheating when comparing online and face-to-face learning environments.

And at least one school, the University of Texas at Austin, found that reports of academic misconduct cases actually declined during the pandemic. Katie McGee, the executive director for student conduct and academic integrity there, explains that before the pandemic, UT-Austin had toughened its ability, through software, to detect cheating.

With online learning, educators are using third-party tools, which can make cheating easier to detect. Middle Tennessee State, for example, rolled out an online proctoring tool, Examity, at the start of the pandemic. The tool records testing sessions on students' webcams and uses software to flag possible cheating. The university has seen reports of cheating jump by more than 79% from fall of 2019 to spring of 2021.

"I don't believe that more students started cheating during the pandemic," said Baily. "What I believe is that we then put in place these proctoring systems that enabled us to find these students who were cheating."

And Baily says Examity is here to stay at Middle Tennessee State. Orr calls remote, third-party proctoring tools a "new industry standard."

That could be a problem for some students and faculty who have raised privacy and equity concerns around such services. At the start of the pandemic, students at Florida State University petitioned the school to stop using Honorlock. The petition says using Honorlock "blatantly violates privacy rights."

And at Miami University, in Ohio, petitioners argue that yet another service, Proctorio, discriminates against some students, "as it tracks a student's gaze, and flags students who look away from the screen as 'suspicious' too, which negatively impacts people who have ADHD-like symptoms." The petition also goes on to note, "students with black or brown skin have been asked to shine more light on their faces, as the software had difficulty recognizing them or tracking their movements."

At the University of Minnesota, students are also petitioning against the use of Proctorio, calling the service a "huge invasion of privacy."

Mike Olsen, the head of Proctorio, wrote in a statement to NPR that humans make all final determinations regarding exam integrity. He added that the company has partnered with third-party data security auditors, and an analysis of Proctorio's latest face-detection models found no measurable bias.

Honorlock declined NPR's request for comment.

Ken Leopold, a chemistry professor at the University of Minnesota, says he and other faculty must balance privacy concerns with the need to guard against cheating. He says he has avoided using Proctorio in his classes, saying the software "didn't sit right" with him. But then came the pandemic.

The school is having conversations with students about remote proctoring. But, he says, "I can't see Proctorio or some equivalent entirely vanishing from the university at this point."

"We're sensitive to the students' concerns, but at the same time, we have to uphold academic integrity,'' says Leopold, who advises the university on remote proctoring and academic misconduct. "If you're going to give an exam remotely, you have very little choice."

Correction Aug. 27, 2021

A previous version of this story incorrectly said Tricia Bertram Gallant was affiliated with the University of California, Santa Barbara. In fact, she researches academic integrity at the University of California, San Diego.

Students cheat for good grades. Why not make the classroom about learning and not testing?

Professor, Educational Psychology, The Ohio State University

Disclosure statement

Eric Anderman received funding from National Institutes of Health.

The Ohio State University provides funding as a founding partner of The Conversation US.

View all partners

We have been hearing stories about academic cheating: from students caught cheating on homework assignments as well as college entrance exams to teachers being caught in cheating scandals, such as the ones in Atlanta , Georgia, and Columbus , Ohio.

Today, between 75% and 98% of college students surveyed each year report having cheated in high school. So, if cheating is happening at that large a scale, is it just inevitable? And can we even blame our students?

In order to figure out how to answer these questions, it’s important to consider why students cheat in the first place. Although the obvious reason seems to be the desire of students to get ahead (eg, to get a good grade, or to avoid a punishment), the real reason is actually a bit more complicated.

Academic goals matter

When students do their schoolwork (which includes everything from daily homework assignments to major examinations), they usually have certain goals in mind. These goals vary from one academic task to another.

In other words, if you were to ask a student, “What is your goal in taking next week’s chemistry test?”, the student should be able to tell you what she wants to get out of the experience.

My colleagues and I have been studying the psychology behind academic cheating for the past two decades, and we have found that students’ goals in their academic tasks are related in very predictable ways to their likelihood of cheating. Research also indicates that teachers and parents can influence those goals, and thus potentially deter cheating.

If the sole reason for engaging in an academic task is to get a good grade, then it’s probably easy for a student to justify the act of cheating.

As my colleagues and I found , some students might have short-term reasons. For instance, for some students, it might be as simple a motivation as the desire to go to a friend’s party on Saturday night. If they think that their parents will not let them go if they fail the test, they might take the easier option to cheat, to be able to go to the party.

For some others, it might be a longer-term reason: They might want a good salary and other luxuries in their adult life and believe that the only path to those things would be a good college. And they might be willing to cheat on their tests to be able to get ahead in their future.

Students have different goals

Whereas these reasons may seem selfish and shortsighted to some adults, to many adolescents, who are still unable to consider the consequences of their actions, these goals may seem perfectly reasonable.

We refer to these goals as “extrinsic” goals. Research indicates that students who experience classrooms in which extrinsic goals are common are more likely to cheat.

Clearly, not all students have these goals. Some students are motivated by their desire to learn.

So, for some students, the goal might be to truly understand and master the material that is being studied. In other words, whereas some students might have a goal of getting a good grade on a chemistry test in order to get something (eg, to go to a party), others might have the goal of truly learning chemistry: “I want to understand chemistry because I want to develop drugs to help fight cancer; I know that understanding chemistry is essential for me to be successful in this career.”

We refer to these goals as “mastery” goals. Research indicates that students who experience classrooms in which mastery goals are valued and encouraged are less likely to cheat .

If one thinks about this, it starts to make sense. When students are learning in classrooms where the teacher truly values mastery of the academic content (as opposed to getting a good grade on an assessment), then “cheating” really doesn’t offer any benefits to the students.

Teachers can help

The ways in which assessments of student learning are administered are particularly relevant in discussions of academic cheating. If results of assessments ultimately come down to a grade on a test or an assignment (eg, an “A” or an “F”), then students often will come to value the grade more than what they are actually learning.

However, if, in contrast, the assessment truly focuses on a demonstration of mastery of content, then students will focus on mastering that content and not just on getting an “A.”

When students have to demonstrate mastery of material, cheating doesn’t serve much of a purpose – if you truly have to show the teacher that you understand and can apply the information that you learned, then cheating won’t buy you any shortcuts.

Fortunately, there are strategies that educators can use to facilitate students’ adoption of mastery goals instead of extrinsic goals.

Here are a few suggestions, based on our research :

Make sure that assignments and exams require students to demonstrate mastery of content, as opposed to just requiring the regurgitation of memorized facts.

When students do not demonstrate mastery on an assignment or a test, allow them to redo the assignment. Educators sometimes don’t think that this recommendation is fair – after all, if one student gets all of the answers right the first time, why should someone else get a second chance? But, if the goal is really to learn or “master” the content, then does it really matter if the student gets a second chance?

Avoid high-stakes, one-time assessments.

Always provide students’ grades privately – don’t share results publicly or display distributions of scores; students often will cheat in order to avoid looking “dumb.”

Ultimately, some students will inevitably cheat. But, by considering why students are doing various academic tasks in the first place and helping them set their “mastery” goals, educators can make a significant dent in the epidemic of academic cheating.

• Adolescents
• high stakes testing
• Atlanta Cheating scandal
• Academic cheating
• Intrinsic goals
• Student learning
• Good grades
• Learning motivation

PhD Scholarship

Senior Lecturer, HRM or People Analytics

Senior Research Fellow - Neuromuscular Disorders and Gait Analysis

Centre Director, Transformative Media Technologies

Postdoctoral Research Fellowship

Insights into How & Why Students Cheat at High Performing Schools

“ A LOT of people cheat and I feel like it would ruin my character and personal standards if I also took part in cheating, but everyone tells me there’s no way I can finish the school year with straight As without cheating. It really makes me upset but I’m honestly contemplating it because colleges can’t see who does and doesn’t cheat. ” – High school student

“Academic dishonesty is any deceitful or unfair act intended to produce a more desirable outcome on an exam, paper, homework assignment, or other assessment of learning.” (Miller, Murdock & Grotwiel, 2017).

Cheating has been a hot topic in the news lately with the unfolding of the college admissions scandal involving affluent parents allegedly using bribery and forgery to help their kids get into selective colleges. Unfortunately, we also see that cheating is common among students in middle schools through graduate schools (Miller, Murdock & Grotwiel, 2017), including the high-performing middle and high schools that Challenge Success has surveyed. To better understand who is cheating in these high schools, how they are cheating, and what is driving this behavior, we looked at recent data from the Challenge Success Student Survey completed in Fall 2018—including 16,054 students from 15 high-performing U.S. high schools (73% public, 27% private). We asked students to self-report their engagement in 12 cheating behaviors during the past month. On each of the items, adapted from a scale developed by McCabe (1999), students could select one of four options: never; once; two to three times; four or more times. We found that 79% of students cheated in some way in the past month.

How Students Cheat & Who Does It

There are two types of cheating that the students we surveyed engage in: (1) cheating collectively and (2) cheating independently. Overall rates of cheating collectively were higher than rates of cheating individually. Examples of cheating collectively include, working on an assignment with others when the instructor asked for individual work, helping someone else cheat on an assessment, and copying from another student during an assessment with that person’s knowledge. Examples of independent cheating include using unpermitted cheat sheets during an assessment, copying from another student during an assessment without their knowledge, or copying material word for word without citing it and turning it in as your own work.

When we looked more closely at who is cheating according to our survey data, we found that 9 th graders were less likely than 10 th , 11 th , and 12 th graders to cheat individually and collectively. This is consistent with other research in the field that shows that cheating tends to increase with grade level (Murdock, Stephens, & Grotewiel, 2016). We also found that male students were more likely to cheat individually than female students. Broader research from the field about cheating by gender has yielded mixed results. Some find that rates for boys are higher than for girls, while others find no difference (McCabe, Treviño & Butterfield, 2001; Murdock, Hale & Weber, 2001; Anderman & Midgley, 2004).

Why Students Cheat

“I think what causes us stress during the school year is the amount of cheating going on around school…Some of my friends and classmates who have siblings or friends that took the classes before in a way have a copy of what the tests will look like. It makes them have a competitive advantage over other people who have no siblings or known friends that took the class before. To have people who have access to these past tests, it creates more stress on students because we have to study more and push ourselves harder.” – High School Student

Why are students cheating at such high rates? Previous research on cheating suggests students may be inclined to cheat and rationalize their behaviors because of various factors including:

• Performance over Mastery: Students may cheat because of the risk of low grades due to worry, pressure on academic performance, or a fixed mindset ( Miller, Murdock & Grotewiel, 2017). School environments perceived by students to be focused on performance goals like grades and test scores over mastery have been associated with behaviors such as cheating (Anderman & Midgley, 2004).
• Peer Relationships/Social Comparison: The increase of social comparisons and competition that many children and adolescents experience in high performing schools or classrooms or the desire to help a friend ( Miller, Murdock & Grotewiel, 2017) may be another factor of choosing to cheat. Students in high-achieving cultures, furthermore, tend to cheat more when they see or perceive their peers cheating (Galloway, 2012).
• Overloaded : Another factor in students cheating is the pressure in high-performing schools to “do it all” which can be influenced by heavy workloads and/or multiple tests on the same day ( Miller, Murdock & Grotewiel, 2017)
• “Cheat or be cheated” rationale: Students may rationalize cheating by blaming the teachers or situation. This often occurs when students see the teacher as uncaring or focused on performance over mastery ( Miller, Murdock & Grotewiel, 2017). Students may rationalize and normalize cheating as the way to succeed in a challenging environment where achievement is paramount (Galloway, 2012).
• Pressure: Students may also cheat because they feel pressure to maintain their status in a success focused community where they see the situation as “cheat or be cheated” ( Miller, Murdock & Grotewiel, 2017).

We see many of these factors reflected in our survey data. Students listed their major sources of stress as grades, tests, finals, or assessments (80% of students) and overall workload and homework (71% of students). We also found that 59% of students feel they have “too much homework,” 75% of students feel “often” or “always” stressed by their schoolwork , 31% of students feel that “many” or “all” of their classes assign homework that helps them learn the material, and 74% worry “quite a bit” or “a lot” about taking assessments while 70% worry the same amount about school assignments.

Reflecting high pressure from within their community, only 51% of students feel they can meet their parents expectations “often” or “always,” 52% of students worry at least a little that if they do not do well in school their friends will not accept them, and 80% of students feel “quite a bit” or “a lot” of pressure to do well in school. Meanwhile, only 33% of students feel “quite” or “very” confident in their ability to cope with stress . Open-ended responses reported by students on our survey reinforce the quantitative data:    

“It is hard to do well in classes and become well rounded for applying to college without something giving way… in some cases students cheat. ”

“ I don’t think anyone is having a great time here, when all they’re focusing on is cheating and getting the grade that they want in order to ‘succeed’ in life after high school by going to a great college or university.”

“ Teachers often give very challenging tests that require very large curves to present even reasonable grades and this creates a very stressful atmosphere. Students are often caught cheating because that is often times the only route to getting a decent grade. ”

Quotes like these suggest that there may be a relationship between heavy amounts of homework on top of busy extracurriculars and students feeling that cheating is the only way to get everything done.

What Can Schools Do About It  

Schools may find the prevalence of the cheating culture overwhelming—potentially daunted by counteracting the normalization and prevalence of achievement at-all-costs and cheating behaviors. Students themselves, in our survey and in previous research, call for a learning environment where cheating is not an expectation or everyday behavior for getting ahead, and students are held responsible for their behavior (McCabe, 2001).

“ The administration needs to punish students who cheat. The school does not crack down on these kids, and it makes it harder for others to succeed. ”

“ Since I was in 9th grade it feels like our counselors only really care about our class rank and GPA. I am a hard worker but I don’t have the best GPA. Our school focuses too much on grades. This creates pressure on students to cheat just to get a good grade to boost their GPA. Learning has been compromised by a desire for a number that we have been told defines us as people. ”

Schools can work with students to change the prevailing culture of cheating through listening to students about their experiences and perceptions, acknowledging the issue and predominant culture, and collaborating with students to clarify and redefine how and why students learn. Some areas we (and other researchers) recommend that schools can address underlying causes of cheating include:

• Strive for school-wide buy-in for honest academic practices including defining what constitutes cheating and academic dishonesty for students and providing clear consequences for cheating (Galloway, 2012). Further providing open dialogue and discussions with students, parents, and teachers may help students feel that teachers are treating then with respect and fairness (Murdock et al., 2004).
• Educate students on what cheating means in their school community so that cheating is viewed as unacceptable ( Miller, Murdock & Grotewiel, 2017)
• Establish a climate of care and a classroom where it is evident that the teacher cares about student progress, learning, and understanding.
• Emphasize mastery and learning over performance . One strategy is through using formative assessments such as practice exams that can be reviewed in class and homework that can be corrected until students achieve mastery on the concepts ( Miller, Murdock & Grotewiel, 2017).
• Revise assessments and grading policies to allow for redemption and revision.
• Ensure that students are met with “reasonable demands” such as spacing assignments and assessments across days and reduce workload without reducing rigor ( Miller, Murdock & Grotewiel, 2017)
• Teach students time management strategies (e.g. using a planner, breaking tasks into manageable pieces, and how to use resources or ask for help). Schools may even teach parents how to help students organize and manage their work rather than providing them with answers. ( Miller, Murdock & Grotewiel, 2017)

Overall, schools should aim to change student attitudes around integrity through “clear, fair, and consistent” assessments, valuing learning over mastery, reducing comparisons and competition between students, teaching students management and organization skills, and demonstrating care and empathy for students and the pressures that face ( Miller, Murdock & Grotewiel, 2017) .

Anderman, E.M. & Midgley, C. (2004). Changes in self-reported academic cheating across the transition from middle school to high school. Contemporary Educational Psychology , 29(4), 499-517.

Galloway, M. K. (2012). Cheating in advantaged high schools: Prevalence, justifications, and possibilities for change. Ethics & Behavior, 22(5), 378-399.

McCabe, D. (1999). Academic dishonesty among high school students. Adolescence, 34 (136), 681- 687.

McCabe, D. (2001) Cheating: Why students do it and how we can help them stop. American Educator , Winter, 38-43.

McCabe, D. L., Treviño, L. K., & Butterfield, K. D. (2001). Cheating in academic institutions: A decade of research. Ethics & Behavior , 11, 219-232.

Miller, A. D., Murdock, T. B., & Grotewiel, M. M. (2017). Addressing Academic Dishonesty Among the Highest Achievers. Theory Into Practice , 56 (2), 121-128.

Murdock, T., Hale, N., & Weber, M. (2001). Predictors of cheating among early adolescents: Academic and social motivations. Contemporary Educational Psychology , 26, 96-115.

Murdock, T. B., Miller, A., & Kohlhardt, J. (2004). Effects of Classroom Context Variables on High School Students’ Judgments of the Acceptability and Likelihood of Cheating. Journal of Educational Psychology , 96 (4), 765-777.

Murdock, T., Stephens, J., & Grotewiel, M. (2016). Student dishonesty in the face of assessment. In G. Brown and L. Harris (Eds.), Handbook of Human and Social Conditions in Assessment (pp. 186-203). London, England: Routledge.

Wangaard, D. B. & J. M. Stephens (2011). Academic integrity: A critical challenge for schools. Excellence & Ethics , Winter 2011.

Interested in learning more about your students’ perceptions of their school experiences? Learn more about the Challenge Success Student Survey here .

Your one stop for college news and resources!

Digital magazines, write for us.

Search College News

Campus news , campus news , featured, how and why do college students cheat on assignments, editorial staff.

Writing-Help has conducted new research, surveying 800 students from U.S. universities to find out how and why college student cheat on assignments.

86% of surveyed students admit they cheat in college in one way or another. Among them, 76% just copied others’ works from online resources, thus infringing copyright. When we asked about the plagiarism issues, students confessed to trying to paraphrase or synonymize those works.

Others appeared to be more concerned about getting plagiarism-free assignments: 53% said they asked AI text generators to craft essays for them; 48% replied they better trust their works to custom writing services because it’s a human writer crafting papers from scratch there, and the originality won’t suffer.

Why do Students Use Custom Writing Services?

The #1 reason for using writing services is the pressure to succeed (87%). High expectations from teachers, parents, and the public in general, based on the stereotype that one should perform well in school and college to land a good job and succeed in life, lead to students’ stress and anxiety. Afraid to fail the expectations, students seek assistance to manage their academic results. Another motivation is panic: 63% feel their knowledge isn’t enough to write an A-worthy essay, addressing online services for help. (Impostor syndrome and fear of failure are also here.)

The extensive group of motivations behind cheating on written assignments relates to time management: 68% of students lack this skill and can’t organize their schedule to complete tasks on the due date. For 85%, things are more complicated: Struggling with academic overload, they can’t physically meet all the strict deadlines and decide to delegate some written tasks to related services.

An expectedly high percentage of respondents (71%) call laziness the motivation for ordering papers from writing services. For 54%, cheating is OK or even necessary to stay competitive: Seeing their peers doing that, not getting caught, and achieving high results while spending less effort, honest students lose motivation and decide to follow the lead of those classmates.

For 33%, the lack of interest in a subject is enough to ask someone else to complete this subject’s related tasks for them. More practical and career-focused, modern students don’t see any reason to spend effort on anything they consider irrelevant or invaluable for their future life.

How Often do Students Use Essay Writing Services?

Given the primary motivations behind using essay writing services, 55% of respondents admit they do it regularly. Others (31%) said they paid for papers a few times (1-3) when academic overload with lack of time came by.

At the same time, 14% of students from those coming to Writing-Help’s chat indicated they would never pay for essays because of ethics. Answering the question, “How can we help you?” they said they came to the chat because of curiosity.

SEE ALSO: Which Colleges and Universities Produce the Most Business Leaders?

Related Articles

Best Holiday Destinations for Students This Summer

First impressions: Killzone 3 Open Beta

Controversy over National Spelling Bee Championship Word

"The Dark Knight Rises" trailer

What's trending.

What Are the Most Competitive Companies to Apply for in 2024?

Three Ways College Students Can Connect with the Planet

What Are the Benefits of Travelling for Students?

Most Underrated Colleges Across the United States

Recommended for you.

Endangered whales taking over California coast

Royal Baby Watch: The Conclusion

Miss America becomes victim to racist backlash

Mario Batali agrees to pay $5.25 million to employees whose tips he skimmed

This page has been archived and is no longer being updated regularly.

Beat the cheat

Psychologists are providing insight into why students cheat and what faculty, schools and even students can do about it.

By Amy Novotney

June 2011, Vol 42, No. 6

Print version: page 54

More than half of teenagers say they have cheated on a test during the last year — and 34 percent have done it more than twice — according to a survey of 40,000 U.S. high school students released in February by the nonprofit Josephson Institute of Ethics. The survey also found that one in three students admitted they used the Internet to plagiarize an assignment.

The statistics don’t get any better once students reach college. In surveys of 14,000 undergraduates conducted over the past four years by Donald McCabe, PhD, a business professor at Rutgers University and co-founder of Clemson University’s International Center for Academic Integrity, about two-thirds of students admit to cheating on tests, homework and assignments. And in a 2009 study in Ethics & Behavior (Vol. 19, No. 1), researchers found that nearly 82 percent of a sample of college alumni admitted to engaging in some form of cheating as undergraduates.

Some research even suggests that academic cheating may be associated with dishonesty later in life. In a 2007 survey of 154 college students, Southern Illinois University researchers found that students who plagiarized in college reported that they viewed themselves as more likely to break rules in the workplace, cheat on spouses and engage in illegal activities ( Ethics & Behavior , Vol. 17, No. 3). A 2009 survey, also by the Josephson Institute of Ethics, reports a further correlation: People who cheat on exams in high school are three times more likely to lie to a customer or inflate an insurance claim compared with those who never cheated. High school cheaters are also twice as likely to lie to or deceive their boss and one-and-a-half times more likely to lie to a significant other or cheat on their taxes.

Academic cheating, therefore, is not just an academic problem, and curbing this behavior is something that academic institutions are beginning to tackle head-on, says Stephen F. Davis, PhD, emeritus professor of psychology at Emporia State University and co-author of “Cheating in School: What We Know and What We Can Do” (Wiley-Blackwell, 2009). New research by psychologists seems to suggest that the best way to prevent cheating is to create a campus-wide culture of academic integrity.

“Everyone at the institution — from the president of the university and the board of directors right on down to every janitor and cafeteria worker — has to buy into the fact that the school is an academically honest institution and that cheating is a reprehensible behavior,” Davis says.

Why students cheat

The increasing amount of pressure on students to succeed academically — in efforts to get into good colleges, graduate schools and eventually to land good jobs — tends to be one of the biggest drivers of cheating’s proliferation. Several studies show that students who are more motivated than their peers by performance are more likely to cheat.

“What we show is that as intrinsic motivation for a course drops, and/or as extrinsic motivation rises, cheating goes up,” says Middlebury College psychology professor Augustus Jordan, PhD, who led a 2005 study on motivation to cheat ( Ethics and Behavior, Vol. 15, No. 2). “The less a topic matters to a person, or the more they are participating in it for instrumental reasons, the higher the risk for cheating.”

Psychological research has also shown that dishonest behaviors such as cheating actually alter a person’s sense of right and wrong, so after cheating once, some students stop viewing the behavior as immoral. In a study published in March in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin (Vol. 37, No. 3), for example, Harvard University psychology and organizational behavior graduate student Lisa Shu and colleagues conducted a series of experiments, one of which involved having undergraduates read an honor code reminding them that cheating is wrong and then providing them with a series of math problems and an envelope of cash. The more math problems they were able to answer correctly, the more cash they were allowed to take. In one condition, participants reported their own scores, which gave them an opportunity to cheat by misreporting. In the other condition, participants’ scores were tallied by a proctor in the room. As might be expected, several students in the first condition inflated their scores to receive more money. These students also reported a greater degree of cheating acceptance after participating in the study than they had prior to the experiment. They also found that, while those who read the honor code were less likely to cheat, the honor code did not eliminate all of the cheating,

“Our findings confirm that the situation can, in fact, impact behavior and that people’s beliefs flex to align with their behavior,” Shu says.

Another important finding is that while many students understand that cheating is against the rules, most still look to their peers for cues as to what behaviors and attitudes are acceptable, says cognitive psychologist David Rettinger, PhD, of the University of Mary Washington. Perhaps not surprisingly, he says, several studies suggest that seeing others cheat increases one’s tendency to cheat.

“Cheating is contagious,” says Rettinger. In his 2009 study with 158 undergraduates, published in Research in Higher Education (Vol. 50, No. 3), he found that direct knowledge of others’ cheating was the biggest predictor of cheating.

Even students at several U.S. military academies — where student honor codes are widely publicized and strictly enforced — aren’t immune from cheating’s contagion. A longitudinal study led by University of California, Davis, economist Scott Carrell, PhD, examined survey data gathered from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, U.S. Naval Academy and U.S. Air Force Academy from 1959 through 2002. Carrell found that, thanks to peer effects, one new college cheater is “created” through social contagion for every two to three additional high school cheaters admitted to a service academy.

“This behavior is most likely transmitted through the knowledge that other students are cheating,” says Carrell, who conducted the study with James West, PhD, and Frederick Malmstrom, PhD, both of the Air Force Academy. “This knowledge causes students — particularly those who would not have otherwise — to cheat because they feel like they need to stay competitive and because it creates a social norm of cheating.”

Dishonesty prevention

Peer effects, however, cut both ways, and getting students involved in creating a culture of academic honesty can be a great way to curb cheating.

“The key is to create this community feeling of disgust at the cheating behavior,” says Rettinger. “And the best way to do that is at the student level.”

At the University of California, San Diego, for example, the student-led group Academic Integrity Matters! (AIM!) is circulating a student petition that calls on faculty to provide more education on academic integrity, state more explicitly the rules for academic integrity in the classroom and report all cheating when they see it. The petition spawned from a recent survey AIM! developed asking professors for their opinions on the current state of academic integrity at UCSD, says Nick Graham, the UCSD student who led the development of the petition.

“One of the conclusions we reached from this survey was that professors think students don’t care about the promotion of integrity at UCSD,” Graham says. “We saw that as a huge problem and so we developed the petition. The signatures we have accrued so far are a testament to the fact that students want UCSD to be a place of integrity and that they both need and want professors’ help.”

Teachers can also help diminish students’ impulse to cheat by explaining the purpose and relevance of every academic lesson and course assignment, says University of Connecticut educational psychologist Jason Stephens, PhD. According to research presented in 2003 by Stephens and later published in the “The Psychology of Academic Cheating” (Elsevier, 2006), high school students cheat more when they see the teacher as less fair and caring and when their motivation in the course is more focused on grades and less on learning and understanding. In addition, in a 1998 study of cheating with 285 middle school students, Ohio State University educational psychologist Eric Anderman, PhD, co-editor with Tamara Murdock, PhD, of “The Psychology of Academic Cheating,” found that how teachers present the goals of learning in class is key to reducing cheating. Anderman showed that students who reported the most cheating perceive their classrooms as being more focused on extrinsic goals, such as getting good grades, than on mastery goals associated with learning for its own sake and continuing improvement ( Journal of Educational Psychology , Vol. 90, No. 1).

“When students feel like assignments are arbitrary, it’s really easy for them to talk themselves into not doing it by cheating,” Rettinger says. “You want to make it hard for them to neutralize by saying, ‘This is what you’ll learn and how it’s useful to you.’”

At the college level in particular, it’s also important for institutional leaders to make fairness a priority by having an office of academic integrity to communicate to students and faculty that the university takes the issue of academic dishonesty seriously, says Tricia Bertram Gallant, PhD, academic integrity coordinator at the University of California, San Diego, and co-author with Davis of “Cheating in School.” Such university-wide initiatives must first include an integrity assessment to get a baseline measure of student and faculty attitudes and current behavior, Bertram Gallant says, adding that a good one is available through the International Center for Academic Integrity , a consortium of 360 high schools, colleges and universities where information about academic integrity and successful policies, procedures, research and curricular materials on the topic are shared. It’s also important to clearly communicate to students what is and isn’t appropriate, and to create a sense of moral community on campus through campus-wide activities promoting ethics and professional integrity.

At UCSD, for example, all freshmen must complete an online tutorial on academic integrity before they can register for their second-semester classes. Professors are also encouraged to explain the importance of academic integrity in their syllabi and to take time during the first week of class to talk about the behaviors that constitute cheating in their courses, as well as the consequences for engaging in those behaviors.

There’s also evidence that focusing on honesty, trust, fairness, respect and responsibility and promoting practices such as effective honor codes can make a significant difference in student behaviors, attitudes and beliefs, according to a 1999 study by the Center for Academic Integrity. Honor codes seem to be particularly salient when they engage students, however. In Shu’s study on the morality of cheating, for example, she found that participants who passively read a generic honor code before taking a test were less likely to cheat on the math problems, though this step did not completely curb cheating. Among those who signed their names attesting that they’d read and understood the honor code, however, no cheating occurred.

“It was impressive to us how exposing participants to an honor code and really making morality salient in that situation basically eliminated cheating altogether,” she says.

Amy Novotney is a writer in Chicago.

Letters to the Editor

• Send us a letter

More From Forbes

More than half of college students believe using chatgpt to complete assignments is cheating.

• Share to Facebook
• Share to Twitter
• Share to Linkedin

The majority of college students believe using artificial intelligence (AI) tools like ChatGPT to ... [+] complete assignments and exams is cheating, but they also believe its use will become the "new normal" in the future.

Over half of college students (51%) believe that using artificial intelligence (AI) tools like ChatGPT to complete assignments and exams is cheating. Two in ten (20%) disagreed, and the remainder were neutral. Those are among the key findings from a just-released BestColleges survey of 1,000 current undergraduate and graduate students, conducted in the first two weeks of March.

The survey found that 43% of college students overall say they’ve had experience using AI tools like ChatGPT, and half of those acknowledge turning to those tools to work on assignments or exams. This figure translates into 1 in 5 college students admitting they employ AI to complete their schoolwork. Most of the students who’ve used AI apps said they did so for personal projects, out of curiosity, or for fun.

Student Views About The Ethics Of AI Tools

Students’ opinions about the ethics of using ChatGPT for their academic assignments depended on the way the survey questions were posed. For example,

• When asked if “using AI tools to help complete assignments and exams is morally wrong,” 41% agreed, while 27% disagreed.
• But when asked if “AI tools should be prohibited in educational settings,” 38% of respondents disagreed, and only 27% agreed.
• The survey found that 48% of students agreed that “it is possible to use AI in an ethical way to help complete my assignments and exams,” more than twice the percentage (21% ) who disagreed.

Among those students who used AI tools to complete assignments or exams, 50% said they used them for only some portion of the work but completed the majority themselves. 30% used AI for the majority of their assignment, and 17% used AI to complete an assignment and turn it in with no edits.

Best High-Yield Savings Accounts Of 2024

Best 5% interest savings accounts of 2024.

Most college students (57%) said they didn’t intend to use or continue using AI to complete assignments or exams. However, 32% said they used it or would continue to use it in the future, while 11% preferred not to answer.

Most Students Said Their Instructors Are Not Discussing The Use of ChatGPT.

Colleges and universities are debating what policies they should put in place regarding students using ChatGPT to complete academic work. Should it be banned outright for coursework? When does its use constitute plagiarism? Can and should students be taught to use it responsibly? The BestColleges survey indicated that a lack of clear and consistent policies is leaving many students uncertain about how AI tools are viewed at their institutions.

While 31% of students knew about rules prohibiting AI tools at their schools, over half (54%) reported that their instructors had not openly discussed the use of AI tools like ChatGPT and only 25% said their schools or instructors had specified how to use AI ethically or responsibly.

Other Opinions About Chat GPT

Among the respondents, 40% of students believed the use of AI by students defeated the purpose of education. Twenty-seven percent of them worried about the impact of AI on their education, and 31% were worried about its impact on their career or potential career. Almost half of students (48%) were worried about the impact of AI on society in general.

While the majority of students (63%) thought that AI couldn’t replace human intelligence or creativity, a majority (51%) still thought the results can at least pass as "human."

Regardless of whether it’s used for academic purposes or regarded as being ethical when it is used, Chat GPT is here to stay in the minds of most students. Six in ten (61%) reported that they believed AI tools like ChatGPT will become the new normal in the long run. That anticipation reflects a reality for which most colleges appear to be still unprepared, despite its obvious implications for student learning, academic integrity and the very nature of scholarly work.

• Editorial Standards
• Reprints & Permissions

Join The Conversation

One Community. Many Voices. Create a free account to share your thoughts. 

Forbes Community Guidelines

Our community is about connecting people through open and thoughtful conversations. We want our readers to share their views and exchange ideas and facts in a safe space.

In order to do so, please follow the posting rules in our site's  Terms of Service.   We've summarized some of those key rules below. Simply put, keep it civil.

Your post will be rejected if we notice that it seems to contain:

• False or intentionally out-of-context or misleading information
• Insults, profanity, incoherent, obscene or inflammatory language or threats of any kind
• Attacks on the identity of other commenters or the article's author
• Content that otherwise violates our site's  terms.

User accounts will be blocked if we notice or believe that users are engaged in:

• Continuous attempts to re-post comments that have been previously moderated/rejected
• Racist, sexist, homophobic or other discriminatory comments
• Attempts or tactics that put the site security at risk
• Actions that otherwise violate our site's  terms.

So, how can you be a power user?

• Stay on topic and share your insights
• Feel free to be clear and thoughtful to get your point across
• ‘Like’ or ‘Dislike’ to show your point of view.
• Protect your community.
• Use the report tool to alert us when someone breaks the rules.

Thanks for reading our community guidelines. Please read the full list of posting rules found in our site's  Terms of Service.

• Instructors
• Institutions
• Teaching Strategies
• Higher Ed Trends
• Academic Leadership
• Affordability
• Product Updates

Why Do Students Cheat? One Student’s Perspective

Sarah Gido is a Marketing and Communications major at Anglo-American University in Prague, Czech Republic

Cheating has always been an issue in school. When I asked my friends if they had ever cheated in school, the response was almost always yes. Some said that in high school they wrote answers on water bottle wrappers or even on their legs to be seen through the holes of their jeans. Another said they took an online public speaking course and had their script written above their computer. But if we all know it’s morally wrong, why do students cheat? And why are more students cheating now in 2023 than ever before?

Online learning makes cheating easier

The shift to online learning in 2020 drastically changed the relationship between students and learning. From a student perspective, it is much easier to cheat on virtual tests and homework assignments. With any answer at their fingertips on the internet, students turn to search engines for help on exams. Digital learning puts a barrier between students and professors, but also between students and learning content.

It’s difficult to feel connected and interested in information through independent learning that arises from digital assignments. When students don’t have an emotional stake in the learning process, they retain less of what they learn and cheating is an easy solution. From splitting screens between tabs and studying websites, technology has made student cheating easier—and harder for instructors to detect—than ever before. When it’s that easy, students often find that it doesn’t feel as wrong. Furthermore, it’s easier on the conscience to cheat without a professor or your peers looking at you.

Students are losing motivation

Students’ plates are fuller than ever before. The switch back to fully in-person learning was jarring but a welcome change for many! However, many students fell into a cycle of choosing convenience over studying during virtual and hybrid learning courses. Being back in the classroom meant the return of intense schedules, public speaking, and rising stress levels. Staying motivated in class is much more difficult when balancing the stress of a job, relationships, sickness, or hunting for an internship. According to a survey completed by the American Addiction Centers, 88 percent of students reported their school life to be stressful. Dwindling levels of motivation can lead to procrastination and resistance to do assignments that weigh on students’ minds. Homework, essays, and exams turn into dreaded obligations completed with haste by cheating rather than opportunities for enhancement.

Students are focused on passing courses

In the minds of many students, there’s more emphasis on passing classes than there is on learning. In the stress of coursework, focus on exam scores can be overwhelming. Finishing a degree is difficult and there has been a distinct shift in the perception of college courses and the end goal. The COVID-19 pandemic put an abrupt halt to the “normal” progression of school life, and many students now are just looking to finish.

Curb your students’ desire to cheat

The students of today are unique and are looking to regain motivation. Making content relatable is the best way to tap into the minds of students and have them invest time and energy into the course. This is as simple as using relevant real-world resources and references. I look forward to courses that challenge me in a fun way as a learner and individual. As a Marketing student, my favorite college course I have taken utilized nontraditional assignments, including oral exams and examining current advertisements. Fostering a classroom that welcomes opportunities for career and personal development may energize your students and make them less likely to cheat.

Want to learn more about how and why students cheat, plus strategies for preventing and detecting cheating? Download our free eBook, “Cheating and Academic Dishonesty: How to Spot it — and What to Do About It.”

Related articles.

Stack Exchange Network

Stack Exchange network consists of 183 Q&A communities including Stack Overflow , the largest, most trusted online community for developers to learn, share their knowledge, and build their careers.

Q&A for work

Connect and share knowledge within a single location that is structured and easy to search.

When is it acceptable to report classmates who cheat on an exam? [duplicate]

So for one of my computer science classes, we have a WhatsApp chat among all students in the class to network and help each other out with questions regarding homework, or if we have any confusion on assignments. It's a given that we can get help on these types of assignments.

But exams are proctored online, and getting help on them is strictly forbidden. However, some students in the chat have posted to the WhatsApp chat during their proctored exams, posting photos of the exams, the questions, and receiving help from others during their exams.

Why would I care about this? So normally, when a student cheats on an exam, it would have no effect on another student because the two overall students' grades are unrelated. However, the exams are curved. So these students that cheated on the exams **not only have an unfair advantage, ** but they also put other students at a disadvantage. Them doing exceptionally better than they would have has the potentiality to reduce other students grades by up to 10-15% of what it would be. So if Student A would normally get a 65 because they don't know the content, they now get a 89, thus, throwing off the entire curve. However, student B who actually DID try his hardest and studied got an 74. Their grade would have been higher with the curve, but student A cheating disrupted the curve. As a result, student B gets an 79, where they would've had an 84 without the several cheaters with almost perfect exam scores at the top.

Personally, I hate to be 'that girl' that reports someone else like a snitch... But I worked so hard in this class. I studied for 6 hours every day before this exam, and got an 83... and these people admit in chat that they would probably fail if they didn't use WhatsApp (have it screenshotted-saying that exactly). So I worked so hard and got an 83. They cheated and got a solid 90, doing no studying, no hard work on their own part. They work full time, so they complain they don't have time. But how is that my fault, or the fault of the other students that the cheater makes different life choices, or chooses to put less time into school, and we as a result should suffer? That's my rationale for wanting to report them. I play fair, so why should we suffer because they don't?

• computer-science

• 7 I'm curious about how important and advanced your class and this exam was. I mean, how stupid can they be to cheat like that, leaving traces on a whats-app chat... –  EigenDavid Commented Oct 31, 2017 at 16:28
• 1 Make sure you have all relevant screenshots. (I.e., all the ones demonstrating cheating.) It is apparently possible (or becoming possible) to remotely delete WhatsApp chat. –  user2768 Commented Oct 31, 2017 at 16:28
• 3 The students that provided responses may have also broken your University's guidelines. (Of course, that depends what the precise guidelines specify. Nonetheless, this points is probably worth raising.) –  user2768 Commented Oct 31, 2017 at 16:30
• 5 That must have been a fairly relaxed exam format if they were able to take pictures of the exam and use their phones during it. –  JMac Commented Oct 31, 2017 at 16:52
• 1 I'm not sure the last half/rant of this question is necessary: We all know how curved tests work. –  Azor Ahai -him- Commented Oct 31, 2017 at 18:36

4 Answers 4

The answer to the title question is:

(barring some sort of really bizarre circumstances that I am not able to think of right now). The specifics of the situations does not make me change my answer in this case.

• 1 I agree completely - in fact I have had students communicate during and after an exam about cheating and, in most cases, have been able to do something about it. –  Solar Mike Commented Oct 31, 2017 at 16:02
• 13 Just from my school's code of honor... "An Aggie does not lie, cheat, or steal, or tolerate those who do. " –  Sean Roberson Commented Oct 31, 2017 at 16:26
• 1 @DanRomik (good point.) definitely report it. Would add to try and be as anonymous as you can be while doing so - even going so far as to remove as much personally identifying information from your profile here if you can. Some of your classmates may be unethical, but that doesn't make them stupid or ignorant of this site. Your profile and the question reveal your gender and location, for example. –  Jeutnarg Commented Oct 31, 2017 at 18:12
• 1 @JSowwy Report them as soon as possible. –  Tobias Kildetoft Commented Nov 1, 2017 at 13:13
• 1 @JSowwy what more evidence is needed? I assume you have screenshots of the WhatsApp chat. As Tobias said, report them without further delay. Your goal is to help prevent future cheating and punish the cheating that has already occurred, not to trap people into committing more cheating. –  Dan Romik Commented Nov 3, 2017 at 2:05

There is absolutely no reason for you to hate being “that girl”. You need to understand that the mindset that being a “snitch” is a negative thing is a result of cultural conditioning that you have been subjected to. Probably historically there were good reasons for societies to associate negative feelings with snitching (e.g., resisting an evil king or dictator who makes stupid rules, and his cronies who reward people who snitch out citizens who violate those rules). Unfortunately today in modern democratic societies we are stuck with that anachronistic mindset even though the reasons for it are no longer even a little bit applicable.

So, you need to rethink your assumptions about what it means to be a snitch. In the context of your situation, complaining about the cheating will be doing a huge service not just to yourself but also to your honest peers, to your university and its reputation, to future employers of graduates of your university, and ultimately (although they are unlikely to see things that way) to the cheating students themselves, who will be taught a valuable lesson at a point in their lives when the stakes for dishonest behavior are still relatively low. I know it’s easier to say this advice than to follow it, but there is no reason for you to feel any guilt or other negative emotions about reporting the cheating. Whatever consequences are visited on the cheating students, they brought them on themselves and fully deserve them.

The only word of caution is that you must take great care to maintain your anonymity, to avoid social ostracism or other negative consequences for your complaint, which are a very real danger.

• 4 While I agree with the sentiment, i.e. that OP should report this behavior, I must disagree with your justification of being a snitch. "evil kings" and "stupid rules" are applicable to a wide range of subjects, regardless of the time period, and open to interpretation on individual basis. I think that "ratting others out" has a negative social connotation because it applies to people who "should mind their own business". I.e. third parties who based on their (incomplete?) perception of some (partially?) available information go on to create trouble for other people. –  user3209815 Commented Jan 15, 2018 at 11:35
• 3 Also (while, I too, agree) it is by no means totally anachronistic behaviour. The cold war wasn't that long ago. DDR and its STASI weren't that long ago. There is still many places/situations nowadays that are essentially similar to the evil king or dictator one. Admittedly, schools and universities and the like in western countries don't generally fall into that category. –  fgysin Commented Jan 18, 2018 at 9:54
• @fgysin agreed. –  Dan Romik Commented Jan 19, 2018 at 7:53

To add to the other answer: Always- unless you don't want to risk retaking the exam yourself.

A couple of years ago, during a class-wide final coursework assessment for German, everyone had to write out their pre-prepared essays from memory.

(This was the old-GCSE exam in the UK, I guess an international equivalent would be an end-of-year exam in 'freshman' year).

I was among a mere handful of the class that had bothered to memorise their scripts in advance. On the day, we were allowed dictionaries on our desks, and 10 words on a sheet of paper as an aide memoir. However, about 55% of the class had brought their draft scripts in, and were copying directly from them.

Although this angered me, I figured that the drafts they'd written in advance still weren't good enough to merit a higher grade than they deserved, so I let it be.

About a week later, someone's parents complained to the school about the "unfair advantage" (ironically, the person who'd reported it had been one of the ones who cheated), and the school made the whole class resit the exam.

At this stage I'd already began to forget most of my script, so I had to put effort into memorising it again.

After the resit, a few of the cheaters' grades went down, but, as predicted, a few of the already-low grades remained relatively unchanged.

My new grade was only eight marks lower than the first had been, but that was enough to bring it down to an A rather than an A* (A+).

Your situation seems quite different, so I'd encourage you to report it, just try and keep the knowledge fresh in your mind, just in case you need to resit.

Some people cheating is unlikely to significantly sway the curve one way or other. By reporting this you will affect someone much more negatively than how they affected you. Also, if it ever gets out that you were the "snitch", you will incur a significant social standing hit and may very well be excluded from any future whatsapp groups for example.

• 4 I understand the sentiment, but "by reporting this you will affect someone (...) negatively" is not how it works; the cheaters know the consequences when deciding to cheat, any consequences of getting caught are always their own responsibility, never that of the reporter. The cheaters are not supposed to cheat in the first place and are thus affecting themselves negatively. –  11684 Commented Jan 14, 2018 at 12:23
• 1 @guest Are you serious? –  Reader Manifold Commented Nov 23, 2019 at 7:57

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged ethics computer-science university exams cheating .

• Featured on Meta
• Upcoming sign-up experiments related to tags

Hot Network Questions

• Reconstructing Euro results
• Have there been any scholarly attempts and/or consensus as regards the missing lines of "The Ruin"?
• Could space habitats have large transparent roofs?
• Is there any legal justification for content on the web without an explicit licence being freeware?
• How to bid a very strong hand with values in only 2 suits?
• Trying to determine what this small glass-enclosed item is
• Exception handling: is one exception type sufficient?
• What does ‘a grade-hog’ mean?
• Is there any other reason to stockpile minerals aside preparing for war?
• Why do we care if the likelihood function is tractable?
• How can I confirm for sure that a CVE has been mitigated on a RHEL system?
• Tombs of Ancients
• Is there a way to non-destructively test whether an Ethernet cable is pure copper or copper-clad aluminum (CCA)?
• Refining material assignment in Blender geometry nodes based on neighboring faces
• White grids appears when export GraphicsRow to PDF
• How many steps are needed to turn one "a" into 100,000 "a"s using only the three functions of "select all", "copy" and "paste"?
• Why depreciation is considered a cost to own a car?
• Correlation for Small Dataset?
• How to make D&D easier for kids?
• In By His Bootstraps (Heinlein) why is Hitler's name Schickelgruber?
• Find all sequence that satisfy the system of equation
• Could a transparent frequency-altering material be possible?
• Should mail addresses for logins be stored hashed to minimize impact of data loss?
• Is there an image viewer for ubuntu that will read/apply xmp sidecars?

How Students Cheat

About this site:.

This site was a collaborative one-time project completed in 2017. Content was last updated in 2018 and many of the original content creators are no longer at RIT. For up to date support reach out to the appropriate department for your specific need: Academic Success Center , Center for Teaching & Learning , Faculty Career Development Team , RIT Libraries , University Writing Program .

Cheating comes in many forms. According to RIT's Student Academic Integrity Policy :

Cheating is any form of fraudulent or deceptive academic act, including falsification of data, possessing, providing, or using unapproved materials, sources, or tools for a project, exam, or body of work submitted for faculty evaluation. [1]

Methods students use to cheat can range from low-tech solutions such as copying from a neighbor's test to more high-tech methods involving innovative uses of available technologies. For instance, a student might try to store notes on a calculator, lookup answers on a smartphone, or listen to prerecorded solutions on an MP3 player. As new technologies become available (e.g. smartwatches) so do the potential tools students can manipulate to their advantage.

A quick internet search for methods of cheating will reveal a wide range of resources, how-to guides, and demonstrational videos that show students how to cheat on exams and class assignments. Being aware of some of the tools and techniques that exist is important for faculty when designing and evaluating class assignments.

RIT Libraries offers a workshop for faculty on High Tech Cheating . For more information, please email [email protected] .

Article Spinning

Originally designed as a technique for Search Engine Optimization (SEO), article spinning involves changing the writing of an article just enough to hide the fact that the content was copied from another work. This is usually accomplished by replacing words with synonyms or related terms. Another form of article spinning involves piecing together an article from multiple articles on the same topic.

While article spinning can be done manually, there are also many online tools that will "spin" an article on the writer's behalf. The result is typically a poorly written document that still needs to be edited by the paper's author.

Essay Banks and Paper Mills

Essay banks and paper mills give students the option of purchasing completed papers for class assignments. The exact service provided can vary. Essay banks typically resell prewritten papers on specific topics. In contrast, paper mills give students the option of having a unique paper crafted based on individual assignment criteria. Customers need to provide the site with general information such as a topic, due date, and article length so that a new, original work can be created. The higher the quality of the fraudulent work (and thus less likelihood of being caught), the more expensive the service.

Further Reading

• Five Sneaky Plagiarist Tricks That Don't Work , Plagiarism Today , Jonathan Bailey, 2012
• How Students Use Technology to Cheat and What Faculty Can Do About It , Information Systems Educators Conference, Lisa Z. Bain, 2014
• The Shadow Scholar , Chronicle of Higher Education , Ed Dante, 2010
• Plagiarism and the Web: Myths and Realities , Turnitin, 2011(free download)

[1] Rochester Institute of Technology. (2013, March 16). Student academic integrity policy . Retrieved from University Policies website: https://www.rit.edu/academicaffairs/policiesmanual/d080

Eberly Center

Teaching excellence & educational innovation, explore potential strategies., my students cheat on assignments and exams..

Students might blame their cheating behavior on unfair tests and/or professors.

Some motivational theories predict that students are more likely to cheat when they perceive the exams and tests as very unfair (e.g., requiring knowledge of material that was not previously covered or skills they haven’t practiced). If they believe it’s impossible to prepare for the test, they reason that there is no point in studying for it and so they might resort to cheating. Whether the unfairness is real or only perceived is not important in terms of its effect on student behavior. One situation where this theory might apply is when exams require students to transfer knowledge or skills to a novel context. Students often focus on superficial features of the initial learning situations (e.g., examples, cases, and problems) that they encounter without understanding or recognizing the general principle involved. So, when a new situation arises, they either lack the general concept you expected they had learned or lack the skill of identifying key ideas. If a student’s knowledge organization reflects a superficial understanding of the material, problems presented in a different context might look unfamiliar and therefore unfair. 

Strategies:

Assess what you teach., communicate the alignment to the students..

Structure the course so that there is explicit alignment between assessments and instruction . This principle is the bedrock of course design, and reducing cheating is only one of its byproducts. For example, if transfer of knowledge/skills to new contexts is a focus of your assessments, make sure to provide the students with multiple and varied examples for practice.

Make sure that the students understand what they will be expected to do that on exams and how it relates to the course activities.

This site supplements our 1-on-1 teaching consultations. CONTACT US to talk with an Eberly colleague in person!