Large-scale cheating has been uncovered over the last year at some of the nation’s most competitive schools, like Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan, the Air Force Academy and, most recently, Harvard.
Studies of student behavior and attitudes show that a majority of students violate standards of academic integrity to some degree, and that high achievers are just as likely to do it as others. Moreover, there is evidence that the problem has worsened over the last few decades.
Experts say the reasons are relatively simple: Cheating has become easier and more widely tolerated, and both schools and parents have failed to give students strong, repetitive messages about what is allowed and what is prohibited.
“I don’t think there’s any question that students have become more competitive, under more pressure, and, as a result, tend to excuse more from themselves and other students, and that’s abetted by the adults around them,” said Donald L. McCabe, a professor at the Rutgers University Business School, and a leading researcher on cheating.
“There have always been struggling students who cheat to survive,” he said. “But more and more, there are students at the top who cheat to thrive.”
NAVAL ACADEMY STUDENTS GO OVERBOARD
1994 was not a banner year for the United States Naval Academy; that spring, 134 seniors were involved in a cheating scandal that caused such a stir it became national news. Somehow, a student obtained a copy of an electrical engineering exam early and started distributing copies of it for as much as $50 a pop. Students either practiced their answers before the exam or snuck in notes of the relevant formulas. After a lengthy investigation, Navy Secretary John H. Dalton expelled 24 midshipmen, including several members of the football team, and disciplined 62 others for honor code violations.
DON'T MESS WITH THE HONOR CODE
In 2001, the University of Virginia, a school with a longstanding honor code, had to drop the hammer on an absurdly large cheating racket. Professor Louis A. Bloomfield realized that students in his popular "How Things Work"? introductory physics class had been turning in identical 1,500-word papers over the course of the previous five semesters. Bloomfield hadn't noticed because the class was so large; each semester's roster had between 300 and 500 students on it.
After running every paper he'd received through a computer program to look for identical essays, Bloomfield realized that as many as 158 students may have plagiarized their papers. The school aggressively prosecuted the plagiarizers under the honor code and eventually expelled 45 of them. Three other students got an even worse fate; since they'd already graduated, UVA revoked their degrees.
DENTAL SCHOOL BITES DOWN ON CHEATERS
Dentists seem like a rather honest, unassuming sort, right? Apparently not at the Indiana University School of Dentistry. A scandal rocked the school in 2007 when second-year dental students figured out a way to hack into the computer system that held their exams. Once inside, students could study the X-rays on which they were going to be tested, so when the exam rolled around, they already knew all the answers. The amazing thing about this scandal wasn't that it happened, but its scope; nearly half of the second-year class had some hand in it. At the end of the investigation, nine students were expelled, 16 more were suspended, and another 21 received letters of reprimand.
MBA STUDENTS NETWORK A BIT TOO MUCH
Getting to know your classmates and learning how to work together is a huge part of business school. In 2007, though, 34 first-year MBA students at Duke took things a bit too far. When faced with a take-home open-book exam they were supposed to work on individually, the students decided to instead collaborate on the test. Of course, when that many people work on a test together, the answers are going to be suspiciously similar, and the professor quickly sniffed out the trickery. After the dust settled, 34 students — nearly 10 percent of Duke's first-year class — found themselves expelled, suspended, or failed for the unauthorized group work.
Harvard University is investigating 125 students accused of collaborating on a spring take-home final exam, in what could prove to be the largest Ivy League cheating scandal in recent memory.
Nearly half the students in an introductory government class are suspected of jointly coming up with answers or copying off one another. Groups of students appear to have worked together on responses to short questions and an essay assignment, violating a no-collaboration policy that was printed on the exam itself, said Jay Harris, Harvard’s dean of undergraduate education.
Georgia Tech students punished for cheating
ATLANTA -- Georgia Tech officials said 136 students have acknowledged misconduct and accepted punishment for cheating on a computer science assignment last fall.
Another 18 students are waiting for their cases to be heard by the student honor committee, and 32 students were exonerated.
One student dropped out of school before his case was resolved.
Punishment ranged from getting a zero on the assignment to suspension, depending on the extent of cheating.
One student with a prior record of plagiarism was suspended for two semesters, Tech spokesman Bob Harty said.
The investigation of 187 students began when a special software program was used to detect exact duplications of computer code in the students' homework assignment.
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