cheryl
Administrator
Staff member
Welcome to college, you can probably get away with cheating - The Outline
When students become customers, it’s much harder to enforce academic honesty.
Many colleges and universities in the U.S. are facing an unprecedented crisis in enrollment, with enrollment rates declining for the eighth consecutive year, and the consequences are seen all over higher education. Sometimes they manifest in unexpected ways; one development is that attitudes toward academic dishonesty — cheating and plagiarism — are trending in favor of students.
In a nation that treats higher education as a product and colleges as businesses, many students and parents logically see themselves as customers who deserve to be satisfied. The shrinking pool of students for some universities reduces the incentives to give failing grades, even for academic dishonesty. Some faculty I’ve spoken to, combined with my own recent experiences as a professor, suggest that attempting to punish cheating and plagiarism is not exactly encouraged. Every campus is different. At some, so-called honor codes (codes of student conduct that outline forbidden behaviors) are taken very seriously. At others, the prevailing attitude is to let students off with a warning. At a private university, I found that dishonesty was generally taken seriously, whereas at very large public institutions (subject to political pressure from state legislatures and parent-voters) my sense was that the process was designed to dole out wrist-slaps.
When students become customers, it’s much harder to enforce academic honesty.
Many colleges and universities in the U.S. are facing an unprecedented crisis in enrollment, with enrollment rates declining for the eighth consecutive year, and the consequences are seen all over higher education. Sometimes they manifest in unexpected ways; one development is that attitudes toward academic dishonesty — cheating and plagiarism — are trending in favor of students.
In a nation that treats higher education as a product and colleges as businesses, many students and parents logically see themselves as customers who deserve to be satisfied. The shrinking pool of students for some universities reduces the incentives to give failing grades, even for academic dishonesty. Some faculty I’ve spoken to, combined with my own recent experiences as a professor, suggest that attempting to punish cheating and plagiarism is not exactly encouraged. Every campus is different. At some, so-called honor codes (codes of student conduct that outline forbidden behaviors) are taken very seriously. At others, the prevailing attitude is to let students off with a warning. At a private university, I found that dishonesty was generally taken seriously, whereas at very large public institutions (subject to political pressure from state legislatures and parent-voters) my sense was that the process was designed to dole out wrist-slaps.