By NOAH TEW/ Editor-in-Chief, BRYNNA WILLIAMSON/ Managing editor, MICHAEL BALD/ Editor for Patriot Pulse
Will Ditto, a student at the University of Texas at Tyler, sits at a corner table in the campus library with papers scattered around his laptop.
A student journalist stops to ask Ditto what his thoughts about academic dishonesty and the extent to which students cheat to get through college.
Ditto pauses.
“I’m literally using Chegg right now,” he says.
Although Chegg bills itself as an online tutoring service that overworked students use “to make life a little easier,” this is often not the case.
Ditto, like many students, says he sometimes uses the shortcuts offered by Chegg to do homework.
“If you ain’t cheating you ain’t trying,” he adds.
‘DEFINE CHEATING’
Although the University of Texas at Tyler dedicates over 800 words to its definition, the baseline explanation of cheating is simple.
It is “any act designed to give unfair academic advantage to the student.”
According to UT Tyler’s Manual of Policies and Procedures for Student Affairs, academic dishonesty covers cheating, plagiarism, collusion, and falsifying academic records.
This includes submitting the same written assignment or research paper for more than one course and providing false or misleading information to receive a postponement or an assignment.
‘HOW BAD CAN IT REALLY BE’
Cheating is a foggy topic.
Students don’t want to admit it. Professors sometimes don’t recognize cheating, or do and then take care of it privately. Universities don’t like to talk about it. Therefore, it’s hard to determine exactly how widespread this issue is.
It is impossible to know how many cases of cheating go undetected.
Reporters interviewed faculty members, administrators and more than 100 students about whether or not they cheat – and if so, how. This goes a long way in estimating these previously unsure numbers.
‘WHATEVER IT TAKES’
Reports show that instances of students cheating in college have increased nationwide, especially after the coronavirus pandemic in 2020.
In a study done by The International Center for Academic Integrity, 95% of high school students admitted to cheating, and more than half of college students said they had cheated.
Some studies place the percentage of cheaters even higher.
According to statistics cited by ProctorEdu, a company that makes online proctoring software, as high as 98% of students engage in some form of academic dishonesty.
“Cheating no longer carries the stigma that it used to,” says a posting on ProctorEdu’s website. “Less social disapproval coupled with increased competition for admission into universities and graduate schools has made students more willing to do whatever it takes to get the A.”
A student who wanted to remain anonymous definitely agreed.
“Society places an absurd amount of expectations and due dates on students to where they literally do not have enough time to complete assignments. Cheating seems like the only option,” the student said.
‘THE ONLY OPTION’
The Patriot Talon Editor-in-Chief, using input from others, created a survey to gauge student practices and attitudes about cheating.
In October, 111 students filled out the survey after accessing it on their cell phones using a QR code. To encourage honesty, the survey was anonymous.
Some students did not answer all the questions or add comments.
Seventy-eight respondents said they had cheated in college. Only five said they were caught. Nearly 70% said that they had cheated while taking an online exam.
Some students who responded to the survey tried to justify cheating.
“Is it ‘cheating’ or using your resources?” questioned one student.
“Helping other students out who need the help shouldn’t be considered cheating. We’re in this together.”
“It’s called ‘investigative skills!’”
“Might as well let us cheat, they train you on the job,” said one student who attached a “crying face” emoji to the end of their message.
However, twenty-seven percent of the students who responded to the survey indicated they had never cheated. Many were just as emotional about cheating being wrong as the cheaters were about it being right.
“Cheating is a crime. Never cheated in my life nor will I ever.”
“Academic integrity is a construct.”
“It’s wrong.”
“I’ve seen lots of people use things (such) as Chegg and Quizlet for assignments instead of studying and feel like there should be more of a fuss about integrity.”
“They cheat and make the average grade for an exam higher, meaning there is no curve and the ones that don’t cheat get punished.”
‘HOW DOES THIS HAPPEN’
The cheaters said they take advantage of websites that provide answers to assignment questions. Like Ditto, 50.5% of students have used Chegg and 47.3% have used the website Socratic.
Social media sites also are good sources of getting answers, confided those who are academically dishonest. 31% percent of the cheaters found answers using Snapchat; 30.6% did the same on GroupMe and 37.8% went to iMessage.
The most popular site for answers is Quizlet by far. Of those who have cheated, 88.3% said they have used Quizlet. This website is intended for people to make online study cards and share them. It is known, however, for having answers to homework assignments, quizzes and even exams.
Quizlet insists it is not a cheating site. Under its Honor Academic Integrity heading, Quizlet says that it is “meant for learning, not cheating. … If you are a teacher or student and have found content on Quizlet that is being used to cheat, please report it so we can review and take the appropriate action.”
‘CHEATING WILL NOT BE TOLERATED’
Professors at UT Tyler are required to have a section in their syllabus about cheating.
Anita Brown, a professor in mass communications, states in her syllabus that “plagiarism and cheating will not be tolerated. A student who is caught doing either will earn a 0 for that assignment and will be subject to academic and disciplinary action. If a student is caught a second time, they will automatically fail the course.”
In some areas of study, if students repeatedly fail a class they are kicked out of the program.
Other professors also dish out tough punishment for cheating.
In the School of Nursing, students are not allowed to share course materials or distribute them in any way. Any nursing student caught doing this can receive a 0 on the assignment, fail the course, or can even be removed from the nursing program.
A syllabus from a Pharmacological Basis for Nursing class states that students are forbidden to upload class material to academic sharing sites. Doing so “destroys the integrity of the assignment of the course, allowing others an unfair advantage,” according to the syllabus.
To maintain academic integrity, many professors put written assignments through a plagiarism software called UniCheck.
UniCheck flags phrasing, sentences and paragraphs that appear to have been copied from other written work and can be used to build a case that a student has plagiarized.
As director of student conduct, David Hill deals with more cases of academic dishonesty than anyone on campus.
“In cases where the faculty are not comfortable in addressing it (academic dishonesty) or the student contested it, they take it to my office,” Hill said.
Professors also refer cases to Hill when the student has had a prior instance of academic dishonesty, the professor believes he cannot conduct a fair investigation or there are “weird” circumstances involving the case.
“I’ll have what we call an administrative meeting with the student. I’ll kind of review everything with them. I’ll get the student’s side of it,” he said.
Hill said the standard of proof that must be met is “preponderance of the evidence.”
“I have to show that it is more likely than not that this student committed this act which violates this policy,” he said.
Even if he believes a student cheated, if there is not enough evidence, he cannot act against the student.
“There may be cases where someone actually did something (wrong.) We just don’t have enough evidence … and that’s the case sometimes,” he said.
According to Subchapter 8-300 of UT Tyler’s Manual of Policies and Procedures for Student Affairs, Hill can dole out punishment that range from a simple verbal warning to eventual expulsion from the school or even the revocation of a degree.
‘A SCARY SITUATION’
In the war on academic integrity, the battles fought are often between faculty and students.
For cheating students, academic dishonesty seems to be impersonal and vague – simply a method of reaching the desired grade. For professors, however, cheating is personal.
“What makes me mad is, it is not so much that they cheat or they lie,” said Hill, who also teaches classes as an adjunct professor. “It’s when they think I’m such an idiot they don’t need to be good at it (hiding cheating). That is just personally offensive.
Brown said cheating is often easily discernible – like when a student’s writing suddenly becomes drastically better or when a student copies and pastes from Google.
When she discovers cheating, she’s not angry. She’s just hurt.
“I respect y’all so much as students,” she told a class of mass communication students. “Just like you would respect your manager or your boss or your parents, we deserve that level of respect. And when you cheat in our classrooms, you’re showing us that you don’t care about the person standing up here, that you don’t care about your classmates who are putting in, you know, hard work.”
Dealing with students who cheat involves not only disappointment and anger, but also emotional empathy, Hill said.
“Probably my biggest frustration is that a lot of students really are looking for someone to know their names, to recognize that they’re in a bind, and tell them that they matter and that it’s going to be okay … but I see a lot who don’t have (a support group) and have no idea how to go about building one,” he said.
Brown and Hill are more than willing to sit down and talk with students who admit their wrongdoings.
According to Hill, when confronted with evidence of cheating, most students invent a “poorly thought-out falsehood.”
“Anyone can make a couple of bad choices and then come in and talk to me about it. I can work with that if they’re upfront. But if you lie to me, it’s really hard for me to work with you going forward,” Hill said.
Brown echoed the thought with equal conviction.
“(If) you feel the need to lie to me because you think that will … be what gets your assignment accepted … it’s just going to make me view you differently as a student and it’s going to make me not want to help you in the long run,” she said.
Brown once had a male student aggressively confront her after she failed him for repeatedly cheating.
She was teaching a class when he flung open the door. He walked across the room and got within inches of her face. The student screamed at her, spit insults and hurled insults.
“It actually was quite a scary situation,” Brown recalled. “He threatened violence … unless I changed his grade.”
Concerned by the threat the hysterical intruder posed, two of Brown’s big, tall and strong lab assistants stepped up to her side. They watched protectively as the student continued to get more unhinged and unpredictable.
Brown filed a police report, the student was expelled from campus and eventually deported back to his home country.
‘IT WAS HEARTBREAKING’
Cheating may seem like a theoretical problem – a “victimless crime.”
But often, it’s not.
Because of the severity of what he must sometimes dole out, Hill says punishing some students is heartbreaking.
“There are some that I have just agonized over,” Hill said. “It’s when I need to suspend or expel someone and know it’s going to have a traumatic impact on them. … I had one student who was a father and had a kid and another one on the way and was just really kind of lost and …”
Hill stops. He has to collect his thoughts.
And his emotions.
“I’m a dad. I got a kid. It was heartbreaking and I had absolutely no flexibility (in issuing punishment).”
Hill says in most cases students cheat because they are under pressure to succeed but struggle to make the grades they need.
“I’ve had students where there’s a lot of family pressure. Sometimes the parents have very high expectations, and they have to live up to them,” he said.
Financial stress can also be a reason that a student will cut corners to ensure they get the degree they need to land a good job.
“I’ve had cases, especially after COVID, where the primary breadwinner had lost their job and so they can’t support the student for that much longer… I’ve had cases where the family is in really dire straits and that student has to graduate, has to get a good job, so that they can support their family.”
He said in many cases, students simply do not want to learn the material.
“You have students who did not come to college because of a love of the material and a love of learning,” Hill said. “They came to college to get a degree and to get a job. So they look at that degree very differently. They don’t look at it like, ‘I need to know this material,’ they look at it like, ‘I need this degree because I want this job, therefore, whatever it takes to get it.’”
‘THEY’RE JUST LAZY’
Jaden Scott is many things: a mass communications student, a designer and a skateboarder.
One thing he is not is a cheater.
“I can understand why people cheat,” Scott says. “It’s more of a last resort for them, they don’t know what’s going on, they don’t know what they’re doing, etc. … but yeah, I personally look down upon it, but I can understand why some people kind of still do it.”
Scott says he has never cheated.
“At least not that I recall, never,” Scott says. “Not even in college. The way I get by is by careful studying. That’s it. Even if it’s a misleading question or something like that. Even if I have to look through like 10 pages or so worth of notes or even my textbook to figure it out. Just kind of connect the dots there and see how it goes.”
For Scott, the amount of work people put to cheat takes more effort than just studying the material.
“I think sometimes people like to put way more effort into getting away with cheating instead of just using your notes or something like that, which I find is easier to use notes,” Scott says. “The reason why they do cheat is that I guess they’re just lazy.
“They just don’t want to put in the effort to try and find the answer,” he continues. “They want a quick solution. … It’s just to make things easier on themselves instead of actually trying to put whatever they learn to good use, which is the whole point of college.”
OTHER STORIES
