According to Michael Hartnett, author of “The Great SAT Swindle,” 98 percent of college students admit to cheating. A significant difference when compared to 20 percent in 1940.By middle school, according to “Cheaters: Kindergarten to high school, college to working world” from onlinemastersdegree.com, two out of three middle schoolers find cheating normal and 90 percent admit to copying another’s homework.
“I think homework is something people should help each other on,” senior and National Honor Society president Daniel Mejia-Cruz said. “I always ask my friends for homework, but homework doesn’t count, that’s what you’re supposed to learn from, it’s why teachers assign it and sometimes you need help.”
Junior Kurt Lantion agrees with Mejia-Cruz, but said there is a difference between those he helps on assignments and those he does not.
“If it was a friend, maybe, if it was not a big deal like a single question,” Lantion said. “I trust [a friend] more. I wouldn’t expect them to tell their teacher that I let them copy. As long as you’re helping them learn and you’re not like ‘oh here’s the answers’ it’s ok. But if it were someone I barely knew, then no, but I would try to make it not obvious that I don’t want them to cheat.”
However, Mejia-Cruz said the severity and punishment for cheating should be determined by the importance and influence of the assignment.
“I think cheating on a major grade deserves more punishment than cheating on a daily grade because it’s worth more of your grade and therefore impacts your GPA more,” Mejia-Cruz said.
Apart from inconveniencing classmates, NHS sponsor Clay Huggins said cheating also personally affects teachers.
“If a student cheats in my class, I see it as a personal offense that they care so little about my class that they would cheat rather than learn.”
According to a 2007 poll by CollegeHumor.com out of 30,000 responses 14.5 percent of participants copied over someone’s shoulder, 11.1 percent stored information into their calculators, 9.2 percent received answers from a friend and 45.6 percent combined the methods. Though these are the most popular forms of cheating, still others find more extreme ways.
“When I taught in Egypt, we had to take a student to the emergency room because he climbed onto the roof of one of the school buildings, gained entrance and tried to climb on top of the false ceiling tiles to get to a classroom and take a copy of a test,” Huggins said. “He fell through the tiles and cut his head open. He was lucky that a janitor came through the room, because it was after hours and otherwise he may have died. I couldn’t believe someone would risk life and limb over a test.”
Consequences of getting caught increase with the level of education.
“Cheating in high school is really bad because you’ll be into the habit of it and when you get into college if they ever catch you doing that you’ll be expelled,” freshman Christian Carr said. “Once you get expelled from one college that pretty much ruins your chances of getting into other colleges.”
“Cheaters: Kindergarten to high school, college to working world” stated that half of societies’ top raking business people polled have cheated in their academic career. The article claimed that 56 percent of MBA owners, 54 percent of engineers, 48 percent of educators and 45 percent of lawyers admit to cheating. The same can be said for high-ranking high school students according to surveys by U.S. News and World Report showing 80 percent of them admit to cheating.
“People who are under pressure of doing well may [be more prone to cheating],” senior Sarah Ma said. “Why would [students who] don’t care in the first place care if they get an F or if they get an A?”
Cheating, according to Lantion, is promoted by technology and the Internet. Its prevalence allows students to receive a variety of information and shortcuts to completing assignments. A 2010 article by Online Educators Database common paper mill websites receive an average of 8,000 hits per day.
Websites such as Turnitin.com allow educators to cross check assignments against those on the web. In Mississippi the implementation of such data forensics dropped cheating by 70 percent. However, this cannot limit all cheating. The best way to do so according to Carr is through peers.
“Kids listen to kids just being like ‘no dude, don’t do that’ would help,” Carr said.