Cheating has become a serious problems in schools all over the nation. Large scale cheating has been exposed even at prestige institutions such as Harvard. Many students are cheating not just to survive, but to thrive. Recent studies of student behavior proved that a majority of students have violated standards of academic integrity at one point, and that high achievers (A.K.A AICE, IB, AP, Honor Roll students) are just as likely to do it. Moreover, for many reasons the issue of cheating has worsened over the past few decades.
Cheating has become easier, accessible and tolerated. It seems as if parents and teachers have given up on reinforcing whats right and what is wrong. Thus, making cheating seem more widely tolerable. Nowadays, everything seems like a competition and theres always an overwhelming pressure coming from different people.
The difference between this generation and past generations greatly lies in the internet. Internet access has made cheating tens of thousand times easier, it allows students to connect instantly with millions of websites, all which are full of answers, then friends to consult and thousands of essays and assignments to plagiarize. In addition, generations of research has shown that a major factor in this unethical behavior comes from how simple it is to cheat and hard the material is.
In A recent study by Jeffrey A. Roberts and David M. Wasieleski at Duquesne University found that the more online tools college students were allowed to use to complete an assignment, the more likely they were to copy the work of others.
asked students if they believe that cheating has got worse? and if yes, why do they think this is happening?
Jennifer Solano, 10th grade said, “Yes, I think so because people get lazier and lazier as they go through school. Nowadays there’s more ways to cheat, such as Quizlet. Teachers are also lazy and just want to grade papers and get it out of the way. Teachers are somewhat at fault … sometimes.”
Alycia Celia, 12th grade said “I think cheating seen as a socially acceptable. It’s a easy way out, especially when under a time crunch or when people don’t know the answers, a lot of times I think kids are just lazy. The resources are becoming more and more accessible.”
