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Cheating in Higher Education

Jill found this article on a friend’s Facebook status.

After reading the entire thing, I am just shocked. Do that many kids pay people to write papers for them? And even seminary students?

And just as shocking to me: Why haven’t the teachers and professors realized this? Can they not tell that the stupid kid who can’t form a grammatically correct sentence on normal assignments suddenly aces his 20-page assignment on a topic he’s completely ignorant about? Are the teachers that daft, or do they not care? Maybe they don’t want to look bad for failing half their students?

My opinion of institutions of higher education is at an all-time low after reading that. Colleges seem more concerned with squeezing money out of their wealthy students’ parents than with quality education. Unfortunately, this is to be expected; colleges operate like greedy corporations. If you have hundreds of kids willing to go into debt for the next twenty years to afford a degree from your prestigious university, why would you care about cheating so long as the money is rolling in?

I attended a public college (UMass Lowell). Funded by tax dollars plus student debt, this institution required me to take a semester-long class in which the FINAL was writing a three-page paper. We also learned how to write complete sentences! In some of my lecture classes, cheating was so rampant that you could hear the buzz of collaboration on tests. It seemed like many of the students were barely on a level with a high school freshman in regards to basic English skills (those who weren’t there to drink, anyhow).

Rising costs, lower standards of education, and disregard for cheating students… what other problems plague the collegiate community today?

PS After some further reading, it seems that some colleges have at least tried to curb the rising incidences of cheating. Good for them!

  1. Ben

    That’s awesome, I read some articles about honor codes in schools. There are some problems. First of all, it takes the burden of enforcement off the teachers. Secondly, it requires student “rats” to work. Most of the time, students don’t want to call someone out if it means speaking up and doing the right thing.

    If I were a professor and I was aware of rampant cheating, I’d take a few simple steps to curb it. First of all, I’d make students write a *hand-written* page or two of text at the start of the class. This would be easy to cross-reference against future papers for grammar, spelling, and style if there were any suspicions.

    Secondly, during tests there would be complete silence, and I’d either split up students or go on patrol for the duration.

    I would obviously avoid assignments that could be cheated on at home easily. Maybe do more in-class writing assignments that couldn’t be cheated on?

    I’d vary my test answers year to year. Jill told me that students at her college would HAND OUT ANSWERS before tests because they were the same answers every year. And this was at a Christian college!

    Finally, I’d warn the students that, if caught cheating, you’d get an automatic F for the class, period.

  2. Danielle

    A friend of mine recently quit her job to go back to school full time and pursue her dream job and her school has an honor code. She was recently in class and saw a couple of people cheating and ended up reporting it to the professor, who took action on the students. It was good to see someone willing to stand up for it and a professor who is willing to uphold an honor code.

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