A rchive Date
[ 01-06-2005 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Canada ]
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[http://www.canoe.ca/NewsStand/Columnists/London/Ian_Gillespie/2005/06/01/1065625.html
Who says cheaters never prosper?
IAN GILLESPIE, Free Press News Columnist
2005-06-01
According to Debra Dawson, more than 80 per cent of students say they've never cheated.
I think they're lying.
As director of the educational development office at the University of Western Ontario, Dawson specializes in topics such as academic integrity and plagiarism.
And yesterday, as part of this week's Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences at Western, Dawson delivered a seminar called The Chances of Getting Caught Were Slim: A Qualitative Analysis of First- and Fourth-Year Students' Rationale for Cheating.
Several times during the session, Dawson emphasized the positive: "Most students don't cheat," she said. "Most students know it's wrong."
Despite that, Dawson delivered some troubling statistics.
About 80 per cent of college-bound students in the U.S. admit to cheating on school work, with 95 per cent of them claiming they weren't caught.
A recent survey of 4,138 Western students revealed:
* 34 per cent of the respondents had collaborated with others on an independent assignment.
* 32 per cent admitted they copied material from a published source without citing the source.
* 31 per cent admitted they copied material from the Internet without proper citation.
* 26 per cent admitted to getting test questions and answers from students who had previously taken the test.
* 16 per cent admitted to falsifying lab data.
The study also asked students to explain their reasons for cheating.
The most common reason was competition: students reported the need to maintain or increase their grades was a powerful motive.
"Marks are everything," wrote one student.
Another explained that "one bad grade can be the difference between pursuing your dream and settling for a backup plan."
Fear of failure was the second-most common rationale for cheating. Dawson said many students made comments to the effect that "everyone is doing it" and that they cheated in order to "level out the playing field."
Dawson said another common rationale for cheating was tied to "time management" problems, with students reporting they simply had too much work.
Dawson added that some students described it as "a crime of opportunity" - in essence, they did it because they could.
Of course, the fact that students cheat shouldn't surprise anyone.
In his book The Cheating Culture: Why More Americans are Doing Wrong to Get Ahead, David Callahan argues that more of us are cheating and we're doing it more than ever before.
Whether it's teenagers illegally downloading pop tunes, baseball players taking steroids, journalists making things up or politicians accepting kickbacks, Callahan says there's more cheating than ever - particularly among the young, the wealthy and the well-educated.
Callahan blames our cutthroat, dog-eat-dog, winner-take-all culture. He says that with employers focusing more on profits and efficiency, more and more employees are feeling the pressure to cut corners.
In an interview on his website (www.cheatingculture.com), Callahan says more and more of us are willing to do anything to get ahead.
"To start with, we live in a winner-take-all society," he says. "Winners get paid more these days, so people will do whatever it takes to be a winner."
Callahan argues that the American dream of affluence (which I think is also the North American dream) is dangled in front of one and all. But in fact, there's a huge gap between such expectations and actual reality - no matter how hard we work, most of us will never become rich or famous. And that creates a cynical population that believes cheating is justified.
"We've become a society divided between a winning class that is richer than ever and often cheats because it can get away with it," says Callahan. "And an anxious class that cheats to move up in the world - or just stay afloat."
Dawson said one way to lessen cheating among students is to teach them how to manage their time more effectively (since many cheat because they're running out of time).
Still, it all comes down to simple choices. If, for example, your neighbour offers to hook you up with free cable TV, do you take it?
Sadly, I wouldn't be surprised if most of us answered yes.
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