Studies Find More Students Cheating, With High Achievers No Exception

[Julian Englis]

Source: The New York Times

Large-scale cheating has been uncovered over the last year at some of the nation’s most competitive schools, like Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan, the Air Force Academy and, most recently, Harvard.

Studies of student behavior and attitudes show that a majority of students violate standards of academic integrity to some degree, and that high achievers are just as likely to do it as others. Moreover, there is evidence that the problem has worsened over the last few decades.

Experts say the reasons are relatively simple: Cheating has become easier and more widely tolerated, and both schools and parents have failed to give students strong, repetitive messages about what is allowed and what is prohibited.

“I don’t think there’s any question that students have become more competitive, under more pressure, and, as a result, tend to excuse more from themselves and other students, and that’s abetted by the adults around them,” said Donald L. McCabe, a professor at the Rutgers University Business School, and a leading researcher on cheating.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/08/education/studies-show-more-students-cheat-even-high-achievers.html?_r=0

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It's the free market at work on kids with family values.

[silverweb]

1. Hardly surprising.

[font color="navy" face="Verdana"]When our media, our corporate leaders, and our elected officials all blatantly lie, cheat, and steal to push their agenda and get ahead, then defiantly challenge anyone to do anything about it, the message to our young people is that this is perfectly acceptable and only "winning" counts.

[Julian Englis]

2. Exactly.

If Fox News can lie and call itself a "news" network, kids have to figure that lying is a successful strategy.

Plus, with all the cuts in education funding and a worsening job market since the Reagan Reaction, kids can only feel more desperate about the future.

[Joe Bacon]

13. This is the fruit of Ayn Rand's Objectivism

Ayn Rand is the high priestess of looking out for #1. And in Ayn Rand's world, lying, cheating and stealing your way to the top is the preferred road to success.

And we have R-Money and Lyin Ryan uttering falsehood after falsehood while our corporate controlled conservative press gives them pass after pass. The Republican Party has mastered Orwell's "Newspeek" in ways that would make him spin in his grave.

Look at everyone who succeeds at cheating. Arnold Schwarzenegger cheated with steroids, rigged a Olympia contest to cheat Sergio Olvera out of a title, lied and cheated his way into the Governorship of California, and he cheated on his wife as well as a bunch of his business deals. He lied his way into the California governorship and succeeded in fucking the state over.

Steve Jobs is hailed as an innovator. But the Macintosh concept was originally created by the Xerox PARC lab. They didn't patent it. Jobs stole the concept from Xerox.

And there's Mark Mc Guire and Barry Bonds who squirted steroids to get to be Baseball's home run kings.

And for those curators of integrity--the churches. Look at all the scams pulled by megachurch preachers. Look at how Catholic bishops shuffle child molesters from parish to parish. Look at how the overwhelming majority of churches and temples preach the Prosperity Gospel--The more God loves you, the more toys he gives you. Of all the corrupted institutions the churches are the truly the most depraved.

Is it any wonder why kids conclude that honesty gets you nowhere?

[fasttense]

3. When corporations and Wall Street Firms

can lie, cheat, steal and get away with all the money they conned out of unsuspecting victims, why shouldn't students? Our richest class has set the bar very low and our kids are following their example. Wealth and money do NOT trickle down but morales and values do.

[jtuck004]

4. "He'd grown up just like me. My boy was just like me. And the cat's in the cradle ... "n/t

[davidpdx]

5. It goes on big time in China

In fact students even on applications and essays to study in American schools.

[no_hypocrisy]

6. Law schools too.

Twenty years ago, two alum cheated their way through law school. School made it easy for them: two sections of the same class sitting to take the same exam on the same floor of the same building. They sat in different classrooms. At a designated time (11:05 a.m.), they'd take a bathroom break, conference in the restrooms and return to the exams, skewing the grading curve for the rest of us.

They tried it again when we took the bar the month after graduation. Same arrangement but they met once in the morning and once in the afternoon for the two-day session. They looked in the bathroom (mirrors, tiles, ceilings) to discover hidden cameras and found none.

They took the bar exam without incident. It was the second day, the last session and "pencils down" was called. Everyone was allowed to leave except for each of them. They were escorted to another room where they were shown a tape of them exchanging answers in the restrooms. A disembodied voice told them they were permanently banned from sitting for the bar in any state or U.S. territory and they just pissed away seven years of college.

(Bet at least one of them is holding office at this moment . . . . . )

[treestar]

7. Show and not substance is what our culture is starting to be about

But here's one area where you just can't hide. What are they going to do when they find themselves in something over their head, because they are really not qualified to do it?

[Igel]

10. It's been trending that way a lot. Form over substance.

I remember being offended by it as a kid in the late '60s. Seems to have gotten worse, but not much worse, in the media since the early '80s.

It does seem to have taken root more among people. So if you cheat and aren't stopped, it's not a moral failing it's the "university making it easy." Heck, of course everybody, "we the people," are utter scum. In a democracy, if the scum rule all you get is a smelly putrifying mess. After all, it's a government of the people--those who form the government come from the populace as a whole, not just a class of royalty.

We've undergone two shifts in the last 400 years. We started with external honor in which all that mattered is what was said--be an adulterous thief all you want, just don't let it be rumored about if you want to keep your honor. Then you might have to kill the liar who dared speak the truth.

Then we moved to personal honor. Doing what's right, based on an internalized code of ethics, constituted honor. You can respect a man for doing something you don't agree with as long as it doesn't conflict too much with your values. But you can't respect a man "doing what's right" if it's merely for gain or show.

Now we're post-honor. For a lot of kids and young adults, you say they lie and cheat and they shrug. It doesn't hurt them. In fact, they often don't see anything wrong with it. They've been taught that everybody from the President (with the right letter after his name) is corrupt, that Congress is corrupt, anybody with money is corrupt, anybody with power is corrupt. If you take away all the role models, the next step is what happens when teens become teens--they discover their parents have clay feet, that their parents are also flawed. If nobody's perfect and if all ideals are just "hypocrisy," then not only is venality okay anything more is hurting the self.

When the kids who do still have some sort of internal moral compass see that those without a moral compass really don't suffer but, in fact, get additional perks then under good ol' Skinnerian behaviorist thought all we're doing is motivating more behavior we say we don't want.

[treestar]

16. Good points

I never liked that cynical view that all politicians are corrupt. It teaches people that to succeed, you have to screw somebody over. And too many people feel OK with all that.

[PassingFair]

11. Then they will just be promoted.

Then someone making less money that needs health care will do the actual work.

[Paulie]

8. Having to pass those standardize tests

We've become do whatever it takes to score high. No child left behind effects. Sigh.

[WooWooWoo]

9. it's a lot easier to cheat now

than it was 25 years ago.

I mean, why would a student spend days researching a topic when he could copy it from the internet in seconds.

Plus, it's really important to get a degree. It impacts your life for decades. You gotta do what you gotta do to get that overpriced piece of paper and that line on a resume.

$150,000 for one line on a resume.

I'm not sure what's worse, the cheating by students, or the fleecing by colleges.

[sulphurdunn]

12. "We want to be famous

and successful," i.e rich and famous. The brightest and the best want to do things like find a cure for cancer, prove the existence of the Higgs Boson or win a Nobel Prize for literature. These are the A team of the brightest, and they are the best. They will be famous but not rich. Most of the them will work in laboratories or classroom. The cheaters will be rich but not famous (unless they are infamous). Most of them will work in board rooms or legislatures. They are the B team of the brightest, and they are far from the best.

[L0oniX]

14. There's enough examples of the "by any means" everywhere you look in the USA.

Cheating is the norm.

[2Design]

15. understand and accept this - when everything is measured in numbers

and not ability - the balance sheet says you have to use whatever resources you can

Did not always think this way

but at one time you could get a job just by going to visit the company and asking for interview or calling

now everything is based on numbers

[lady lib]

17. Regarding the Harvard scandal

after reading through the details of it as reported by the NY Times, I tend to think that it was the unfortunate result of a poorly managed class by the professor rather than willful cheating by the students. The professor did not make clear what the ground rules were - not to the students or the TA's, and was not consistent in how he had previously managed the class in years past. And the students, having been encouraged to work in groups in other classes, and given the confusing nature of the final's test questions, asked the TA's for help. This one is more about the professor than the students.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/01/education/students-of-harvard-cheating-scandal-say-group-work-was-accepted.html

[Julian Englis]

18. The show "24" g;orified cheating

It's all right to cheat if the means justify the end. The war in Iraq showed us that, too.

[YOHABLO]

19. Our future bankers and congressmen no doubt.