Having worked with many high school and college students a recent article in the New York Times, "To Stop Cheats, Colleges Learn Their Trickery" by Trip Gabriel, caught my eye.
Gabriel writes about how colleges are busy installing high tech instruments in testing rooms to detect cheating among students. The University of Central Florida is currently battling cheating by installing computers recessed into desktops in hope of decreasing the amount of cheating. Ellis Taylor, the associate dean of the testing center at University of Central Florida stated, "When a proctor sees something suspicious he records the student's real time work at the computer and directs and overhead camera to zoom in, and both sets of images are burned onto a CD for evidence." As a result, cheating has dropped significantly to 14 suspected incidents out of 64,000 exams administered.
According to Campus Computing Survey, 55 percent of colleges and universities now use an anti-plagiarism service, the most popular being Turnitin.com.
Cheating occurs in the majority of universities and colleges. Donald L McCabe, a business professor at Rutgers University surveyed 14,000 undergraduates over the last four-years and an average of 61 percent of students admitted to cheating on assignments and exams. Many colleges and universities are hoping to reduce incidences of plagiarism by educating students about plagiarism using online tutorials rather than fear tactics.
Mr. Danes, a philosophy major at Cornell University added to the students website a link to a voluntary tutorial on how to avoid plagiarism. With it he added a strongly worded admonition "other generations may not have has as many temptations to cheat or plagiarize as yours" and urged students to view this as a character test.
Some argue because of the current generations familiarity of cutting and pasting on computers, and downloading music and movies, that students really don't understand the meaning of plagiarism. Anything is possible, but I would assume that most students attending college would know the definition of plagiarism.
In my private practice, it is not unusual for students to openly admit to cheating on exams, homework assignments, and research papers. Some parents are aware that their children cheat on school assignments and frankly don't express much concern about the situation.
We need to look deeper to understand the genesis of this problem. In the June 10, 2010 issue of The New York Times, Gabriel wrote "Cheat Sheet, Under Pressure, Teachers Tamper With Tests". In it he discusses how teachers and principals cheat by tampering with the answers on standardize tests administered to their students. Principals and teachers are claiming they are under the additional pressure of the federal "No Child Left Behind" law mandating that public schools bring all students up to grade level in reading and math by 2014. Not to speak of the monetary incentives principals and assistant principals would be awarded if higher scores were achieved.
Steven Levitt, author of Freakonomics studied answer sheets from Chicago public schools after the introduction of high stakes testing in the 1990's, and they concluded that 4 to 5 percent of elementary school teachers cheat.
Is cheating just an expression of our culture, considering the wrongdoings of Bernie Madoff, former President Clinton, and the improprieties of the Catholic Church? Or are we just getting better at catching those who cheat?
©2010 Wanda Behrens Horrell, All Rights Reserved
www.wandabehrenshorrell.com
wjb60@columbia.edu
