Studies Show Student Cheating Trend

Corporate scandals have garnered their share of headlines, but cheating isn’t just for the pros. Business professionals in training are also being scrutinized.
The Center for Academic Integrity at Duke University found students seeking an MBA were the most likely of all graduate students to cheat. Thirty-nine percent of social science graduate students admitted to cheating, compared to 56 percent of business grads.
At the University of Arkansas, Tim West, associate professor for accounting, also studied cheating.
Before taking his position at UA, West taught a managerial accounting course at another institution. As part of a midterm exam, West selected a take-home problem from the instructor’s manual of the course text. Despite telling students not to collaborate or use the Internet to find an answer, he found that 47 of his 64 students cheated on the exam.
“When it first happened, I got really angry, and then I kind of looked at it as an opportunity for us to investigate,” West said.
His study revealed students find a number of ways to rationalize cheating: students claim to be confused about what constitutes cheating, they say everyone cheats or that is just how business operates.
“If the general consensus of a class is cheating on an assignment, then I would clearly do the same not just because ‘everyone is doing it’ but because my grade will most likely suffer for my honesty, and honesty is not reflected in my GPA,” said one student in West’s study.
College brings a new set of challenges for students. Students may have been top of their class in high school, but find themselves in a different pecking order in the college classroom. The pressure to maintain grades, whether for scholarships, application to grad school or just to satisfy parents, can be overwhelming.
“Anytime there are professional gains and a lot of pressure, and you don’t have enough time to do all that you want to do, shortcuts are very tempting,” West said.
Business schools, West said, actually bear some responsibility for tempting students to cheat. Business schools were once criticized for producing company employees who couldn’t work well in teams. In response, business schools put a heavy emphasis on teamwork and collaboration.
After his research, West now takes a harder line with students. He now announces during the first day of classes that he will flunk anyone who cheats. He hopes laying down the gauntlet will prevent students from cheating.
“We’ve skipped the whole value of the struggle to learn new material,” West said. “We’ve all had things that we thought were impossible to learn, and eventually maybe we figure it out, and once we do, that’s a big reward. You can feel really good about yourself.”
Don Soderquist, retired senior vice chairman for Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and founder of The Soderquist Center, said people don’t hold themselves to the same ethical standards they once did.
“It’s a slippery pole,” he said. “And I think our society has been slipping for the last 25 years.”
Soderquist said people try to rationalize what they’re doing, blurring right and wrong. Instead, people have to discover what is important in their lives.
“You begin with values and a person needs to examine — as does a company — what their values are,” he said.