Academic Fraud Abroad

According to the Education Testing Service, academic cheating is defined as naming another individual’s work as your own. Nobody likes to admit it, but students cheat. One way or another, one can bet readers of all stages of life have at least thought about cheating. Whether looking for the right answer on a difficult test or an easy way out of a tedious assignment, most students have thought about it.
So what compels students to cheat?
“I used to copy all of my friend’s math assignments in 8th grade because I just didn’t feel like doing [the assignments],” senior Lira Carol said. A sense of laziness and procrastination often litters the foundation of cheating. Ironically, a desire to overachieve can lead students to cheat in school. In fact, more emphasis on a grade rather than the learning process teaches kids to just earn the grade, no matter what the cost. Today, between 75 to 98 percent of college students admit to cheating at some point in high school, according to the Education Testing Service. An intense feel for competition can also motivate students to cheat—if a peer is cheating and getting a higher grade, they will feel like that is the right choice to make because it is giving the grade they deserve.
“I hear about cheating all the time: in my social science class [almost] all of us texted each other answers just before a quiz,”an anonymous senior said. And not everyone feels obligated to make a fuss when they catch someone looking over at their paper. As a result, it continues to happen.
It is not condemned among friends so why should anyone feel any more obligated when teachers warn not to? That kind of attitude stems from the idea that students will not get punished if they are caught at all. Students feel that the consequences are not intimidating, especially in middle and high school, and that it is so easy to get away with that there is hardly a reason not to be academically dishonest.
But there is. Spending however many minutes or hours someone takes to memorize answers to a test or copy an assignment word for word can easily be translated into working on actual studying. Not only will that not leave a gaping hole in one’s dignity, but it will help to absorb the information much better. Students will actually learn. Teachers reiterate it all the time, but it holds tremendous value: Cheating in school only cheats the student themselves.

By: Astrid Tovar StaffWriter