It Takes a Village Academic Dishonesty - Middlebury College · tribal maxim that it takes a village to raise a child. In a similar sense, I would argue it takes the whole campus community—students,

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FOR THE LAST FIFTEEN YEARS, I have researchedquestions of academic integrity. My initial in-terest in these questions was driven by my ownexperience as an undergraduate at PrincetonUniversity in the mid-1960s. Graduating froma high school where cheating was common, Iwas particularly intrigued by one item I re-ceived among the blizzard of forms and papersPrinceton sent me as I prepared to matricu-late: information about the Princeton honorcode. I was informed that exams would be un-proctored; that, on every exam, I would haveto affirm that I had not cheated or seen any-one else cheat by signing a pledge (which I canstill recite verbatim almost forty years after mygraduation); and that all alleged violations of

the code would be ad-dressed by a student

honor committee. Although somewhat skep-tical in light of my high school experience, Iheaded off to Princeton confident I would domy part to uphold this seventy-year-old tradi-tion. Apparently, the overwhelming majorityof my classmates felt the same way. During myfour years at Princeton, I never observed, sus-pected, or heard of anyone cheating, althoughsurely there were at least some minor trans-gressions of the code.

When I returned to academia after morethan twenty years in the corporate world,where I witnessed at firsthand the continuouserosion in the ethical values of recent collegegraduates, I was intrigued by the opportunityto conduct meaningful research on academicintegrity. I was particularly curious to seewhether campus honor codes were still a vi-able strategy and to explore the impact theywere having on a new generation of students.While I remain a strong advocate of honorcodes, my thinking about academic integrityhas evolved over the last fifteen years—oftenin surprising ways.

The problemIn the fall of 1990, I surveyed students atthirty-one of the country’s most competitivecolleges and universities (McCabe andTrevino 1993). Fourteen institutions had tra-ditional academic honor codes, and seventeendid not, having chosen instead to “control”student dishonesty through such strategies asthe careful proctoring of exams. From the morethan six thousand students who responded, I learned several important lessons.

The incidence of cheating was higher thanI expected, and many students were quitewilling to admit their transgressions. For ex-ample, 47 percent of students attending aschool with no honor code reported one ormore serious incidents of test or exam cheat-ing during the past year, as did 24 percent ofstudents at schools with honor codes. Whilesuch comparisons would seem to support thepower of honor codes, it was not the code it-self that was the most critical factor. Rather,the student culture that existed on campusconcerning the question of academic integritywas more important. The existence of a codedid not always result in lower levels of cheat-ing. More importantly, the converse was alsotrue: some campuses achieved high levels ofintegrity without an honor code. While thesecampuses were doing many of the same thingsas campuses with codes—e.g., making academicintegrity a clear campus priority and placingmuch of the responsibility for student integrityon the students themselves—they did not usea pledge and they did not mandate unproctoredexams. What was important was the cultureof academic integrity to which incomingstudents were exposed.

Many of the students I surveyed were trou-bled by the failure of their institution, and oftenits faculty, to address the issue of cheating.Because they believed that weak institutionalpolicies and unobservant or unconcernedfaculty were “allowing” others to cheat and,thereby, to gain an unfair advantage, studentsviewed cheating as a way to level the playingfield. This was a particular problem on large

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DONALD L. MCCABE is professor of managementand global business at Rutgers University andfounding president of the Center for AcademicIntegrity.

Academic DishonestyD O N A L D L . M C C A B E

If we truly believein our role

as educators, we would do better

to view mostinstances of cheating as educational

opportunities

It Takes a Village

campuses and in courses with large enroll-ments—environments where, arguably, it isharder to establish a strong, positive commu-nity culture.

In 1993 (McCabe and Trevino 1996), I sur-veyed nine medium to large universities that,thirty years earlier, had participated in thelandmark study of college cheating conductedby William Bowers (1964). Bowers’s projectsurveyed over five thousand students onninety-nine campuses across the country andprovided considerable insight on how oftenstudents were cheating and why. Two out-comes of my 1993 project are particularlynoteworthy in comparison to Bowers’s results.First, there were substantial increases in self-reported test and exam cheating at these nine

schools. For example, 39 percent of studentscompleting the 1963 survey acknowledgedone or more incidents of serious test or examcheating; by 1993, this had grown to 64 per-cent. Based on student responses to the 1993survey, however, it was difficult to tell howmuch of this change represented an actual in-crease in cheating, and how much was simplya reflection of changing student attitudesabout cheating. In 1993, many students sim-ply did not see cheating as a big deal, so it waseasier to acknowledge—especially in ananonymous survey.

Second, there was no change in the inci-dence of serious cheating on written work; 65percent of students in 1963 acknowledgedsuch behavior, and 66 percent did so in 1993.

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&Educational Opportunity

RutgersUniversity

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suggested that this younger generation ofstudents was more lenient in defining whatconstitutes plagiarism. Although survey ques-tions were worded to ask students about a spe-cific behavior, without labeling it as cheating,more than a trivial number of students in1993 said they had not engaged in a particularbehavior, while providing an explanation ofwhy the instances in which they actually haddone so were not cheating. The ethics ofcheating is very situational for many students.

Just as technology has enabled new forms ofcheating that are becoming popular with stu-dents, that same technology has made it easierto reach large numbers of students in surveys.Since 2001, I have been conducting Web-basedsurveys that make it possible to reach an entirecampus population with relative ease. However,many students are concerned that it is easier toidentify the source of electronically submittedsurveys, so they elect either not to participate orto do so while being cautious about what theysay. While it is hard to get people to be honestabout their dishonesty in any circumstances, itis even harder to get them to do so when theyare concerned about the anonymity of their re-sponses. This is reflected in notably lower ratesof self-reported cheating in Web surveys andlower levels of participation (as low as 10–15percent on average compared to 25–35 percentfor written surveys in this project).

Nonetheless, in these Web surveys of overforty thousand undergraduates on sixty-eightcampuses in the United States and Canada,conducted over the last two academic years, 21percent of respondents have acknowledged atleast one incident of serious test or exam cheat-ing, and 51 percent have acknowledged at leastone incident of serious cheating on writtenwork. Although most had engaged in othercheating behaviors as well, four out of everyfive students who reported they had cheated ona written assignment acknowledged that theyhad engaged in some form of Internet-relatedcheating—either cut-and-paste plagiarismfrom Internet sources or submitting a paperdownloaded or purchased from a term-papermill or Web site. Although the self-reportedrates of cheating found in these Web surveysare lower than in earlier surveys, they clearlyare still of concern. In addition, the differencemay relate more to research methodologythan to any real change.

Of concern to whom?Each campus constituency tends to shift the“blame” for cheating elsewhere. This is a majorproblem. Many students argue, with some jus-tification, that campus integrity policies areill-defined, outdated, biased against students,and rarely discussed by faculty. They also faultfaculty who look the other way in the face ofobvious cheating. They are even more criticalof faculty who, taking “the law” into their ownhands when they suspect cheating, punishstudents without affording them their “rights”under the campus integrity policy. Many facultybelieve that these campus policies are overlybureaucratic and legalistic and that they oftenfind “guilty” students innocent. Some facultyargue that they are paid to be teachers, notpolice, and that, if students have not learnedthe difference between right and wrong by thetime they get to college, it’s not their job toteach them—especially in a publish-or-perishworld. Although the evidence suggests other-wise, many also believe it’s too late to changestudent behavior at this point.

Faculty also complain about administratorswho fail to support them in the face of whatthey perceive as obvious cases of cheating. Theycomplain about administrators who, at least inthe minds of some faculty, are more concernedwith whether the student is a star athlete, thechild of a major donor, or has achieved someother favored status. Of course, many adminis-trators can detail a litany of the ways in whichthey think faculty shirk their responsibilities inthe area of academic integrity. Still others com-plain that students are only concerned withgrades; how they obtain those grades is lessimportant for many.

The most appropriate response to studentcheating depends in large part on the goals ofthe institution. If the primary goal is simply toreduce cheating, then there are a variety ofstrategies to consider, including increased proc-toring, encouraging faculty to use multiple ver-sions of exams and not to recycle old tests andexams, aggressively using plagiarism detectionsoftware, and employing stronger sanctions topunish offenders. But while such strategies arelikely to reduce cheating, I can’t imagine manypeople would want to learn in such an environ-ment. As educators, we owe our students morethan this, especially when cheating may reflectcynicism about what they perceive as erodingmoral standards in the academy and in society.

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Today’s students seem to beless concerned with what ad-ministrators and/or facultyconsider appropriate behaviorand much more concernedwith the views and behavior of their peers.Students do expect to hear the president, theprovost, a dean, or some other official tellthem during orientation how they are aboutto become academic “adults,” adults who re-spect the learning process and who, amongother things, don’t cheat. And many studentswant to hear this message. But it’s clear fromstudent comments in my surveys that the real“proof” for students is in the behavior of theirpeers and the faculty. Regardless of the campusintegrity policy, if students see others cheating,and faculty who fail to see it or choose to ignoreit, they are likely to conclude that cheating isnecessary to remain competitive. Many studentsask, “if faculty members aren’t concernedabout cheating, why should I be?”

It takes a village I have always been intrigued by the Africantribal maxim that it takes a village to raise achild. In a similar sense, I would argue it takesthe whole campus community—students, fac-ulty, and administrators—to effectively edu-cate a student. If our only goal is to reducecheating, there are far simpler strategies wecan employ, as I have suggested earlier. But ifwe have the courage to set our sights higher,and strive to achieve the goals of a liberal edu-cation, the challenge is much greater. Amongother things, it is a challenge to develop stu-dents who accept responsibility for the ethicalconsequences of their ideas and actions. Ourgoal should not simply be to reduce cheating;rather, our goal should be to find innovativeand creative ways to use academic integrity asa building block in our efforts to develop moreresponsible students and, ultimately, more re-sponsible citizens. Our campuses must becomeplaces where the entire “village”—the commu-nity of students, faculty, and administrators—actively works together to achieve this goal.As Ernest Boyer observed almost two decadesago (Boyer 1987, 184), “integrity cannot bedivided. If high standards of conduct are ex-pected of students, colleges must have impec-cable integrity themselves. Otherwise thelessons of the ‘hidden curriculum’ will shapethe undergraduate experience. Colleges teach

values to students by the stan-dards they set for themselves.”

In setting standards, facultyhave a particularly importantrole to play; students look to

them for guidance in academic matters—notjust to their peers. In particular, to help stu-dents appropriately orient themselves and de-velop an appropriate mental framework asthey try to make sense of their college experi-ence, faculty must recognize and affirm acade-mic integrity as a core institutional value.Without such guidance, cheating makes sensefor many students as they fall back on strategiesthey used in high school to negotiate heavywork loads and to achieve good grades.

One of the most important ways faculty canhelp is by clarifying their expectations for ap-propriate behavior in their courses. Althoughfaculty certainly have the primary responsibil-ity here, they should share this responsibilitywith students. Not only does such “consulta-tion” result in policies in which students feel agreater degree of ownership and responsibility,but it also helps to convince students they trulyare partners in their own education. Nonethe-less, faculty do have a unique and primary roleto play in the classroom, and it is incumbentupon them not only to minimize opportunitiesto engage in academic dishonesty (even if onlyout of fairness to honest students) but also torespond in some way when cheating is sus-pected. While some may argue over the mostappropriate response, it is essential that therebe some response. As noted earlier, studentssuggest that faculty who do nothing about whatappears to be obvious cheating simply invitemore of the same from an ever-increasingnumber of students who feel they are being“cheated” by such faculty reluctance.

While faculty can do much to improve theclimate of academic integrity in their campus“villages,” they should not be expected toshoulder this burden alone. University admin-istrators need to look more carefully at therole they play. The Center for Academic In-tegrity at Duke has encouraged, and helped,many campuses to examine their academicintegrity policies, yet there are still manyschools that have not reviewed their policiesin decades. Instead of reacting to an increas-ing number of faculty complaints about Inter-net plagiarism by simply subscribing to aplagiarism detection service, for example,

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The ethics of cheating is

very situational for many students

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comprehensive look at their integrity policies.While some may decide that plagiarism detec-tion software is an appropriate component oftheir integrity policy, I trust many more willconclude that it’s time to abandon their almostexclusive reliance on deterrence and punish-ment and to look at the issue of academic dis-honesty as an educational opportunity as well.

Over the last fifteen years, I have becomeconvinced that a primary reliance on deter-rence is unreasonable and that, if we truly be-lieve in our role as educators, we would dobetter to view most instances of cheating aseducational opportunities. While strong sanc-tions clearly are appropriate for more seriousforms of cheating, it’s also clear that most stu-dent cheating is far less egregious. What, forexample, is an appropriate sanction for a stu-dent who cuts and pastes a few sentences froma Web site on the Internet without citation?In some cases, this behavior occurs out of ig-norance of the rules of citation or is motivatedby a student’s failure to properly budget his orher time. In a last minute effort to completethe two papers s/he has due that week, as wellas study for a test on Friday, s/he panics. If thestudent is a first-time “offender,” what’s theeducational value of a strong sanction?

Having decided that sanctions do littlemore than to permanently mar a student’srecord, an increasing number of schools aretaking a more educational approach to acade-mic dishonesty. They are striving to imple-ment strategies that will help offendingstudents understand the ethical consequencesof their behavior. These strategies seem oftento be win-win situations. Faculty are morewilling to report suspected cheating, or to ad-dress it themselves, when they understandthat educational rather than punitive sanc-tions are likely to result. A common choicenow is to do nothing or to punish the studentprivately, which makes it almost impossible toidentify repeat offenders. On a growing num-ber of campuses, however, faculty are being en-couraged to address issues of cheating directlywith students. As long as the student acknowl-edges the cheating and accepts the facultymember’s proposed remedy, the faculty membersimply sends a notation to a designated partyand never gets involved with what many con-sider the unnecessary bureaucracy and legalismsof campus judicial systems.

When more faculty take such actions, stu-dents who cheat sense they are more likely tobe caught, and the overall level of cheating oncampus is likely to decline. Administrators,especially student and judicial affairs person-nel, can then devote more of their time andresources to proactive strategies. For example,several schools have developed mini-coursesthat are commonly part of the sanction givento first-time violators of campus integrity poli-cies; others have devoted resources to promot-ing integrity on campus, rather than investingfurther in detection and punishment strategies.A common outcome on campuses implement-ing such strategies is a greater willingness onthe part of faculty to report suspected cheat-ing. They view sanctions as more reasonable,designed to change behavior in positive ways,demonstrating to students that inappropriatebehavior does have ethical consequences. Asstudents quickly learn that second offenseswill be dealt with much more strongly, in-creased reporting also serves as an effectivedeterrent to continued cheating.

Of course, the most effective solution tostudent cheating is likely to vary from campusto campus, depending on the unique campusculture that has developed over the course ofa school’s history. Indeed, no campus is likelyto reach the ideal state where the proactivestrategies I have described are sufficient inand of themselves. Rather, some balance ofpunishment and proactive strategies will beoptimal on each campus and, although thatoptimum will vary from campus to campus,punishment will always have some role. Thestakes are high for most college students to-day, who think their entire future—theirchances of gaining admission to professionalschool, getting job interviews with the bestcompanies recruiting on campus, etc.—de-pends on a few key grades. It is, therefore, un-realistic to think that none will succumb tothe temptation to cheat.

Students, even the most ethical, want toknow that offenders will be punished so thatother students will be deterred from engagingin similar behaviors. In fact, I am often sur-prised by the comments many students offerin my surveys calling for stronger punishmentsfor students who engage in serious cheating.While they are willing to look the other waywhen someone engages in more trivial formsof cheating to manage a heavy workload, for

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example, they are far less forgiving of studentswho cheat in more explicit ways on major testsor assignments. The difficult task for everyschool is to find the appropriate balance be-tween punishment and proactive strategiesthat deters students who would otherwise cheatwhen the opportunity arises yet that also worksto build a community of trust among studentsand between students and faculty, a campuscommunity that values ethical behavior andwhere academic integrity is the norm.

The need to achieve some balance betweenpunishment and proactive strategies was wellsummarized for me this spring when I made apresentation at the Coast Guard Academy inNew London, Connecticut. A second class-man who was listening to my emphasis onproactive strategies suggested that, since stu-dents see so much cheating in high school andin the larger society, deterrence probably playsan important role in reducing cheating in col-lege. In his own case, he suggested that duringhis first two years at the academy the biggestfactor in his decision not to cheat was fear ofthe strong sanctions that existed and were of-ten used. But during those two years, he wasalso exposed to many proactive messagesabout why integrity matters, especially in anoccupation where the lives of so many maydepend on doing one’s job with integrity. Heobserved that he has now reached the pointwhere he wouldn’t think of cheating—nolonger for fear of punishment, but because heunderstands the importance of integrity. How-ever, for him, and perhaps for many other stu-dents, those strong rules helped him learnbehaviors that he could later understand andvalue for more idealistic reasons. No campusmay ever reach a truly ideal combination, butdeterrence and proactive strategies bothshould play an important role in any academicintegrity policy.

Do somethingIt is impossible to know whether such propos-als will work on every campus. But to thosecampuses that have doubts about the effec-tiveness of such strategies, I offer the same ad-vice I give students when they expressconcern about reporting peers they suspect ofcheating because of the fear of reprisal or be-cause they believe sanctions on their campusare too severe. Do something! While I’m surethere are some campuses where the modest

suggestions offered here may not work as wellas other possible choices, I’m even more con-vinced that any campus that has not reviewedits integrity policies for some time is derelictin its responsibilities to its students and likelyhas a degree of discontent among its faculty.Perhaps even more important, it is depriving itsstudents of an important learning opportunityin the true liberal arts tradition. ■■

To respond to this article, e-mail [email protected],with the author’s name on the subject line.

REFERENCESBowers, W. J. 1964. Student dishonesty and its control

in college. New York: Bureau of Applied Social Research, Columbia University.

Boyer, E. L. 1987. College: The undergraduate experiencein America. New York: Harper & Row.

McCabe, D. L., and L. K. Trevino. 1996. What weknow about cheating in college: Longitudinaltrends and recent developments. Change 28, 28–33.

——. 1993. Academic dishonesty: Honor codes andother contextual influences. Journal of Higher Education 64, 522–38.

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