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Survey Shows Majority of Students Get Away With Cheating

By Editorial Staff
  |  
  2 Min Read
Cheating Students

Many Canadian students admit to some form of cheating.

A recent survey conducted by CBC news has found that universities are trying to crack down on students who cheat. In the 2011-12 school year, more than 7000 students were caught and disciplined, but experts say many more cases go undetected.

Of 54 universities contacted, 42 supplied data on the number of students disciplined for academic misconduct. Results showed that less than one per cent of all students were affected by this formal punishment, revealing that there is a huge discrepancy between the number of students admitting to cheating and the number being caught.

“There’s a huge gap between what students are telling us they’re doing and the numbers of students that are being caught and sanctioned for those behaviours,” says Julia Christensen Hughes, dean of the College of Management and Economics at the University of Guelph in Ontario.

While quite a few students admit to some form of cheating – a number that some studies put at 50 per cent – many do not feel plagued by guilt since they believe that everyone at one time or another has been guilty of misconduct. According to the CBC survey, plagiarism accounted for more than half of all cheating cases, followed by unauthorized aid or collaboration at 22 per cent, and cheating on tests at 10 per cent.

Many professors believe that punishment has to be more severe to protect the integrity of the academic system and to deter other students from following the same course. The most common penalty is a grade reduction, perhaps a zero on the assignment or in the entire course. However, notes on transcripts, suspensions, or expulsions are all possible penalties. Seem harsh? Christensen Hughes says they’re really just trying to protect students and their degrees.

“For those degrees to continue to have value, they have to stand for something. They have to represent that a student has engaged with a curriculum, with a program, has achieved a certain level of mastery. If we can’t be assured when we confer that degree that it has actually occurred, then our integrity as an institution is in question.”

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