How To Reduce Academic Dishonesty

Academic dishonesty is one of the major issues in not only in every school around the world but also in prestigious universities. It ranges from plagiarizing homework to cheating in tests. There are several reasons why students cheat on tests or homework. The reasons include not being ready to being unsure of the task in hand to having too much workload and so on. In order to stop this epidemic, there can be both lenient and harsh techniques involved. Several approaches to resolve this epidemic is to implement harsher consequences, reducing class sizes, allowing retakes on tests, and not assigning huge amounts of homework. 

A technique that is widely used in most schools is to implement harsher consequences when caught. According to an article: “Example Honor Code Statements”, penalties for violating the honor code, such as cheating on tests, copying homework, or plagiarizing quotes from the internet without proper citation, would be punishable by being suspended and it can also go to the extent of the student being expelled. This is a great – although harsh – way to solve or at least lessen academic dishonesty. Since being suspended or expelled would go on their permanent academic record, they would realize that if they were to be academically dishonest and get caught, colleges would not readily accept them into their colleges. Thus, by employing these consequences, most students would be scared to copy other people’s homework, let alone cheat on tests. Referring to an article: “The Problem with Honor Codes” by Sam Goldman, it states that the “Honor code is unlikely to do much good because it appeals to an ethical principle that students take lightly” (Goldman). I agree with this statement because if given a chance, anyone would cheat in order to get a better grade. For example, if anybody – even the most ethical person in the world – were to be put in a room by him/herself and given a test with a phone beside it, they would still cheat so that they get a good grade or don’t seem dumb to other people. Another way to try and lessen academic dishonesty is by maintaining smaller class sizes. This is because if the class size were to be smaller, the students would be noticed and would be more prone to getting caught when they cheat. Another reason why this would reduce cheating is because maintaining smaller classes would mean that the teacher would be able to teach every student carefully and pay more attention to weaker students. This would lead to the students learning what they are taught and they would decide not to cheat anymore since they have learned what they would be tested on. Thus, maintaining smaller class size would also reduce academic dishonesty. 

One of the lenient techniques to resolve academic dishonesty is to offer students retakes on their exams. The teachers’ aim is for their students to learn while the students strive for good grades. If retakes were made available for students, they would not go through the risks and the trouble of cheating. Students would also start to learn their lessons in order to pass their exams and they would also receive good grades. However, one shortcoming that this technique possesses is that students could take advantage of it. Thus, I believe that a specific limitation of retakes should be enforced so as to not let students abuse the opportunity. The last way to try and reduce academic dishonesty (especially copying homework in this instance) is to give students their way. One of the main reasons students copy homework is because they don’t have the time to complete their own works due to work overload. In order to solve this problem, teachers simply have to not assign all of their works at the same time and expect it to be done by the next class. If teachers were to not stress their students with the workload, students would be able to put their thought and efforts into their work and thus, not actually having to go through the hardships of asking other people for their homework or trying to find other people’s work online. 

To sum up, there are assorted ways to reduce or eliminate academic dishonesty. Both lenient and harsh ways can be used to solve this epidemic. However, it is suggested that we start with the lenient methods so as to not overwork and stress the students out. By employing lenient methods, it would also help students learn what they are taught instead of cramming all of the work or studying everything by heart. 

References

• Goldman, Sam. “The Problem With Honor Codes.” Minding the Campus, Minding the campus, 9 June 2014, www.mindingthecampus.org/2014/05/08/the_problem_with_honor_codes/.
• “Example Honor Code Statements.” Example Honor Code Statements | Office of Community Standards, Stanford University. https://communitystandards.stanford.edu/resources/faculty-and-tas/example-hon or-code-statements.