Faculty Tutorial: Causes of Academic Dishonesty

Literature on academic dishonesty cites a number of factors that contribute to dishonest academic practices (Whitley and Keith-Spiegel, 2002). Contributing factors include:

Peer pressure
Performance anxiety
Excuse making
Inability to manage the demands of student life
Situations that encourage academic dishonesty
Self-justification habits
Unfamiliarity with what constitutes academic dishonesty
Lack of understanding about consequences

Check Your Understanding

What is one common cause for academic dishonesty?

A lack of familiarity with what constitutes academic dishonesty is one common cause.

Peer Pressure

Students can pressure other students to commit acts of academic dishonesty in many ways: pressuring others to work together or split assignments when course policies prohibit collaboration, seeing other students cheat and then joining them, engaging in academic dishonesty as a group and helping friends on assignments or exams when the professor has prohibited collaboration.

Performance Anxiety

Anxiety about academic performance can cause some students to cheat in academic activities. Students may cheat to avoid failing a course or receiving a bad grade. Some students may use cheating as a way to cope with poor test-taking skills.

Excuse Making

Some students blame their course instructors for their cheating, complaining that the professors expect too much or are too difficult to understand. Students also may use the excuse that the exams were unfair or a course was not in their major. Occasionally, students reason that other students are cheating, so they have no alternative but to cheat as well.

Inability to Manage Demands of Student Life

One of the most common reasons for academic dishonesty is students' inability to manage the pressures of their social and academic lives. Students who cannot plan and manage their workload and other activities and are usually behind in meeting their deadlines and can at times resort to cheating or plagiarism as an easy solution.

Situations That Encourage Academic Dishonesty

When course policies do not spell out clearly what students may or may not do regarding collaboration, or when an instructor is not careful in enforcing academic integrity standards, some students may use the situation to commit acts of academic dishonesty. For example, if the penalties for violating academic integrity standards are too minimal, some students may consider cheating to be worth the risk of being caught.

Self-Justification Habits

Some students engage in self-talk in order to justify their actions to themselves, even though those actions may not be appropriate. For example, they justify cheating by telling themselves that they were cheating:

Only once
Only in one academic activity
Because they were sick and couldn't catch up

Other self-talk justifications include students telling themselves that:

"This particular assignment is not very important."
"I do not need this particular course for graduation, so it's okay."
"No one will get hurt by this."
"I had to help a friend in need."
"The instructor doesn't really care."
"Everyone cheats in this class."

Check Your Understanding

What is another common cause for academic dishonesty?

Course policies listed in the syllabus not clarifying what students can and cannot do in the course with respect to completing assignments and collaboration.

Remember

Regardless of the causes of academic dishonesty, it cannot be justified under any circumstance. Furthermore, the consequences of being caught can be devastating for students. Instructors have the professional responsibility to increase students' awareness of academic dishonesty issues and help them avoid committing academic dishonesty.

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