College Cheating

Kevin Corley

With large lecture hall being common for test taking and rapidly advancing technology, cheating is becoming a severe issue. Realistically, colleges cannot monitor every single student to prevent cheating. Because of this, students easily give into cheating to make the grades that they need. Mentioned in an article about college cheating, a survey of 5331 undergraduate students, 56% of business students 47% of non-business students admitted to cheating within the past year.

The real issue with college cheating is that it undermines the accomplishment of earning a degree. The article above raises question as to whether a degree is an honest representation of academic accomplishment if a student who cheats earns the same degree as an honest student. This is definitely a concern. If such a large portion of students are cheating, than a degree’s value can be compromised. Ideally, cheating cannot be eliminated because enforcing it can be extremely costly. The article above states that the “price” to enforce cheating is significant and as a result, administrative action in fighting cheating is minimal. While I do believe that enforcing cheating can be costly, it is something worth paying for. If colleges do nothing about people cheating, then they are treating it like a joke. Cheating is a very serious act. Colleges should treat it as such. Many colleges make it sound like cheating is such a big deal yet there is still such a large portion of students that are cheating. This means that while colleges recognize that there is a cheating problem, they are doing nothing about it. By doing nothing, they are only making the problem much more severe that it could be if they put a little bit of enforcement into place.