Academic Integrity and Social Structure: A Study of Cheating among College Students

Abstract

Without norms of academic integrity, the stability and continuity of the academic system could not be maintained. Educators view any violation of the norms of academic integrity both as an ethical problem and as a negation of one of the objectives of education, i.e., the development of independent critical thinking. Students themselves regard cheating as morally wrong. Yet cheating is a common phenomenon on American college campuses as a number of studies have shown. In 1952 a study conducted in eleven colleges found that nearly twofifths of the students polled admitted cheating. A recently completed nationwide study reports that 49 per cent of the students cheat. Another study reveals the following incidence of cheating reported by seniors: 26 per cent at Columbia, 30 per cent at Cornell, 52 per cent at Fordham, and 54 per cent at Notre Dame.1 Colleges vary in the formal and informal means they use to communicate the norms of academic integrity and th associated sanctions. It is quite p ssibl that the norms may be vague and variously interpreted in regard to specific items of behavior. Furthermore, the norms of academic integrity do not have the same salience for all