The cheating rate among high school and college students is extremely high, with numerous incidents occurring worldwide. Statistics show that a majority of students cheat, whether through cribbing homework, plagiarizing essays from the Internet, or submitting fake term papers. A 2010 study by the Josephson Institute found that 59% of 43,000 high school students admitted to cheating on a test in the past year, with 64% admitting to cheating on a test, 58% admitting to plagiarism, and 95% saying they participated in some form of cheating.
A study of 1,800 college students found that 15 turned in a fake term paper, 84 cheated on written assignments, and 51% of high school students admitted to cheating during a test. However, despite the risks that cheating poses for youth, education, and society, as many as 90% of students cheat in high school.
A 2012 white paper by Challenge Success revealed that 80 percent admitted to copying another student’s homework. A survey of 70,000 students across the United States found that 95 percent of students admitted to cheating in some capacity. Research about cheating among elementary age children has also shown that about 60 to 70% of high school students surveyed in the fall of 2023 have engaged in cheating.
In 2007, an informal 2007 poll conducted by the popular website CollegeHumor revealed that 60.8 of 30,000 respondents, most of them within its core, had been involved in cheating. These statistics highlight the ongoing issue of cheating among students, particularly in high school and college.
📹 Professor Brian Harvey on why not to cheat
What are the statistics of cheating?
The gender gap in infidelity is not as significant for unmarried couples as it is for married couples, with 20 of men and 13 of women admitting to infidelity, and 67 of men and 53 of women who cheated on their spouse more than once. Cheating rates are influenced by age, with men more likely to engage in one-night stands and women seeking emotional connections. The reasons behind infidelity often stem from emotional and psychological factors, with key motivations for cheating identified as anger, low self-esteem, lack of love, low commitment, need for variety, neglect, sexual desire, and situation.
For men, sexual desire and the pursuit of variety are significant factors, as highlighted by a 2017 survey where men cited reasons such as “the other person was really attractive” and “people were hitting on me”. Additional reasons men gave included doubts about their relationship, lack of sexual intimacy, and feeling neglected.
Is cheating more common today?
In the United States, approximately 21% of respondents in 2021 admitted to infidelity, representing a notable increase from 20% in the previous year. This trend suggests a growing prevalence of infidelity in the country since 1960-2021.
What is the number 1 cause of cheating?
The primary reason for cheating is the lack of emotional connection in a relationship. This connection is crucial for avoiding temptations and preventing cheating. Studies show that only 7 out of cheating women and 8 out of cheating men cheated due to sexual dissatisfaction alone, while the majority cheated due to a lack of emotional and sexual connection.
Sexual connection is also a significant factor in cheating. Couples often become lazy about their intimate life, becoming complacent after the initial excitement of a new partner passes. To maintain a good sex life, couples need to continually grow and learn new techniques, fantasies, toys, and experiences. Communication about sex is essential to keep small desires and preferences fresh.
Keeping communication high and judgment about preferences low is crucial for meeting each other’s needs. A sexual inventory created for couples, found in Dr. Jenn’s 6-Step Guide to Improving Communication, Connection, and Intimacy, can help keep communication high and encourage open communication. Using this inventory once a year can help keep sex life fresh and exciting.
What percent of people cheat in high school relationships?
Around 40-60% of adolescents are unfaithful to their partners, with around 70 of them denying infidelity, particularly sexual infidelity. This study was published in the International Journal of Environmental and Public Health, which highlights the prevalence of such issues among adolescents. The research involved data curation, writing, review, and editing, as well as supervision. The study also included contributions from María Alonso-Ferres, Marta Garrido-Macías, and Francisca Expósito. The findings highlight the need for increased awareness and support for adolescents to address and address issues related to infidelity and sexual infidelity.
What percentage of students cheat on homework?
A study by Professor Donald McCabe found that a significant number of college students, including 15 who submitted fake term papers, 84 who cheated on written assignments, and 52 who plagiarized sentences, did not get caught. The study also revealed that 60. 8 of college students admitted to cheating, with most of them within their core demographic. This number is expected to increase as the years progress, with freshmen being the most likely to cheat.
A 2007 poll by CollegeHumor revealed that 60. 8 of 30, 000 respondents admitted to cheating, with 68 of students admitting to breaking the university’s explicit anti-cheating rules. The poll also revealed that 16. 5 of those who admitted to cheating felt no guilt for their breach of ethics. This raises questions about the culture of entitlement and success without regard for the well-being of others, as many students may consider their actions justified when rewarded for their “success”. The study highlights the growing issue of academic dishonesty in the education sector.
Is cheating common in high school?
A review of online surveys indicates that at least 50 students in high school have admitted to engaging in academic dishonesty, suggesting a pervasive prevalence of such behavior.
How bad is it to cheat in school?
Cheating on exams can have significant consequences for both test-takers and non-test-takers. For those who cheat, it can lead to academic failure, suspension, or expulsion from the program or institution. Habit-forming cheating behaviors can also lead to more substantial behaviors in the long run.
When cheating is not discovered, the effects can spread beyond the test, class, and college degree. If a test-taker passes their exam, they may be hired for an unqualified job, which could result in unwanted results such as promotions, assignments, or even their job. Employers may face increased acquisition and firing costs, legal and financial repercussions, and eroded confidence in the exam program.
In summary, cheating on exams can have both academic and non-academic consequences for test-takers. For those who cheat, it can result in failing the test or failing the class, while for non-cheating individuals, it can lead to unqualified employment, increased acquisition and firing costs, legal and financial repercussions, and ultimately eroded confidence in the exam program.
Which gender cheats more?
Infidelity rates vary by age group, with men being more likely to be unfaithful at all ages except for those aged 18-29, and women being most likely to cheat between the ages of 60-69. This article explores the prevalence of infidelity in relationships, its underlying reasons and motivations, and strategies for salvaging and strengthening a relationship post-affair. It provides an in-depth exploration of the many layers of infidelity, aiming to help individuals understand this complex aspect of human relationships better. The article is a valuable resource for those dealing with or seeking clarity after uncovering an affair, as it sheds light on the complex nature of human relationships.
Who cheats more in 2024?
Research shows that men are more likely to cheat than women, but 13 of married women and 20 of married men admit to being unfaithful. It’s crucial to monitor your relationship to identify unfaithful partners, as knowing the signs can save you emotional and mental distress. Cheating is more common during early dating and unfulfilled commitments, with about 20 of married men cheating on their spouses. This article examines cheating statistics among males and females across various age groups.
How many students in high school cheat?
Cheating among children can begin in elementary school when they break rules to win competitive games. It peaks in high school when about 75% of students admit academic misgivings. Research indicates that there are more opportunities and motivations for cheating in elementary age, young children believe cheating is wrong but acceptable, and they are hard to resist when others suggest breaking rules. The need for approval is also related to cheating.
How long do 14 year old relationships last?
High-school relationships typically last from a few months to a year, with a small percentage of couples staying together and getting married. Statistics on high school marriages are scarce due to the rarity of weddings in teenage years. However, research on late adolescent relationships suggests that youth engaging in serious romantic relationships at high school are more likely to get married or start cohabiting by the age of 25. High-school relationships often fail due to the lack of serious problems faced by teenagers, who do not yet need to earn money, rent a house, or pay taxes and mortgages.
📹 Debunking the ‘Pointless’ Education Myth | StarTalk
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I remember putting such little effort into a biology assignment I didn’t use the text book or internet. I was okay with getting bad marks on it. But then the teacher tried to say i plagiarized when I hadn’t used any information materials at all. Just off the top of my head. One of the most frustrating encounters of me not caring and a teacher thinking I cared enough to cheat. Smh.
I’m 28 years old and it took me forever to get out of my basics . Because I never cheated . Life taught me a lot on the way! Life will teach you more than any class room ever can . I’ve learned that having a little street knowledge and learning a little bit of books is always the way to go . I’ll be graduating with my bachelors in 2 weeks! Thank you
I SO agree with this professor. It is about your own moral integrity. I am old now, but never will I forget my first year English professor, who called out one student in our class mercilessly (how I cringed for her!) because she cheated on an essay. I was just 16, and already had a fairly good sense of myself, and wasn’t about to cheat, but boy, did that event hit home. For me it is about intellectual honesty, and is something I have always put a very high value on.
I rarely cheated in my school career, but when on a professional school you are learning things that got deprecated 23 years ago with the introduction of html 4, you have to question yourself why you go to that institution in the first place. I didn’t go there to learn, I went there to get a piece of paper.
I had a college professor that would go over the test questions a day or two before the test. Or sometimes he would hand out the test and go over each question with us. He would tell us the answer Nd explain why thats the answer. I dont know why but yrs later I can remember those answers. It was a totally unique way of learning.
It took me 6 years to finish college. Almost everyone I know who finished in 4 in my major (computer science) used chegg or would find answers online in someway. The way college is set up in America makes it much more rewarding and time saving to cheat and figure out why the those answers are the way they are afterwards
If the school system wouldn’t be structured, in a way, that if you make mistakes you get punished for it. That’s how it feels when you make mistakes, which will result in to a rhythm and a lifestyle where you do not want to make any mistakes. You learn from mistakes, that’s the whole point. Cheating is co-operating in my opinion, they should really try to structure education in a certain way that applies to real life. Instead, we get education based on the way people lived in 1800s lmao. I study Engineering in England, almost done, yet there’s 1 teacher that always says:”I don’t even know why we don’t teach you guys the stuff that the companies, that are waiting on you, are demanding from people nowadays. Instead you guys are learning physics, maths and aspects you won’t need to use in the business.” School system is fucked.
As someone with a degree that actually never cheated but was several times close to doing it: don’t feel bad about it. The pressure can be immense especially if you come from a family that has to pay for your college while being close to poor. The thing is though that you absolutely should study the things in your curriculum. In the end you are only betraying yourself and getting a good education is a privilege, even if the concept of exams is absurd.
Our professor was of opposite opinion. Why remember stupid tables and engineering coefficient (etc.) and then get tested from that? You will be able to use books, resources, the internet and your colleagues in your future work. Do the work and what is really important will stick around in your memory. We could use all the resources a person in reality could on his exams and we actually got to solving real problems. To this day, I remember the most from his lectures.
“The person who you are now is constructing who you will be for the rest of your life.” Me who has been depressed and lonely as fuck during univerity: Well that’s reassuring. Edit: Heh. This blew up, didn’t it? Well, thanks for the kind words everyone. It’s a bit too late for me, I’m afraid – I’m graduating – so I’ll never be able to make up the opportunity that I lost here. I did everything right as well. I put myself out there, I tried to make friends. But some people just didn’t want me around it seems, and did everything possible to make that happen. Oh well. Sometimes, you just end up with the short straw. But hopefully now I can put this mess behind me and move on.
Funny the professor mentioned pilots. I remember chatting with this hippie looking dude who had recently started flying planes as a hobby. He admitted that he knew next to nothing about planes and that he cheated his way into obtaining his pilot’s license. I asked him how he could possibly fly a plane when he barely even knew how to start the damn thing. As it turned out, the fella was quite skilled at cheating death, too.
In A&P class, I loved it. I studied hardcore, reading chapters 2-4 times, writing my own questions. It was the height of my learning at that time. The teacher gave out tests that were multiple choice. But they were pretty damn hard. He did this for almost 2 full semesters. Then one test day, out of the blue, he slaps a fill in the blank and essay test on the class. No one was prepared. Everyone in the class failed the exam except for me. I got a 72%. I barfed up quotes and filled the pages with long definitions and answers, even quoting the page number in the text book. But when I got to one question, “what are the six characteristics of the knee joint?” I listed 6 characteristics which were subheadings in the textbook. I quoted text in each subheading and the page numbers. But the teacher marked them wrong because he wanted the names of the six ligaments. I wrote out a letter to him, asking him to at least subtract the question from the test. I used logic that was sound. He didn’t even read it. I handed it to him, and he threw it in the trashcan before i even left the room. From that moment on, I cheated on his tests. I got the questions before hand for every test and memorized them and the answers. Do I regret doing that? Yes and no. He was a prick, but I was only hurting myself. I still had to learn overarching principles of my life, and where they fit in my life. Now I work at a hospital and I strive to be the best in the department.
What I’ve learned in all my years of working, besides just being plain lucky, is that the people who do the bare minimum amount of work, but who are good buddies with the managers, are the ones who go straight to the top. Hard work gets you nowhere in most work situations. The harder you work, the more work you’re simply given to do by your boss, while the phony baloney cheaters, losers, and suck-ups get promoted to the top and get paid a ton of money for achieving nothing, work-wise. That’s the truth about the working world, from my experience.
I don’t go to university to learn, I go to university so I can get that piece of paper and then get an actual job where I can learn. I’ve been doing an accounting degree for 3 years and most the stuff I learn is completely useless. I’d know 10x more about accounting if I just got a bookkeeping job straight out of school and worked there for 3 years.
I realised this at the very late age of 25. I half assed everything. Cheated multiple times CONFIDENTLY during highschool. Had no shame being lazy and failing. Im starting to really recognize how much of a incompetent and useless adult I am. I want to do great things but I would never let myself be in charge of anything if i was someone else. I wish I can do everything over. Bad habits are so hard to overcome because they became my comforts and escapism. If I can go back, I would just tell myself to start doing this and that without questioning them. I wish I went to uni at the right time. I wish i did things properly instead of wallowing in sadness and loneliness. Life is so short. And most importantly, you’re 19 only for a year. 20 only for a year. And that time will never come back.
Yeah, nonsense. I did engineering and at least with the case of homework, everyone was cheating since it was incredibly inefficient and damaging not to. A convoluted step by step homework problem where you don’t know what you’re doing right or wrong is not learning or constructive. Solved HW problems guided you to the correct solution, unless you want your planes built by a guy who was mistaken cause he didn’t realize the one step he was doing wrong. I’ve also learned that being resourceful and not immediately asking for help from others is the greatest skill you can have as an adult in the workforce. I can’t tell you how many problems I’ve solved by RTM instead of sitting there stuck and confused. Not saying I don’t understand the sentiment, but I don’t buy that cheating is all bad and damages you as a person.
“I don’t want to fly in an airplane programmed by someone who cheated in this class.” One of my math professors (Tom O’Neil) claimed that his will contained a clause saying that if he died in something one of his students designed their grade would be retroactively changed to an F. He was the sort of person who might do that, too. Unrelated to this article, but here’s a good story about him: A student got a 75 on one of Dr. O’Neil’s notoriously hard tests. This student was not used to getting anything under 90% and was on tilt. He noticed that Dr. O’Neil had taken off 2 points for a sign error, and he was going on and on about it. Dr. O’Neil, showing unusual patience (especially for him) was just letting him vent, but when the next class started, the tilted student didn’t stop, so O’Neil said “You want your two points back? Fine.” And wrote 75 + 2 = 73 on the board. He then changed the guy’s grade to 73 and left it. (For those not getting the joke, Dr. O’Neil made a sign error to demonstrate that sign errors can be important. Dr. O’Neil’s tests were so hard that 60% would generally get you an A, so this change was entirely trivial, but it shut the guy up).
I cheat in exams. Yes. Friends used to call me, “the Gadget Guy” because I cheat in numerous ways and I luckily, I pass all subjects during my degree. But I only cheat in exams and not in everyday life. I don’t cheat my wife, my parents, people whom I dealt with, friends, cheat in my work, no I don’t cheat.
I worked hard through college. But I cheated where I needed to. I was a business major, supposedly we’re the major most infamous for cheating. But I never cheated off another person’s paper, per se. I would find ways to sneak my own notes into tests. Now I’m an accountant. Every aspect of my job has a trail. Everything is recorded. If I’m ever unsure how to do something, all I have to do is look back at the history of how it was done before 🙃
I literally use 1% of what I “learned” in college. At least in engineering, the company you work for will teach you what you need to know specific to the job you will be doing…instead of deriving Maxwell’s equations all day. These days, I make a really good starting salary solely working with a software program I was never taught in college. School is a lot of hoop-jumping. Not cheating is more of a moral issue.
The best thing that a teacher can do to teach his children properly is to teach them that failure is okay because you still gain something more valuable than learning. That is why I suggest to give them to hit the gym to grow more muscles as a metaphor of learning. You will surely fail at each set but still you feel better doing it because it will give you more fulfillment in life. If a gym is necessary, give them the right way of doing it. Besides, the people who don’t want to learn are people who bears heavy toil of working hard labor. So giving them this lesson will surely teach them to apreciate that life is harder than what they are expecting.
I loved how he pointed out how silly some of the reasons people give to not cheat are. Like you’re really not hurting everyone else so horribly, and one person cheating in their class isn’t about to ruin a whole ass school. And the point about how we form habits was a fantastic one, definitely something I wish my high school self could have heard! When I got my degree I struggled so much more than I ever needed to and failed three different classes, one of them twice, because I had such awful habits.
This actually is true, it only bears a single problem: You don’t need most of the stuff you learn in college later in life, especially in MINT. Yet, you are graded on everything, whether you are good at it or not. An example: When I studied Biology, I also had to do some physics and physical chemestry. While the latter could somehow barely fit in because of thermodynamics (enzyme kinetics has some reactions that work with them) and basic quantum mechanics (think calculation of light quants in photosynthesis), both were somewhat obscure and only made sense if you wanted to go into deep biochemistry/biotechnology instead of the three other main branches; genetics, microbiology and zoology. But then you would probably switch right into Biotechnology to begin with (which was a shared module with them, so both Biologists and Biotechs had to do the same thing). Physics, on the other hand, had no business being in either of them. Knowing and estimating planetary movements? Calculating how much a bridge would oscillate? Learning endless facts about different theories regarding energy transfer and conversion? All of this was only used by very specialized doctors long after their master thesis, but taught in bachelor. I sometimes joked about how we were being prepared for Xenobiologics, for when the first ships would visit other worlds, and everyone agreed. It doesn’t make any sense. And yet, we were tested in it. And about 60-70% failed, every single year. Many of them very talented in genetics or zoology, just failed because they couldn’t wrap their head around how to calculate the amplitude of an oscillating bridge swinging with 500kN initial energy.
The person I’m going to be for the rest of my life is the guy that gets the work done better and faster because I understand the “system” and how to cheat it all effectively and efficiently. There’s plagiarism and there’s cheating one copies work and sure then this guys argument applies but if you are cheating by being resourceful and figuring out unique solutions, by all means please do. You will learn how to go with the flow and not stress yourself sick. Don’t be that one hard worker that never enjoys life because you think you gotta do it the “right way”
I mean, definitely agree, but if it’s for a gen ed, I’m flexible. My school forced us to take this god awful class, where the teacher didn’t have any idea what he was teaching or why, and yet made us all buy SEVEN textbooks, of which we used maybe three pages from two books. Our grades were determined by our attendance, and a final exam. No quizzes, no homework, none of that. Oh yeah, and HE GAVE US THE FINAL EXAM THE DAY BEFORE WE TOOK IT. I was the type of student who didn’t do much homework, but got through because my class participation was top notch, so you’d think I’d be godlike at a class with no homework. Nope. I’ve never cheated for anything before or since, but I was backed into a corner. I’d tried my best to pay attention, but i had no idea what the teacher was trying to communicate, and the exam had nothing to do with anything we had touched on in the class. So I squeezed every answer I could onto a notecard I cut up so I could palm discreetly, feeling guilty, but also angry enough at the bullshit to do it anyway. I get to the exam, sit in the very back row, and the guy closest to me has his entire notebook open, sitting on the floor. Barely making any effort to hide it at all. I couldn’t believe it, but it made me feel better to have a comrade. I did feel some type of way about how hard I’d worked to cheat discretely, while this dude had a whole ass notebook lol So the teacher is walking around, observing us all to try to prevent us from cheating. Turns out, the back row was the wrong choice, because even though there’s a wall behind it, you can get between it and the back row, and this is a place the teacher decides to go when making his rounds.
This is the best explanation I have ever heard. I have tried to tell students something very similar – but I wasn’t talking about cheating. I was just tutoring or being a TA or Lab assistant. I would tell them the basic stuff they were learning was the building blocks of their career. They needed to develop those skills to get through later courses. I think I was lucky. We never had a case of cheating when I went to college – at least none that became known (like large numbers).
I was one of those knuckleheads that didn’t cheat during university. And I was also one of those dumb asses who got 5 on a line on everything, with a 7 from time to time. Now, 10 years after finishing it, I can say I remember about 10% what I learned there and my honesty didn’t do shit to help me. By cheating, I could have been a 8 or a 9 guy, have a flawless grade sheet and still forget it all in the end, like i did anyways.
Man I’ve cheated so much that I learned some stuff I can’t forget. For example a teacher got mad at the class cause we were being loud and told us we are doing a 5min (a random question that you have 5 minutes to write on) on all of the ethernet cables that we’ve learned. Their abbreviations, the whats, whys, and hows of the cable even how to crimp one. Man I cheated on that shit and I havent forgotten a single cable like 5 years later still. Sometimes cheating is good.
No mention of the fact that what you might be cheating at (i.e. an exam) has no real bearing on your ability to perform the task you’re going to be employed to do. You might not like the idea that somebody just copied the plans for a plane you’re travelling on, but the plans they copied actually worked and the plane they completed by copying will also work. At the end of the day, the only thing “cheating” hurts is the education system by exposing how uptight and unwilling to evolve it is.
In middle school we had these really old desks with ink wells that had sliding square brass lids. It just so happened to be the EXACT same size as our mini times-table reference print outs that we were supposed to have glued in the back of our maths book. Well… I cut it out and stuck it in my ink well. Got 10 out of 10 every times-table test. In high school I excelled in most topics – but literally HATED maths. I was scared of the teacher, scared of being asked a question, in the bottom set – and in hindsight most of all scared that everyone else “got it” and I didn’t. Today I still don’t know my times tables. I’m still hiding it from my kids! (Not saying this for “likes”, but truly). Cheating might often start from laziness or looking for a quick win, but it is embedded by fear once you start down that road and can’t find back. Think I better confess this story to my kids – last thing I want them to do is repeat my mistake.
One time in high school we were allowed all sorts of cheat notes on one maths examn, but they had to be self written. The point was, If you spend Time to write those notes and understand how to use the things you write, you Will also learn in the process. There was no point writing down formulae that you didn’t Even understand nor couldnt use in practice. It was a great way to learn!
Funnily enough one of the biggest cheats I’ve ever known was a kid from an obscenely rich family who basically bought his way through every test he ever had to sit. He’s a really likeable guy, and I believe that he is a good person. He’s also now the captain of a 747 for a major international airline (that I never fly with).
(As a teacher and a student.) Everything he said is 100% correct, BUT I’d like to add the fact that “tests” are very unrealistic and shouldn’t carry as much weight as they are given. Individual and group projects are a far greater measure of real work life than tests will ever be, HOWEVER … I do enjoy the weekly quiz, because it demonstrates incremental understanding.
“You condemn yourself to something you dont know how to do and done like doing.” This hurts. Like ouch. But…. to share my story real quick. I’ve done the work. I’ve studied my ass off in college. And I still failed one of my courses. This hurt. ALOT. it showed me that no matter how hard I study, I’m just fucking stupid. I had to retake the class, and I find out that other students are using Chegg to pass the course. I’m curious and afraid of falling again and repaying for the course, so of course I use it too. Its the highest grade I’ve ever had in a class. And I didn’t have to spend hours studying- crying- missing out on weekends and sleep. I just opened the website and got the answers I needed. I still don’t know how to do the course correctly. I hate it. But – its not something that’s going to haunt me. Infact. If this were a working situation, finding alternatives is more beneficial than just hammering away at a problem. My employer isn’t going to care that I looked up a solution. They just want it done. Now if my professor can’t see the merit of hardwork- of coming to class everyday on time, studying, coming in for extra help, doing the extra assignments, and still failing… then I don’t think cheating is robbing me of the experience. Its saveing me the frustration of giving 110% of my life to a required class that is holding me back from graduation.
My teacher always told me make the best cheat sheets, prepare to cheat super professionnaly and then just don’t do it. She said the focus it takes to write down on a whole paragraph on a small piece of paper is enough to learn everything. Was absolutely right. Doesn’t work with just downloading it on your phone though.
I had a teacher that had 6 months left untill his pension. I was in my second year. This great man was giving us test exams to see how well we knew the subject. After we all got our documents to take this test exam, he stood up, holding up 2 pieces of paper. He said, raising one of his arms more slightly, “these are the answers for the test exam”. Then he slightly raised his other arm, “these are the answers for the actual exam”. He placed the pieces of paper on his desk for all to see and left the room to get some soup. Everyone was in shock, but I was already half running to the desk with my phone in my hand. I filmed the answers. I got 97% on the test. I believed 100% would be too much. Good times.
I cheated all through school, and cut corners wherever i could with class time and work, and I got my degree 6 years ago. I didn’t even show up to every class, every time. But I’ve been at my job for 5 of those 6 years, and i don’t cut corners there. 50% of college is an unnecessary waste of time, in my opinion, so i didn’t take it too serious, Just serious enough to pass with low B’s and high C’s. Getting the job was my real intention. School was just an obstacle i had to overcome to get to my job.
yea ok but you could come to understand the course material PERFECTLY and this still wouldn’t be an argument against having a backup plan against a professor that might give you a bad grade that will then negatively affect your entire career… all while accruing student debt. In all seriousness, if any student is reading this, study your ass off to prepare and better yourself…. AND cheat.
This article cuts deep. Especially for those who have struggled in school due to the pandemic. People can tell you all they want that it’s about wanting to succeed and having the willpower, but there’s a point where you just can’t take it. Where the problem isn’t simply you but the system you’re in. I went through all of high school and over half my time in college believing in not cheating. And it went well. It was only after I failed my first class in my third semester that I really started to question school. Some of my family gave me a lot of shit for failing. Told me I needed to do summer school to “catch up”. As if suddenly I’d decided to slack off. And all it ever did was make me hate the system more. Even the little details made me upset. Who decided that you either failed or passed? Why can’t you fail or succeed? I kinda went on a rant, but I guess it’s just to say that even though I still refuse to cheat out of honour, I understand people cheating out of desperation. No one should ever be worried about their future because they got a 59.
Yeah he’s right, but studying for 4 years to earn an A4 paper that says I’m “good” in this field only to realize that no matter what job you get. They’ll train you how to do your job without even using 10 precent of what you have learned unfortunately. I wish I cheated in college and not bust my ass for 4 years not getting nights of sleep only to get a job that told me what to do without using any of my knowledge. Btw I’m an engineer. We don’t use shit in our job just follow the instructions and you’ll get paid handsomely.
When I was in college our teacher was an old dude who created his own assembly compiler and accompanying program to write assembly code. We being students had no idea how impressive that was or how good of a programmer he was. So we get a difficult assignment none of us were looking forward to working on. But we ended up finding the fully completed code on a computer a student from the previous class forgot to lock! So we quickly copied it and sent it to each other, 4 of us in total. We thought hey, we’ll each do our own modifications and pass it in, no big deal. As our teacher was going over the passed in assignments he says out loud “Well, looks like Mike and John worked together on this assignment”. Then several minutes later “Looks like Paul was also in this little group.” Nothing for awhile, I thought phew I modified it enou… “Adam too, how disappointing, would the 4 of you please stay after class.”
So many comments saying ‘School only values grades so I’ll just cheat anyway,’ but I think the professor actually knows this reasoning and disagrees with it. What I think he’s saying is to not ‘stoop down’ to school’s level and only focus on the grade. If it is possible to learn the subject decently then you should do it anyway without cheating because that way you build an ethic for doing things ‘right’ which should help you throughout your life. Yes, obviously, the world and the economy isn’t a completely fair system that will reward this all the time but there is definitely a benefit to doing things without cutting corners that should be appreciated.
Ι avoided cheating, but after perusal this article I realized what I’ve been missing out. Quoting “Don’t cheat, if you do you’re really hurting yourself” I hurt myself, by eating wrong, not exercising and by staying up late to study what I didn’t during the day. If cheating means hurting myself but fixing the above, I’ll take that.
Funny how these days almost every quantitative class I take has incorporated cheat sheets that you’re supposed to make for yourself in the exams. Have universities decided to make it easier for students due to external pressure to bring out more graduates, or have they just realized that maybe having to memorize 30 formulas the day before an exam has nothing to do with competence in the course?
When you study for exam pre covid: thoroughly goes through everything and make sure you know how to solve every type of question assigned in the homework When you study for exam during covid: you just need to know enough to understand what the heck the questions are asking so you can search up answers on slader and yahoo answers
I cheated a lot all the way from middle school to high school to undergraduate school and failed in 3 out of 5 courses every year, even after working hard. My habit was due to fear of losing, memorizing concepts instead of understanding, and not due to laziness. In the graduate school and at jobs, I truly understood the consequences of cheating when others are doing fantastic and you don’t have a foundational concepts because you cheated all the way through.
To be fair, tests can sometimes be really stupid because it prevents people from succeeding in life. There’s no opportunity to move forward, you either pass or you don’t. I know many people who’ve cheated on exams and are doing so well in their careers because it’s not always about what you know, but how well you do.
Students wouldn’t cheat if tests were merely diagnostic instead of being graded. I’ve been pushing for a pass/fail grading system for so long. No grades. It’s just either you pass, or don’t. And the only way to pass is to demonstrate by practical exam. You either understood the topic 100% or you don’t. There’s no percentage of 90%, 80%, 70% passing rate.
I love that he talks about how cheating deeply affects the core of a student rather than giving a canned response or just telling students over and over not to cheat. Students are in school to internalize things that will help them become better humans, so I don’t see why many educators half-ass teach academic integrity, while spending so much time talking about useless garbage.
I agree to a large extent. But the problem with college is all the other stuff they make you learn that you really don’t care about and never really signed up for. Like core curriculum classes. Why did I, a computer science major, have to take chemistry? And I’m a senior now and have already learned everything I care about, yet I have to keep taking computer science electives not because I want to, but because I need to for my degree. And most of these electives I’m only taking because they were the only computer science classes I could get into (registration at my school is very competitive, as with most large universities). So yes, don’t cheat on the classes that actually have something to do with your future career. Don’t major in computer science just because you saw it has a high salary if you hate programming, like a lot of my peers did. But, college is largely a scam, and I’ve spent way too much time and money to be denied my degree because I don’t understand nor care about geology or meteorology.
I was stellar in school, never cheated at all. But then the grades became more demanding. School became less about learning something because it mattered and more about simply doing exactly as the teacher tells you or failing. That’s when i started cheating and ultimately became disillusioned with school.
I’m weirdly mixed on this one. Like, I don’t cheat. I would feel terrible doing it, and I’m a moron who refuses to make things easy for themselves. But at the same time I honestly don’t blame a lot of people for cheating-and I know quite a few who did. It does kind of shoot your learning in the foot; those people who cheated often didn’t have a good grasp of what they skimmed over, and had a hard time applying it in other situations. But university doesn’t really feel like its end goal is education at this point. It’s a transaction. Your money and time goes in, and a degree comes out, which is the ticket to a job (and the university is always trying to get more of your money). Often what you learn isn’t even all that applicable to the jobs out there, as innovations have occurred that the older profs never kept up with. There’s all these speeches about the sanctity of learning, and how you should be glad you’re there to begin with, so you should take it seriously. But universities aren’t there to teach people-they DO teach people, but that’s just something they have to do to make money. It is a business, and the students are the customers, so I don’t blame them for resorting to any means necessary to get what they paid for. I wouldn’t feel this way if university was “free”, or people got in based off scholarly merit alone. If that was the case, and education was the sole intent of the system, than cheating would truly feel like a moral failing. But unfortunately I live in North America, and in a lot of ways, things really suck here.
Here’s my issue with this. I went to uni and never cheated on a single test. My test scores were good but nothing special. I had a friend who in my opinion was very intelligent. He chose to organize a way to cheat on almost every in class test we had. And I believe he was right for doing so. Uni does not put you in a workplace environment or provide you with a real enough experience to determine your job skill set. When we both graduated we learned very quickly that nothing we learned in school applies to the real world. The written tests were useless and we both earned enough debt to last the next 8 years. Do whatever it takes to get to were you want. If you don’t, someone else will. I did however stop working in that field (environmental science) and opened my own garage (dream job).
I watched this article when I was still in school. Was quite inspired for the message. But now that I hot out of school, I think its total bullshit. Cheating is the natural response of a disfunctional education system that values grades over learning. If schools were really concerned with learning they wouldnt make condensed tests for any student. Its just a easy and simple way to evaluate people individually. And cheating is a last resort to someone who is fed up with studying and memorising everything. I tried to live by the message of this article once upon a time. And this has brought me nothing but frustration and regret. Everyone who had the opportunity cheated in my class. And I was the only odd one that refused to cheat. Did it bring me good habits: NO. Did it made me a better person overall: Momentarily. Do I still think its a good message: NO, especially for students DONT LISTEN TO THIS GUY. You are already in a awful place for learning, you are wasting your time studying things you wont remember after a week. If you really, really want to be a better person then study what you like the most, something that you wont be ever bored to pick a book or listen about. You wont gloss over the details, you wont cut corners, you wont be fed up about the most boring of things, and you will dawn sure be a professional if you really love what you do. Cheat if you can over everything else in school if you have the opportunity. And make the best out of what you love. Be a honest person, but do know where you are now.
This argument is true for something like, say, an engineering class for someone trying to be an engineer. It isn’t true for something like a calculus class for someone who wants to be a musician, which has little, if not nothing, to do with math in general. In that case the sensible thing would be to just get the best grade that you can in that class with whatever tactics you can muster. Edit: People really missing the point of my comment. I’m in college right now studying Public Management, yet I’m taking an Astronomy class. Do I need this class? Yes. Do I care about the contents of the class? No. Will I cheat? Yes.
I had a cousin that cheated in his a levels (British exams that are highly important for getting into a good university) however he knew the course back to front. He had managed to get his hands on the exam paper and then on his own he attempted it and didn’t go great just because of the pressure and trickery in the paper. He then learned the paper and got 100% in the exam. What does this show? That he is going to get no where in life? Maybe he wants to get into a good university without having exam pressure. It’s appalling! Our testing system must change. Why should we let pressure ruin people’s potential!!!
I got away with the ultimate cheat. I dropped out of high school, never went to college, and became an engineer., even though my teachers and counselors and executive staff told me I was going to flip burgers for the rest of my life if I dropped out. Well, they were right. I love making burgers for my family on my beautiful grill in my backyard on the weekends.
Be nice to the teacher Make sure to always participate in class and do your homework I had so many eye contacts with the teachers after I cheated but they let it slide I also witness how they were perusal students cheat but let it slide They always called out students who were disrespectful or never participate in class
After perusal this article multiple times, I think I’ve gained a new perspective. I’ve been cheating occasionally because this horrible school system only values your grades and not what you learn. I’ve also had this expectation I set for myself to do well in school, get a college degree, and work a well paying job. For this reason, I’ve decided that I will drop out of school to avoid cheating and to also learn actual, useful things now. Actually, I’ll just continue cheating in school or else I’ll be broke and living under a bridge.
I came to this conclusion when I was in 2nd grade. I cheated on a math test and got an A+. I bragged about it and so from this moment on everyone expected me to a math genius. It forced me into situations that as a kid are very traumatic. For example I got into these weird situations where I was being bullied for being a math nerd even tho I wasn’t but I couldn’t admit it because at the same time some other class mates admired that and all this weird stuff that happens as a kid. Anyway, the lesson was, that cheating creates a timebomb that will make ur life harder later on.
In theory I agree with everything he said and it was beautiful, but if I was américan and college was thousands of dollars a year and I knew if I failed a year that would mean I would have lost all this money I would definitely cheat if it helped me pass the exam. I forgot most of the stuff I studied without cheating in the past years anyways, also most people don’t know what they’re doing when they start working after graduation whether they cheated or not
When he says, “I don’t wanna fly an airplane that was engineered by someone who cheated in this class” that’s a great point if what you’re learning in class relates to what you’re going to do in your career. Unfortunately, it’s often the internship that you learn the most applicable knowledge. For most majors, college is a tedious process of doing ‘busy work’ and making deadlines for the degree. The degree signifies to an employer that you have some level of conscientiousness – but it usually isn’t a signifier of any level of competency in your field.
I might get some critique for this but simply put if you have integrity you won’t cheat. In this society integrity is highly undervalued and understandably so. I mean in a life where the main focus is to cut corners and finish somethins ASAP, people forget basic principles. As a Christian I believe that integrity is highly valuable and important. It might not make a difference here on earth but someday for somebody your choice will make a difference.
Sharing notes are not cutting corners. I took notes for those who could not write- it wasn’t cheating. Lecture notes are for learning. Why is it people think sharing notes is bad? Bad professors who rush through slides to make it difficult or constantly change slides to mess up others- are NOT concerned with your learning. They are just focused on being power hungry and don’t respect learning.
The most important part of the article, as cliche as it sounds, is at the end. Everything up until that point, even the most selfish and virtueless of individuals can disregard. Who could possibly want to condemn themselves to doing something they do not know how to do and not even liking said something, possibly for the rest of their life?
As a profesional I must say, if you are a programmer.. cheat.. cheat a lot, because almost nothing that you learned on the University is going to be useful to you a couple of years after graduating, so then you gonna have to learn a new language in a couple of weeks if you want to keep been competitive on your field, and it will take a lot of “cheating” (programming with google tab open), what you need to learn is the habit of looking for answer, not memorizing a temporal one
The thing about cheating is it depends on the context of the class, teacher, parent’s and school’s expectations, ect. If there are extremely high expectations with teachers who do not know how to teach and difficult assignments, many students will find themselves stuck between a rock and a hard place. Later in life when you have a job, many will argue that you can’t cheat there because it is “more serious.” The thing about a job is that now you are getting paid, so you are incentivized to actually do well (also your job only involves one thing, whereas school and college can involve many areas of study). This points to a much deeper and fundamental problem, which is that most schools are forgotten how to motivate students to do well, and only remembers how to punish student’s when they don’t. This creates a harmful and detrimental outlook towards school as only a place of possible punishment, which affects performance. This in turn creates a negative feedback loop until a student starts cheating. The assumption that all types of cheating prohibit learning is also false. Would you consider getting a test bank ahead of time cheating? I have had plenty of teachers who will just give a Kahoot with all of the test questions, and I will still remember the material long after the test. Not only that, but now the class average improves and is motivated to do better on the next people. Schools themselves need to start learning how people learn, and then adapt appropriately. There are ways to make the class easier and increase learning, it doesn’t have to be a tradeoff.
The guy depicted in a movie “Catch me if you can” shows you that you can cheat/lie/scam all your way to success and even after that still be succesful and Leo Dicaprio playing his story. The only one you should never cheat or betray is yourself. If you feel that college or school sucks either make yourself feel better about it or look for something else.
That’s why many people have such a problem to quit smoking. Nicotine is out of your body in 3-4 days. In 3-4 weeks you body will stop asking for it. But you made smoking a habit and getting rid of habits is extremely hard. It’s not about the smoking itself, it’s about the ritual to go outside after lunch and have a smoke break. To take your coffee outside and meet your colleges. Sure, you could do all of that without smoking but smoking has always been part of that habit. You must break those habits and then you can quit. Here’s my tip for doing that: Keep all the habits but instead of smoking, do something else you hate doing. In my case it was drinking tea, because I hate tea. So I would still go for a smoke break but instead of cigarette, I would have a cup of tea. By combining those habits with something you hate doing, you reprogram your brain to dislike those habits and very soon you are glad if you do not have to go outside at any weather and drink that horrible tea.
Counter point: I don’t want to fly in an airplane programmed by somebody who DIDN’T cheat. A good programmer is going to double, triple, and quadruple check their code by looking everything up online and making sure they’ve done it all right. If a programmer is making everything up as they go, either they’re a one-in-a-million super genius or they’re writing garbage code. You think when a plane crashes the families of the deceased will be like “Hey, at least the codebase was original!”
I cheated a fair bit to get my IT technician diploma. I have a 85000$ career where im one of the most knowledgeable people at work, because i care about actually doing the job and IT systems, not some stupid fucking test that has obscure questions that you were supposed to remember by heart. The human brain just doesnt work that way.
he is using the same logic teachers in the 90’s taught us about calculators. If you don’t understand the topic and all you do is hit 2 + 2 and the screen tells you 4, they acted like you would never get by IRL when you didn’t have access to a calculator 24/7. Fast forward 10 years, we have the internet in our pockets, and every desk job involves a computer with a built in calculator. Employers meanwhile preferring that you DON’T do all your math mentally, and would rather have you use formulas to auto calculate the answers or just use a calculator twice to check and double check for the correct answer you are looking for.
I cheated throughout my first three years of highschool because It was a waste of my time and I just felt like I was doing it to get it done. I wasn’t learning anything of value. So I dropped out and started working my ass off and living life to the fullest and by 23 years old now I have two cars fully payed off and a mortgage halfway payed off
I cheated all my life and always cut corners. I made everything more difficult to myself and had to relearn easy things by discovering it myself. Interestingly it helped me to become the person I’m now. I’m not scared of anything. I know that I will be able to find any solution to a problem because I had a lot of experience trying to find the answer even in extremely difficult situations.
At my private college, the professors all left the class during exams and came back at the end to collect them. Exams were not supervised. I only saw one person attempt to cheat, and it was a foreign exchange student who was visiting for one semester. I won’t say what country she was from. No one gave her the answers she was asking for, so she couldn’t cheat anyway.
The underlying problem is that exams are outdated and not a very productive strategy to measure someones understanding of the course. You mostly are forced to do unrealistic things in unrealistic scenarios while under pressure, especially when you have to solve harder and more complex problems, where it’s neccessary to take your time to think of a solution. In some scenarios I think it is justified to cheat, especially when you have a sucky prof who just wants you to memorize something, that you will 100% forget.
Most of my time in the university I didn’t cheat. But a few times I did. It was some unfair exams. I remember that I could do every problem of the class except for one kind. And the whole exam was two problems of that same kind. I cheated with my cellphone (I got a picture of the solved problem). It never changed anything in my career and I’m glad I did that. I also remember cheating one more time in another exam. It was too difficult. And I’m glad I did that too.
I cheated my way through college. You can get a degree through cheating. I didn’t get a job after graduation. Instead I started my own business. I’ve been out of college for a little over a year and make 6 figures on my own. Cheating is problem solving that can’t be taught. Sure its taboo but it also brings out creativity, talent, and bravery. All of those things will be more useful then whatever subject you are cheating on once mastered. I’m not saying it’s always the best option but for someone going into business that wants to make a lot of money, the skill will take you places. I’d also like to mention that the time I saved by cheating I used for learning how to build a business and pursue things I was passionate about, NOT article games or partying.
Alongside that, you aren’t actually learning anything if you’re cheating. Just wasting time. Whether you want to or not you might as well go through with it and try to learn the material as well as possible, because even if you get subpar grades you’ll have a better grasp and work ethic than someone who cheats through the whole course without trying