Academic Honesty Maintaining academic honesty is an important part of the educational experience. Students study to gain the benefit of knowledge, and when they cheat they do not acquire this knowledge. For educational institutions it is important that their students gain knowledge. For the system in general, academic honesty is a key part of the system. People need to do their own work in order to get benefits, and when they cheat they undermine the entire purpose of the education system.

Underlying Factors

There have been many studies that outline the underlying factors that contribute to academic dishonesty. While there are some basic factors like age, gender and grade point average, many contextual factors have also been identified, including the level of cheating among peers, peer disapproval of cheating, and the perceived penalties for cheating (McCabe & Trevino, 1997). Clearly, the propensity to cheat is affected by a number of variables, and the culture surrounding the student is one. In addition to some of these variables, cultural context can also play a role, as well as both the internal and external pressure that the student feels.

When McCabe and Trevino note the importance of perceived penalties for cheating, this research finding is supported by their earlier work (1993). They noted at that time that many educational institutions have lax punishment. Some instructors may even be willing to turn a blind eye to cheating, which creates...

Where minimal formal punishments exist and there are few informal, social punishments, academic dishonesty is more likely.
Curasi (2013) notes that educational institutions can implement better communications policies with respect to academic dishonesty. Where norms and expected behaviors are communicated, they can combat student views that support different forms of academic dishonesty. Often, students are oriented more towards the grade or the degree rather than the material. A university education today has become a commodity rather than an asset -- a minimum requirement for a job rather than something that demonstrates a person's skills and abilities. Such attitudes in the business world degrade the value of the education itself, something that surely affects the students. It takes significant effort on the part of the schools to combat such views.

Further, schools themselves exacerbate the problem with courses and instructions that do not emphasize knowledge acquisition and synthesis. Students who might otherwise find a subject engaging can be turned off by instructors who worry more about where the semicolon goes in the reference list than about the actual content of the paper. Combined with the education as commodity approach in the corporate world, students lose interest in the value of education for its own sake. Such views can be reinforced easily -- outright ignorance and stupidity…