[this is not very related to science but it is an issue I feel very strongly about. This was my essay for the Ethics and Corruption in the public sector course I took during my Masters in Public Policy.]
1. DESCRIPTION
One of the behaviours that negatively
affect an educational system is the very high levels of students’
academic dishonesty. This is especially the case for written examinations, the
main assessment procedure in both high-school and university level education in
Greece.
Academic dishonesty is a very dangerous
type of corruption because it happens when people are at such a young age, at
the stage when they learn how to think, try to find out what they believe in
and develop into the people that they will eventually become. If a behaviour is
perceived as correct or normal at this stage, it is more likely that it will be
repeated for the rest of the life of the individual, or even be transferred in
situations outside education. By adopting such a corrupt behaviour at such an
early stage, young people are more likely to be corrupt as adults as
well.
Academic dishonesty in the context of
written examinations exists in many forms. Students can increase their chances
of getting good grades by finding out the questions before the exam, copying
from other students during the exam, copying from material brought into the
exam room (notes in the bag, on the floor, in pencil cases, etc), from texts written
on their hands, arms, thighs etc, and/or using technology (e.g. using mobile
phones to obtain answers from the internet or from friends at home) or even by sending
someone else to sit the exam for them. All these forms of cheating are used to
great extents depending on the situation.
The focus of this essay will be university
students who are performing any of the above behaviours during their higher
education studies. They are the ones who initiate and benefit from the
corrupted act of cheating in written examinations. The alarming trend that served as inspiration
for this essay is the increasing number of university students that consider cheating
as an integral and justified part of their studies, even a right. The majority
of students nowadays consider it completely independent of corruption.
There are three main reasons why opportunities for such acts exist in the higher education system. First, there are inadequate control systems to detect students cheating during a written examination. As a result detection rates are unrealistically low. One of the reasons for this is that control systems have not been adapted to the growing levels of cheating over the last half century, so they can be safely considered inexistent or badly designed. For example, technology has greatly advanced over the last few years, but examination conditions have not been adapted in order to be able to detect cheating through technology.
Second,
even when cheating during the written examination is detected, it is ignored by
the invigilators. In other words, no further measures are taken because of the
stress and discomfort that such a report would entail, mostly for the professor.
For example, there are many cases where a professor caught two students talking
during an exam, asked one of them to move seats and the students replied that
if the professor “dared repeat this phrase again they will burn their office”. When invigilators and professors
are faced with such behaviour, they could be even scared to report cheating
behaviour during written examinations to the University authorities.
Finally, when the professor decides to
express the fact that a certain student cheated, this is handled on an
individual level. For example, the professor could notify the student that he
or she will fail because the professor knows that he or she copied. In this
case the student either sits the exam again in the September examination
session, or passes the exam orally, depending on the discussion the student had
with the professor. Such detection, of course, remains invisible to the university
authorities.
2.
RATIONALISATIONS
One of the reasons that such a corrupt act
takes place so extensively is that the students’ can choose from a great
breadth of rationalisations to convince themselves that what they are doing is not
wrong.
The most common rationalisation is that all
other students are also cheating, so there is no reason they should not cheat
as well. In this way students are denying any responsibility for their actions.
This argument can go even further. Students can convince themselves that the
reason they cheat is because they have to if they are to keep pace with others
who are cheating. For example, students by looking up facts during the exam
using their phone could be more likely to get top grades, compared to others
that have to answer their questions without help. Students thus consider that
without cheating, just based on what they have studied, they are at a disadvantage.
To avoid this disadvantage they are obliged to cheat.
A second rationalisation could be that
since cheating is found in every part of society, the student considers it appropriate
for written examinations as well. Here students are using social weighing in
order to avoid of responsibility. For example, if they know that some people
cheat themselves into getting their job by knowing the person hiring them, why
not cheat in the exams?
The quality of the knowledge obtained
through the course could be questioned by the student in order to justify his
or her corrupted behaviour. Their act does not really matter because they will not
use this information in their professional life. If this information will not
be valuable when they practice their profession, they might as well copy so
that they can focus on other subjects that they consider more important.
There is also a great economic incentive
for the students to cheat. Especially in the last few years when youth
unemployment is increasing and the job market is becoming more and more
competitive, the grades that students get during their university education are
become a very important determinant of their chances of finding a job and thus
earning their salary. Thus, they use the excuse of being in an impossible
situation, i.e. that only if they have the best grades they will be able to
earn their living after they finish their degrees, so they have cheat if this
is the only way to ensure that they will get the best grades.
Similarly, when the goals set by the
students or their parents are high, they are also more likely to cheat in order
to make sure they will achieve them. For example, if the students aim to get
into a very competitive and well-known university for their postgraduate studies,
where grades are the major factor affecting their acceptance into the course,
this could get manifested as high pressure on the student to do well. The
student then chooses to cheat in order to later on achieve his or her extreme
goal.
Inadequate resources for passing the
examination with top grades without cheating is also a common rationalisation.
The causes for the inadequacy of their resources could be, for example, that
there was not enough time to study, that there was too much stuff to learn for
the exam or that the professor had not properly explained the material during
the lectures.
Students even blame the professor that
taught the course in order to justify their cheating. By claiming that the professor’s
attitude was inappropriate, since he or she did not put as much effort as
required, i.e. by claiming that they have been “cheated” of the full education
they are owed, the students justify why they cheat. Here too they are denying
any responsibility for their actions, since if this is the case, no one could
blame them for cheating if they are just matching the effort put by the
professor. By condemning the condemners to be hypocrites, they argue that they
are blamed for inappropriate reasons and thus validate their actions.
Given that the university runs under its
own rules, students can also deny that their actions are wrong by simply saying
that their actions are not actually illegal. Since cheating in an exam is not illegal,
this means that it is not as bad as, for example, stealing money, and thus
there is no incentive for not acting this way.
Another rationalisation could also be that a
form of denial of systemic consequences. Students are denying any great injury,
by saying that only they will be punished if detected and only in the form of
failing the course/expulsion of the university. They do not consider any long-term
consequences on themselves or to the higher education system as a whole.
Finally, the possible rationalisations for
those that help others cheat should also be mentioned. They could help others
in their exams in order to help a friend (friendship becomes a higher common
good) or because in this way they can gain social acceptance. In addition, they
could also use it as a tit-for-tat mechanism, in other words they help others
cheat because they are hoping that these other students will help them when
they need to cheat in an exam.
To summarize, cheating is justified because
the stakes are too high or there are no stakes at all. Because there are
inadequate resources to deal with the course load, or because cheating is so
common place that if one does not cheat they are at a disadvantage. Or,
finally, because it is not illegal or no one gets hurt when one student cheats
in an exam.
3.
FACILITATING
FACTORS
In the previous section a great number of rationalisations
were described, which could be used separately or in combination by students that
cheat in written examinations. There are also a number of facilitating factors
that enable them to act in this way.
First, there is an important ethical distance.
The act does not last very long, just during the examination (a maximum of
three hours) and maybe a few hours more, the time spent by the student to plan
how the act would take place (e.g. write helpful texts on their hands before
the exam, communicate with the student that will allow them to copy from
him/her, find the exam questions, etc). Since there is a certain time lag
between the exam and the results, when the student receives his or her grade it
is very easy to forget that the cheating ever happened.
In addition, since in many undergraduate
courses the classes are overcrowded, it is very common that students have no direct
contact with the professor during the course. As a consequence, the students do
not feel guilty towards the professor, which could be a deterrent from cheating.
Furthermore, when cheating is so common
that is a normal part of university education, it is very likely that most
students have not actually considered whether their acts could be ethically
wrong or not. This absence of consideration also creates an ethical distance
that allows the students to very easily believe that the rationalisations
listed above are valid.
A second facilitating factor is the complexity of universities as
organizations. As mentioned above, in many undergraduate classes there is a
large number of students, each of which is taking one
course after another without anyone supervising their progress and their exam
results. Even if in some universities each student is assigned a student
advisor, their meetings are only voluntarily initiated by the students, and
they are usually focusing on one specific subject rather than the progress of
the student. Thus, if a professor notices that a student could have cheated in
their course and, as in most cases, does not report it, there is no way that he
could notify the system – the university in this case – of his suspicions.
Because of the way that universities in Greece are structured, there is no one for
the professor to give feedback to. The only feedback that university professors
give on the abilities of their students is through the grades of their
examination.
The only way that a student can be found to
demonstrate a tendency for cheating is through the exchange of information
amongst the professors. However, since students take 48-58 courses over the
four or five years, most of them taught by different professors, it is very unlikely
for professors to exchange information on specific students and thus
cross-check their suspicions. Only if the student happens to take the courses
of two professors that frequently communicate, these courses take place at the
same time and both professors notice the student cheating, there could be a
chance of bringing the student to the university authorities.
In addition, professors do not just teach
but they are also researchers and have to participate in administrative and
scientific meetings as well. Therefore, they do not have a lot of time to
dedicate in correcting the students’ exam papers and thus they are less likely
to detect that a student cheated in the exam, since something like this would
require a lot of time if sufficient evidence for cheating is to be obtained.
Another facilitating factor is the students’
negotiating power. Because of the way universities function at the moment,
students have a say in professors’ bodies’ decisions. For example, students can
object in the hiring of a professor, help professors pass certain decisions in
the agenda or even elect the directors of the departments. As a result, students
have a certain level of control over the professors, so the latter are many
times scared to penalise or let the students know they have caught them
cheating.
Over the last decades we have observed a
great shift in the baseline that determines whether cheating is right or wrong.
There is nowadays no explicit and unanimously accepted honour code that regards
cheating as bad. In fact, the opposite is slowly being accepted. Helping a
fellow student copy is considered as honest and correct behaviour. In fact the norm of reciprocity is an important
facilitating factor: students help other students that have helped them in the
past.
It could
also be said that students are pressured socially to start cheating. When they
enter the university, any interactions with older students affirms that
everyone cheats, so they have to cheat as well. Students can pass each course
whenever they want, so first year students could sitting their first exams with
students currently in their third, fourth, fifth even sixth year of their
studies, so they observe cheating while it happens. Many times older students
even help younger students cheat by providing them with material or advice on
how to cheat. A need to copy the older, more experienced and thus “cooler” students,
could pressure first year students to adopt this behavior from the start.
As
mentioned above, students can take their courses in the order they want and
they can sit an exam as many times as they want. However, once students are near the end of their degrees, i.e. when they have
just a few courses left, many increase their cheating efforts in order to
finish their degree on time. Scheduling thus enables students that would in
other circumstances not cheat, to act in this way. For example, if a student
has passed all courses but one, the student could try to convince the professor
to increase their grade in order to be able to finish their degree and thus not
wait another six months or a year to sit the exam again.
Another scheduling related facilitating
factor is that in many cases exams do not happen the date/time they have been scheduled
for. It is very common for the university to close during the examination
periods, due to protests by university staff and students alike. As a
consequence, the examination periods change and thus many students are found
with inadequate resources for writing their exams, since they might be notified
a few days earlier of the actual date of the exam.
The simplest facilitating factor is lack of
enough invigilators during the examination. In undergraduate courses there can
be up to 400 students sitting an exam, but there only very few supervisors to supervise
them. It is impossible, therefore, for the invigilators to supervise properly
all the students, and consequently easy for the students to cheat.
The “Reward A hoping for B” behaviour is
another facilitating factor. The university system as it is rewards short term
performance while hoping for long term. Undergraduate studies are divided in a
great number of short-term courses each of which consists on a series of
lectures. While the real aim of the university is to make students learn how to
think, by focusing on the short term – the grades on in each of these
independent, non-interrelating courses – they are converting students to grade
seekers.
Finally, student political parties play a
very influential role in the day to day life in Greek universities. By
participating in a student political party, it is more likely for the students
to cheat since they are given help by the other members of the party, many
times “in order to have time to put work for the cause of the political party”.
Even if a student is not part of such a party, they could be provided with help
in order to vote for the party in a future election.
4. WAYS TO
TACKLE CHEATING IN WRITTEN EXAMINATIONS
There are three stages where cheating in written
exams can be tackled: before the act happens (prevention), when is about to
happen (detection) and once it has happened (response). On the whole, these
measures will mean that such acts will be avoided in the future rather than
taking place ubiquitously as is the case now.
Prevention
The moment students enter at the university
there should be a compulsory lecture in which the disadvantages of cheating are
clearly explained. The vast majority of students think that the most negative
consequence of their behaviour is that they might be caught. They are unaware
that they are hurting their confidence, their chances of finding a job and the
legitimacy of their degree.
Examinations do not take place under strict
conditions. Students are allowed to bring anything into the exam room: their
bag, their phone, books, notes etc. A very simple way to prevent students from
copying from their phone or their books is to not let them bring them into the
examination room. Students should not be allowed to bring anything else apart
from pens and typex into the classroom.
As far as copying from other students is
concerned, candidate numbers could be used in order determine the sitting
arrangements of students. If the desks are equidistant from each other and
there is at least one metre between them (something that does not happen at the
moment) and each desk is marked by the candidate number of the student, then students
will not sit next to their friends/students who have agreed to help them. If
they do end up sitting together, this would be by chance and students will not
want to take a risk this high.
In addition, the more transparent and fair
the examination procedures seem, the less likely are students to cheat. This
impression can be achieved if, for example, students do not write their name on
their answer sheet but their candidate number instead.
In order to prevent the rationalisation
related to inadequate resources, exam dates and syllabus should be given to the
students from the beginning of the course so that they are able to better
manage their time. Equally important is that these are kept: that the professor
teaches the syllabus he distributed to the students and the exam dates are respected
irrespective of whether the university is occupied or not. At the moment, it is
very often that exams are postponed due to strikes or occupations, so this
inputs great uncertainty into their lives of their students and influences how
they study for the exams.
Detection
Detection rates will improve if the
invigilation is intensified. Departments must be obliged to provide sufficient
invigilators for all examinations. A common rule is to have one invigilator for
up to 25 students and at least one additional invigilator per each additional
50 students. For example, if there are 100 students, there should be at least three
invigilators.
In addition, students should be warned at
the beginning of every single exam that the following are strictly prohibited:
·
Use of any electronic device
during the exam, unless it is authorised. For example, calculators should be
allowed when necessary, but their memories should be reset by the invigilators,
when the students enter the exam room.
·
Any communication with other
students. There can be no valid reason for such a behaviour.
·
Students must both not attempt
to read other students' answer papers and leave answer papers exposed to view
by other students.
Students should be warned that if they
perform any of the above, they will be removed from the examination room and
will have to resit the exam in the September examination session. Invigilators
should enforce these rules strictly, because if students notice that the
invigilators are lax, they are more likely to defy the rules.
In order to avoid students sitting exams in
the place of other students, it must be compulsory for very student to present
their university ID card that shows their candidate number. The invigilators
should have the choice of checking the ID cards when students enter the room or
if they prefer to have students display them on their desks during the
examination.
Furthermore, students will be less likely
to cheat if exams are not the only form of assessment their grades will depend
upon. If grades were not just based on exams but also on participation in class,
presence in class or even essays submitted during the course, then students
would not be able to sit exams without attending the courses and/or studying. Students
sign up for a many courses as possible just in case they will be able to pass
with the help of their friends, without actually attend. If there was a
compulsory essay beforehand, then students could not just show up to the exams.
A great indirect way of detecting repeated
is having an advisor who monitors the performance of students throughout their
stay at the university. If each professor had to monitor the progress of say 10
students, this would of course be a time-consuming task, but the benefits of
such an institution are immense and many of them unrelated to students’
academic dishonesty. Such an institution would help for example the student
psychologically as well, since students would feel that someone cares about
them inside the university and thus that they are not just floating electrons
moving from course to course independently. If such a institution existed professors
would give feedback to the advisor of the student, who would then talk with the
student and decide what is the best course of action.
Respond
If the institution of the student advisor
is adopted, it will be easy for professors to respond once they have detected such
a behaviour: they would simply have to directly communicate with the student
advisor. In the absence of such advisors, the university should make it easy
organisation-wise for the professors to report it.
The aim of a response to such acts is not
punish their students and destroy their future careers, but rather to help them
understand that if they sit their exams based on their own work, then they will
benefit the most from their university education. For this reason, it is
proposed to impose a points penalisation system, where students are given a
number of points at the beginning of their studies and every time they are
caught cheating they lose a number of points depending on the gravity of their
act. Students can only get their degree if they do not lose all their points.
In this way, students will be more careful and professors will not be scared to
penalise the students: they will be more likely to report it in this way if
they know the student will not be kicked out of the university immediately, without
a second chance.
DISCUSSION
Extensive student cheating during university
level written examinations has grave individual and systemic consequences. At
the level of the student, when detected it could lead to failing a course,
academic probation or expulsion or even a bad reputation amongst the professors
and occasionally amongst the students. The worst individual consequence for the
student, however, is the lack of learning. Not only because students leave
university without the appropriate skills required in their professional
career, but mainly because they lack the confidence that comes from earning
something through their own efforts. They finish their university without faith
in their own abilities because they know that some or most of the grades have been
received without an objective assessment of their knowledge and work, so they
end up doubting themselves. This lack of confidence has negative consequences
in their careers, given that these are attributes are greatly appreciated in
the workplace, especially when applying for a job.
There are also grave systemic consequences
as well. First of all, the legitimacy of
the students’ degrees, universities or even university level education as a whole
is greatly reduced. For example, when an employer knows that there are high
cheating incident rates in written examinations, they do not trust the grades
presented in an applicant’s cv and are more likely to hire someone else,
someone who has finished a degree or a university characterised by low levels
of academic dishonesty.
Secondly, students who extensively cheat in
written exams are more likely to carry this bad habit over into the workplace,
leading to a corrupt workforce. Thus, there is a gap between what the country’s
human resources could be and what they actually are: there are reduced levels
of efficiency and a less advanced economy because the workforce has not been
trained as well as it was expected.
For all these reasons, great efforts should
be put in tackling cheating behaviour during written university examinations.
However, imposing measures such as those mentioned in the previous section, students
and professors express equally negative reactions. If we take the example of
obliging students to sit on specific desks according to their candidate number,
professors claim that they will not be able to impose such a system because
they will not be able to convince the secretaries to go ahead of the exam in
the examination room and stick on the desks the stickers with the candidate
numbers of students. The students on the other hand, find that such a measure
would restrict their freedom and thus they would greatly oppose it, if university
authorities attempt to impose it.
The written examination procedures have
become so corrupted over the years that the power has been shifted from the professors/invigilators/authorities
to the students. In order to move back the power from the latter to the former,
it will require great measures from the university authorities, which will
invoke great reactions from apparently all stakeholders. Nevertheless, these
are measures that are common place in all other universities in the world. In
addition, it is not surprising that the best universities in the world are the
ones with the strictest rules against academic dishonesty.
If Greek universities and students are not
to lose further their legitimacy, they must impose the above measures
irrespective of the reactions that will receive, since the role of the
university authorities is to protect the university’s and its students’ best
interests and these measure serve this purpose.
realllll helpful
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