Cheating in school (Statistics and Charts)

Cheating statistics

Cheating is considered to be one of the central problems in the sphere of education. Each academic facility aims at creating and sustaining of academic integrity in order to provide the best education options for their students.

Irrespective of these efforts, the problem of cheating is not solved yet. Statistically there are up to 51% of high school students, who confirm that they have cheated during their tests and other academic works during their education.

The survey included around 23 000 public and private schools. According to the research, performed by The Josephson Institute Center for Youth Ethics, at least 74% of students made copies from ready homework of their peer students.

Nobody would argue that the period of adolescence, the years, spent in high school and college are utterly important for the future of the young individuals, they define their ability to work independently, take the responsibility for timely and correct fulfillment of tasks, obtaining of the first serious academic experience and so on.

Irrespective of the fact that each of the students knows perfectly well the idea that cheating your teachers means cheating yourself, this practice still does not stop. There is a variety of cheating options, as it is evident from the table below:

Cheating Behaviour

Causes of academic cheating

Before working out the corresponding effective measures to manage the challenge of students cheating, it is important to have clear understanding of the actual reasons of such choice of the students.

Most of the students, who make this conscious choice, are aware of the fact that cheating is not ethical and is prohibited by their educational institution.

Students tend to explain their choice to cheat in different ways. Some of them say that there is really nothing wrong about this process and that if the task is too difficult for them to fulfil, then they could cheat a little in order to get it successfully done.

Other students state that they do not have enough time to conduct the needed research and check all the needed materials for writing their academic papers, it is certainly much easier to order custom essays online and get their ready papers done by professional writers.

There is also a category of students, which are convinced that ordering a paid essay is not a kind of cheating, rather this is an option to get the needed academic help. Certainly it depends upon the way of using of the received paper.

If they just use these ready written papers for their further work and produce their own research papers, then it is not that problematic, as in the cases, when they simply use the ready written academic papers as their own works. In this case this is certainly a way of academic cheating. Some students tend to blame their teachers, as they state that the teacher does not explain properly or does not devote enough attention to the task, as a result they fail to work over it and simply do not understand what and how should be done.

Real causes of cheating and students’ excuses

 Unfortunately in most cases it is rather difficult to distinguish between real reasons and excuses, which are used by certain categories of students, who do not want to contribute their time and effort into their academic written tasks.

Mostly they are guided not by the idea that they are to obtain as much academic knowledge as it is possible and then be ready for real work in their adult lives. Instead they are convinced that it important to get high grades, then graduate school or college and continue their education. They are not under the pressure of their ethical obligations.

Research in the sphere of academic cheating proved that in fact the decision, whether to cheat or not to cheat does not always depend upon the degree of honesty of a concrete student. Rather it is defined by a number of different factors, which might change depending upon the concrete situation.

For example such factor as risk of detection could make some students refuse from cheating. The chart below shows the real situation of conscious students’ cheating vs. unconscious.

conscious vs. unconscious cheating

How it all started

The idea of offering students academic paper writing help in fact is not new. It has existed for decades already and is successfully utilized by some companies, which aim at earning money via offering such services to the students, who due to some reason do not want or can not produce their papers themselves.

Initially there were such services created, where students could use the papers, which were written by other students and successfully passed before. This practice was known as ghostwriting and was widely used as a form of cheating in colleges and universities.

Later writing services were promoted outside colleges and were situated not far from them. Gradually a strong business system of providing ready custom written academic papers for students was developed. Trained and qualified writers started to earn their money, offering the corresponding services to their customers, who were mostly students.

Who writes academic papers for money?

The companies, which provide the services of producing academic papers for money, engage students from universities, graduates, professional writers, who are able to write academic research papers, essays and other types of written assignments.

Along with development of the new communication technologies this type of business continued to develop. It became much easier to make advertisements, place orders and complete these orders. Essays and academic papers were sold with the help of online Internet web sites.

Customers usually do not face any difficulties, they have just to find the corresponding web site, provide the instructions, which they received from their teacher and pay the needed sum for the essay to be written in time for them.

At the same time the service passes this task to the writer, who has at least some knowledge in the subject and he starts working over the academic paper. Nowadays it is not difficult to do the research, there is no need to go to the library and search for primary sources there. Instead, all you need to do is to search in the Internet for the needed information on the topic. Individuals, who have enough experience and good writing skills, are able to do such tasks quicker, than students.

Academic products for money

The prices, which are defined by academic paper writing sites, are different. They depend upon the difficulty level of the paper and the expected delivery term. Also students could get different types of services, for example it is possible to order the whole paper, which will be written from scratch and till editing. Students order such papers, pay money for them and then give them to their teachers, as their own works.

Certainly they are able to improve their grades, but they still lack the needed knowledge and sooner or later this form of cheating will reveal their real level of knowledge. Sometimes students want to actively participate in the process of writing their papers. They work out outlines or some other parts of the ready paper, which is then finished by a professional writer or a more experienced student.

Certainly under such conditions, customers have more chances to develop their own knowledge, still such approach is considered to be academic cheating, as they do not simply ask for support or help in writing their academic papers, but they get some parts of them written and edited by other people. Sometimes students do not want to risk being detected.

If a student gets regularly low grades and then suddenly writes a perfect essay, this might cause additional suspicion, this is the reason, they prefer to ask the writing service to produce the corresponding level of the paper.

Taking into consideration all these aspects, it is clear that it is not easy to detect this type of cheating by students. However, this does not mean that it does not exist and that it does not hinder students from obtaining real and strong knowledge in the subjects.

Essay writing companies and academic fraud

There were a lot of controversies, related to the fact of existence and operating of the essay writing services for students. The proponents of these services assumed that they could have been utilised correctly and then they should be not considered a form of academic cheating.

Under correct use of these resources the proponents understood the need to use the prepared research papers and other written tasks as the basis for further academic work. A student was expected to receive the ready paper, study it and then use it as a sample for producing his own research.

Theoretically this could have been a good practice, but it was rarely the case. Most of the students consciously made their orders from these writing agencies with the aim not to write their papers on their own. In other words they knew from the very beginning that they were going to use these papers as their own and not to contribute any kind of effort into the process of writing their academic papers.

This is the reason, why academic community did not accept the existing controversy and claimed that the fact of producing ready academic papers for students for money should be considered a form of academic fraud.

Who uses academic essay help services?

In fact there is no ideal image of a student, who constantly applies for paid academic assistance. It is not correct to assume that these are only the students, who have problems with education.

Often these are also students, who could write their own academic papers, but they do not want to do it for various reasons. For example they are concerned about the lack of time and they do not want to risk, thus perform some part of their academic work themselves and leave the rest for the academic writing services.

Sometimes these are the students, who want to start working and due to the fact that they spend too much time at their work places they simply do not have time for writing their academic papers. There are also students, who face changes in their private life, they fall in love and do not want to waste time, instead would prefer to spend it with their boyfriends or girlfriends.

At any rate most of the students, who prefer to use these paid academic writing services, state that they are forced to cheat due to a variety of factors. They complain about serious pressure from the side of academic community, from the side of their teachers and professors, who want their papers to be ideally written and turned in meeting the deadlines.

There is even an idea that essay writing companies could be compared to the process of outsourcing, which is currently so popular in world wide business. Certainly academic writing services could be considered a form of business, but this business violates a lot of norms. Professors and some students do their best to face the challenge of these academic writing services via adding the ready papers to plagiarism checking software.

Purchasing academic papers is unethical

In order to define whether purchasing academic essays from writing services could be considered a form of academic cheating, it is important to consider the issue from the ethical point of view.

A group of student gets an academic task with the preliminary defined academic term. Then all of them start working over the materials, the topic and the body of the paper. But some of them do it themselves, it is more challenging and time consuming, they lack experience and could make mistakes in their papers.

Some students at the same time do not contribute any effort, they just order their academic papers and pay money for them to be completed in time. When the deadline comes all the papers are handed to the professor. He does not know which of them was originally written by a student and which one was just paid for to be produced by a professional writer. As a result the works of the professional writers usually turn out to be better and these students get higher grades. In this case they violate the ethical rules in two ways.

First of all they cheat their professors and other students, as they state that these papers were written by them. Secondly, they make the professor think that the rest students did not manage to cope with the task, which was easy, if to consider that there are students, who managed to perform it perfectly well. Thus from the ethical point of view ordering an academic paper from a professional essay writing site is also a form of academic cheating and before making this choice each student should first consider the actual consequences for him.

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