"To me, the idea of trying to track down custom papers and identify cheaters, that's not as productive as understanding why 200 people, one third of an entire lecture hall," he said, "would choose to cheat."
This quote comes from a recent article on ABCNews.com, "Confessions of a Ghostwriter: Man's Career Thrives Helping Students Cheat," which was prompted by that same man's anonymous "confession" in the Chronicle of Higher Education on November 12. (And really, how can something be a confession when the individual does not acknowledge any wrongdoing and won't even reveal his true identity? Sounds like he's running scared, regardless of his bravado and clammy rhetoric.)
Being in the throes of grading final papers and fielding emails from confused students who don't "understand" why they got something lower than expected on a particular project, I read and watched this ABC News report and was particularly interested in this man's final comment. (Why are we listening to someone who spouts anonymously again? Oh yes. We live in the world of zero accountability - neither required nor expected, so even our "experts" can hide behind the wizard's curtain.)
This ghostwriter of thousands of students' "original" works for hundreds of different types of classes at hundreds of different universities and colleges around America thinks that we, as faculty members and academics, should be less concerned with catching the cheaters and more concerned with why students cheat in the first place. This is actually a point upon which I must begrudgingly agree. Why DO students cheat?
Take a famous student athlete, for instance, who is accused, nay convicted, of cheating in an academic context. What is the consequence of this cheating? Well, the ostensible consequence to that student athlete is an F on his or her transcript, perhaps with a notation that the F was due to cheating (or very often, there is no such notation). Does he lose his scholarship, thus providing a tangible, concrete consequence? No. Is she benched for the season? No. Do all of the other students on campus who find out about said cheating lose faith in said student's athletic abilities? No. In other words, does ANYBODY care, in the end, that a particular student cheated and got caught on an assignment? No. Save for the individual professor who caught said student. And maybe the honesty committee members who slap the student's hand.
Just using this simple example, an example that I guarantee plays out every single semester at every single university and college in this nation, one can see that one potential reason that students cheat (or are sorely tempted to do so) is because there are no tangible, lasting consequences and nobody in authority over their educations and futures really cares (beyond endlessly bitching about it, which I've also been known to do.)
Consider another circumstance, one that is touched upon in the ABC News report. When a professor receives a paper that is clearly NOT in the student's voice or written with the student's actual proficiency level with language, that professor KNOWS it is not that student's work. But she uses Turnitin.com and Google to check for plagiarism and finds nothing. This merely leads to frustration, as she must then grade the paper on its merits and GIVE the student whatever grade that paper earned. Students who cheat know this. And that's also why they do it - they know that the chances of getting caught are incredibly slim (if they pay enough) and their prof will HAVE to grade the work because there is no evidence of plagiarism. This could be why some schools require all major essays be written IN class by hand. No cheating possible there, but hell to grade handwritten, scrabbly texts.
So far, the reasons I've been able to come up with for why students cheat include nobody in authority actually caring enough to punish cheating in a real, tangible way (throw Jimmy out of school? Heresy! Who would pay the bills, then?) and simply being able to get away with it. Those seem pretty reasonable to me. But how about that moral code that half the nation keeps bandying about as though it were so important? Ah yes, morality. That great divider of peoples between the right and wrong, the sinners and the saints. Where are these students' moral compasses, if at least half of them believe that they possess one?
Far from laying blame beyond the student, I would like to suggest that this much-touted moral code is nonexistent in our current mindset and social world. Morality or a sense of right and wrong no longer guides us in our decisions on a daily basis. What is easiest has replaced what is right. What is most convenient has replaced what is most satisfying. And what is fastest has replaced what will have the longest term benefit. We, the people, as a collective, are the reason students cheat with abandon.
Other thoughts and opinions are most welcome because I'm not sure what the answer is, but the problem is incredibly frustrating.
