College students face an intense and competitive environment on many campuses as the pressures for academic excellence grow. Higher education has created a “survival of the fittest” subculture where the need to get good grades often is the focal point of students’ educational experience. The need for students to develop survival strategies expands as the competition for admission to the “right” college or graduate school and for landing the “right” job increases.
There are, of course, many positive strategies that students can use to be successful academically. They include development of study skills such as good methods for note taking, memorization, and reading; time-management techniques; and the utilization of academic-advising and career-planning offices. But despite these avenues, research indicates that academic dishonesty is becoming the survival technique of choice for a growing number of students. Donald McCabe of Rutgers University, for example, conducted a study in 1991 in which 67 per cent of the students responding -- who attended 31 highly selective colleges and universities -- admitted to cheating in college.
The challenge for colleges and universities is to understand why students choose cheating rather than more appropriate strategies for academic survival. Understanding students’ motivation to cheat is necessary if we are to intervene effectively and change their behavior. Many studies of cheating have concentrated on “situational” factors that may influence students to cheat, including tests or assignments that make cheating easy, excessive difficulty of course work, and students’ perception that “everyone” is cheating.
Several other researchers have examined issues of ethics and moral development to try to discover what motivates students to cheat. This approach assumes that the tendency to cheat is directly related to a lack of moral development or a lack of understanding of the ethics of cheating. But based on recent research that we have conducted, we contend that most college students understand that cheating is wrong and unacceptable, and most understand the potentially negative consequences of this behavior. But they choose to cheat anyway. Their motivation to cheat is greater than their moral and ethical principles and more powerful than their fear of the consequences.
Many of the studies of cheating have recommended what institutions and instructors should do to address and redirect dishonest behavior. Such recommendations include improving teaching techniques, designing assignments and tests that make it harder to cheat, and addressing the moral and ethical development of students through educational seminars and classes. Although there is value in such approaches, none has proved to be a significant deterrent for academic dishonesty.
If we are to truly have an impact on dishonest behavior, we must pay attention to the internal factors that move a student to cheat. Studies done over the last 25 years reinforce the idea that dishonest behavior is consistent with low self-esteem. Students with low self-esteem have a greater tendency to cheat for three basic reasons -- they lack self-confidence, their behavior is dictated more by circumstances or people around them than it is by a feeling that they can control what happens to them, and they fear failure.
For various reasons, students who cheat do not believe in their own worth. David Ward of Washington State University, in a study reported in The Journal of Social Psychology in 1986, discussed the relationship between self-esteem and dishonest behavior. He found that subjects low in self-esteem seemed to be more prone to dishonest behavior, because dishonesty was consistent with their negative feelings about themselves. Thus, if an individual is tempted to cheat, it is easier to yield to this temptation if self-esteem is low rather than high. Cheating seems to be inconsistent with generally high self-esteem.
Students who cheat perceive themselves as being incapable of effectively meeting challenges and of solving problems on their own. They believe that they are failures who cannot independently succeed. Lacking feelings of self worth and inner strength, they have become dependent on their external world to survive.
In the classroom, these students look outside themselves for ways to meet their academic challenges. Cheating, whether it is copying from a fellow student, using crib sheets, or more sophisticated means of dishonesty such as theft of exams or the use of “term-paper mills,” becomes a way for students with low self-esteem to achieve their academic goals and avoid failure. Students who lack self-esteem fear failure because it reinforces their feelings of incompetence and inadequacy. Although cheating involves risk, the feeling of inadequacy and the fear of failure are greater than the fear of being punished.
However, achieving good grades through dishonesty may exacerbate students’ lack of self-esteem. Knowing that their choice to cheat is wrong morally and ethically can produce feelings of guilt and shame that compound the students’ negative feelings about themselves and increase their fear of failure. This heightened fear of failure, in turn, contributes to their continuing dependency on external means such as cheating to survive. Thus, the environment for an addictive cycle of cheating may be established.
Interventions designed to address dishonest behavior from a purely disciplinary perspective, such as giving students a failing grade or suspending them from college, are often ineffective because they focus only on the undesirable behavior. Educational interventions such as ethics seminars and training in academic skills may also be ineffective if they do not include information about the relationship between self-esteem and cheating.
To promote academic integrity, institutions must take a comprehensive approach to preventing and detecting academic dishonesty. They should design programs that address the emotional, as well as the disciplinary and educational, needs of student cheaters. We propose the following intervention strategy:
* Evaluation and counseling. Beginning with an initial assessment, students should be helped to identify the internal and external factors motivating them to cheat. Information derived from social and family histories, stress evaluations, and self-esteem inventories can assist the counselor and student in determining appropriate psychological interventions. Such interventions can range from a limited number of individual counseling sessions to group counseling or referral for specialized treatment, depending upon the psychological and emotional needs that are identified.
* Discipline. Actions such as being assigned failing grades, academic probation, and required participation in counseling and other activities are necessary, because they contribute to the development of the student’s understanding of community standards. Although punitive sanctions alone may contribute to lower self-esteem, when such sanctions are combined with appropriate counseling and educational interventions, the damaging results can be mitigated. Appropriate disciplinary actions can help clarify the importance that the institution places on integrity.
* Education. Seminars that enhance students’ academic skills and help them respond better to future ethical dilemmas must be offered. In the academic-skills portion, students should learn about test anxiety and develop time-management and study and writing skills. This will equip them with strategies that should increase their chances for academic success without cheating and help build self-esteem. Then discussions, case studies, and role playing can be used to help students recognize and respond more appropriately to future ethical dilemmas.
Such a comprehensive approach -- combining counseling, discipline, and education -- can help students understand why they are tempted to cheat, build self-esteem, and equip them to succeed without cheating.
William L. Kibler is associate director of student affairs at Texas A&M University. Pamela Vannoy Kibler is a counselor at Blinn College.