I had heard of students cheating in college, but thought it was rare and that it wasn't very prevalent.  Boy, was I wrong.  I had the experience of proctoring an exam for a required class at a local 4 year college.  Out of 300 students 6 were caught cheating.  So you would think that makes it 2% or so, right?  No, that was just the ones that were caught.  Many others were not caught.  According to numerous sources from US News and Businessweek to The American it is estimated that anywhere from 45% to 50% or more of all college students cheat.

That number is appalling.  That means that basically 1 out of every 2 college students cheats.  It ranges from copying on tests to more insiduous methods like buying term papers online, hiring someone else to write papers, hacking, and, of course, plagiarism or copying someone else's work and claiming that it is their own.  We are raising a generation of college students that are substandard and cannot perform at the levels they appear to have achieved.

When asked about this many college students say they are pressured to cheat by parents, tough acceptance standards for graduate schools and the top employers.  The other problem here is that with so much cheating going on students that wouldn't ordinarily cheat are feeling forced into it to keep up with the cheaters.  In response to this some schools are adopting strict and severe penalties for cheating to include expulsion from the school.

Apparently the penalties are more severe or more often doled out at state and non private schools.  Private schools tend to have bipartite system in which they have a similar severe outline like the public schools for cheating but it is rarely followed.  The difference is that private schools like those in the Ivy league tend to have a much higher percentage of students from wealthy families.  Many of these private university students are from big alumni families and have powerful ties.  So, a student can cheat at a public university and then be expelled if caught.  At a private school a student can cheat, get caught, be reprimanded and be brought up for penalties to include expulsion and then once their alumni parents make a contribution of say $100,000 to the school it is all dropped.  Of course to appease the professor involved they may remove the student from that class and just give them a W (withdrawal) or similar grade that won't hurt their GPA (Grade Point Average).

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Do you see a difference?  Now, if a poor or not as well to do student goes to one of these private institutions and gets caught cheating what do you think happens?  The exact same thing when requesting a presidential pardon (yes, sadly all presidents sell pardons for big cash donations like to the Clinton memorial library that involved one NASCAR magnate with over 50 felonies.  He faced certain jail time and then donated $500,000 and blammo it was all wiped clean) - no money, no honey - you must pay to play and at the Ivy leagues the going rate (from what I have seen is $100,000 to $300,000 - more on this in a minute). 

So, this may be how some people with small minds (the current President George Bush for example) graduate from such schools as Yale University.  If you are poor you must earn your degree and work twice as hard as you should because of the grade inflation caused by all the cheating from the wealthy students.  That's right, another problem caused by all this rampant cheating is grade inflation.  It used to be that a C meant you were average.  A B meant you were above average and did quite good.  An A meant you excelled and were in the top few students.  Nowadays some classes that don't use a grade curve can have as many as half or more of the students receiving B's and A's.  Or, if there is a grade curve in place what would have gotten you an A without the rise in cheating would now get you a C. 

This is what forces some students to cheat.  They see others in there classes receiving great scores and grades on term papers and tests that they know they should not have received and could not have received on their own.  And it happens a lot - and it is depressing when you study hard and the frat party animal that never studies and hasn't got a clue about the course bests you by a letter grade or 2.  What do you do?  Do you tell on them and risk social banishment?  Many schools, and especially private schools like the Ivy's, are very Greek and the fraternity and sorority population is very big and quite powerful.  Some of these fraternities and sororities are even behind some of the more mundane or borderline forms of cheating (keeping files of papers, tests and more for their brothers and sisters to use and indicriminately paying TA's and grad students to look the other way or to supply test questions prior to a test).

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Here's a true story that happened while I was a student at one of the more premier private colleges - Cornell University in Ithaca, NY.  One semester a roomate of mine was caught cheating.  They had ordered a term paper from one of those term paper resource ads in the back of Popular Mechanics or some similar magazine.  They were so lazy that they only changed the cover sheet.  They forgot to take the original writers lastname off the top of each page (the original work had the original autors lastname along with the page number on each page).  The student was immediately brought up for cheating and possible expulsion.  As it turns out the students father and rich uncle were powerful alumni of Cornell University.  A donation was made in the amount of over $200,000 to the school and the matter was dropped.  Here's the link to Cornell University's academic integrity page (they forgot to add the section where large donations can basically pardon even the most dishonest of students).

The student was put back into all their classes and ended up graduating (yes, they cheated more after that and rumor had it that they were caught 2 more times and more donations were made to the school and the matters dropped again - this part was rumored and I cannot say if it is true or not, but with the student's history I wouldn't put it past them).  The original incident brought such an uproar on North Campus (that was where we lived) that the school sent officials out to explain to everyone that was upset at the incident and to help put it to rest.  This student was far substandard for an elite school like Cornell University and should never have been able to graduate their as they did not earn their degree.  Years later I had heard from a friend that the student that cheated had gotten a job at the FBI through their influential father or uncle.  It just goes to show you that money can and usually does buy you anything.

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Cheating is a rampant part of college life today.  The rich, usually and well connected, get out of it or just transfer to another private school where they will get away with their cheating.  The poorer students get expelled or similar serious penalties.  This is why I like state affiliated universities better as they actually have lower levels of cheating.  Even the rich don't get away with cheating there.  Only the most powerful (family member on the board, and families that have their names on buildings) can get away with cheating there. 

Recently it was found and revealed that a huge portion of students that took graduate tests like the GMAT cheated.  Numerous schools announced that they would impose serious penalties to those students both current and past that were involved.  It was a big matter for a month or so and then it just dropped from the media completely.  Must be that too many powerful, wealthy and well connected families had students involved. 

Cheating will always be present in some fashion or other.  But by using proctors, using new questions on future tests, and utilizing software like Copyscape and more advanced search databases and techniques the percentage of cheaters getting caught will be increased enough to be an effective deterrent.  Another thing is that this bipartite enforcement system used by elite private schools like Cornell University needs to be stopped (I doubt the good old boy society will ever be stopped, though).  Maybe if we can fix this cheating thing with colleges and universities then maybe we might be able to fix the rampant cheating in our nationwide voting system - nah, that would be asking too much, wouldn't it?

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