To cheat or not to cheat, that is the question

To cheat or not to cheat, that is the question

Posted on March 2nd, 2009 by Terrence Cheng

As a college professor I believe that most students are hard working and honest, but invariably there are those who are not. My official policy is as follows: If I catch you cheating, you fail the course, not just the assignment. Harsh? Yes. Unfair? No.

Why? Because one chooses to cheat — it’s not like cheaters don’t know they are cheating. In my experience students who cheat think they are smarter than the teacher, smarter than the system, and of course smarter than their classmates (who are so silly as to actually do the reading and the work — God forbid!).

On occasion a student will cheat when caught in a tough spot: the workload becomes overwhelming, or one’s personal problems get crazy, or life in general just drags on you, all to the point of desperation.

But does that give you the right to cheat? No. A cheater must fail — again, for the course, not just the assignment — because all the work the student did before getting caught is now in question, and all the work that might come after cannot be trusted.

As cliché as it might sound, you (prospective cheater) are better off ‘doing your best’ and getting the grade you deserve. Even if it is a C or a D, isn’t that better than failing? Or drop the course and take it again later when you are in a better position. It might hurt your wallet immediately speaking, but it will hurt less in the long run than that big fat F and the huge drop in your GPA.

I would also argue that whatever the course, chances are the material is not as difficult as you might think. Hell, even I, creative writer to-be, managed to squeeze through Microeconomics with a B minus.

Did you choose to attend college so you could shortchange yourself by cheating for your grades? Doesn’t that contradict the whole point of going to college and being challenged, earning an education, ‘enriching your life,’ etc.? Sure, some of it is marketing mumbo-jumbo, but I believe in learning, sharpening your sensibilities, growing, maturing, changing for the better. Regardless of the grade, just in the act of trying — legitimately, honestly — do you not learn something?

I am particularly hard on cheaters and enforcing deadlines because I have seen too many students work too hard. A student once brought me a paper two days after giving birth: yes, giving birth. Another student, just last week, came in with pneumonia to hand in her short story. This is why I have no mercy for those who make excuses, because that is ultimately what cheaters do when they are caught.

Instructors could help by sending the message that, A) we know it’s happening, and B) we don’t like it. I tell students on the first day of class that if they cheat, I will catch them, not just with my own vindictive skills, but with technology. They hand in papers via SafeAssign, an online tool in Blackboard 8. It is basically Turnitin.com for Blackboard (for those of you who may not know, Turnitin.com is essentially a database of sources that students might use to cheat. It matches the student work against the database and flags any questionable lines or passages, and then notes the plagiarized source).

If you have access to Blackboard and SafeAssign, use it — it’s your friend. Some academics haven’t quite accepted this about technology yet, but we must because our students are using technology, i.e. the Internet, mostly for good and sometimes for evil, and so we must use it to our advantage as well.

Of course, technology is not a catchall and even the biggest and best databases will not have catalogued every possible source for plagiarism. The best tool is still one’s intuition. Chances are if you suspect someone is cheating, they probably are. Technology can help you prove it.

Teachers can’t be afraid to call a student out if caught cheating. Don’t look the other way, and don’t give second, third, and fourth chances. You’re not doing anyone any favors.

To the cheaters out there who are saying, “I can still beat you,” I ask: if you are going to work so hard at cheating, why not work just as hard on the class material? I’m telling you, sooner or later you will get caught, because us teachers ain’t as dumb as we look.