Code Of Ethics And Ethical Issues In Cheating Culture

Nobody Likes a Copycat Due to the amount of information readily available through websites and online libraries, the problem with plagiarism has become a major ethical issue in today's academic environment. David Callahan, author of Cheating Culture (Macklem, 2006), states "Widespread cheating is undermining some of the most important ideals of American society." With the continuous rise of academic challenges students are pressured more to look towards faster and more convenient ways of research and writing. Conveniently, while students are completing their research, many subjects have topics that represent their thoughts so perfectly that they can not put it in their own words. And instead of taking the effort to word the information
Some universities require all [plagiarism] cases to be reported to special committees while other universities tend to let the teacher deal with the offending student (Toosi, 2004). Universities have to lay down rules and punishments for any academic misconduct and be willing to follow through with their policies. Students and faculty members should be presented with a Code of Ethics that goes into detail of what is considered plagiarism and the punishments if one is caught. The teacher should not have to be the ones to carry out the investigations or hand out the punishments. Professors should also not be criticized or dismissed when they come to the school administration with a case of plagiarism. The school administration should conduct a formal investigation on the said student showing proof of innocence or guilt before coming to the punishment of the offense. Plagiarism should be considered a severe offense and thus have severe punishments according to the offense made. Minor offenses could be that the student did not site information obtained correctly or bits and pieces of information has been cut and pasted into the paper. The extreme offenses of plagiarism would include those students who cheat for their grade by coping papers written by others or buying their assignments through the Web. Various punishments for these said offences could mean: formal counseling from the administration; documentation of the offence to be placed in the students file; loss of credit for the assignment or the entire class; suspension; and/or expulsion. Professors should try to create a learning environment that prevents plagiarism from becoming a problem. The students should be taught thoroughly on citing information and referencing material during writing so that simple mistakes of citing are not an issue.