Cheaters, Cheaters Everywhere

This chapter discusses the issue of student cheating. Student cheating is widespread—most cheat a little, and some cheat a lot. Thanks to social desirability bias, surveys give a lower bound on how many and how often students cheat, so the truth is that more students cheat and more often than the surveys indicate. When cheating is this widespread, it is useless to blame character. What is needed is to change the environment in which students find themselves. This means reducing their incentive to cheat and structuring the classroom in such a way as to make cheating more difficult or less likely to pay off. The good news is that once a university develops a reputation for academic honesty among students, this behavior tends to become self-reinforcing. The bad news is that dishonesty is also self-reinforcing. Changing from the bad equilibrium (lots of cheating) to the good one (little cheating) is also difficult.