Social Forces and Costs of Cheating Causal-Analysis

Social Forces and Costs of Cheating

Causal-Analysis Essay

The rules of personal academic conduct generally require students to do the work necessary to complete class assignments on their own. Any effort to evade this rule in a manner that maintains the impression that the student is performing adequately, would be considered cheating.

Academic cheating can take many forms, from looking over the shoulder of a classmate during an exam, writing notes on inside of the palm or forearm, purchasing the answers from an online service, to paying someone to complete a take-home exam. The justifications a student might use for cheating can be just as varied, and can include being uninterested in the course material, struggling to keep up, a temporary personal crisis, scheduling conflicts, or arrogance. While all of us have experienced personal problems, scheduling conflicts, and boring class material, and some of us may have found instructional material too advanced, not everyone chooses to address these problems by cheating. So, what differentiates a cheater from a non-cheater?

A personality trait comparison between cheaters and non-cheaters would be marginal at best if the concepts of good person vs. bad person, laziness, or criminal propensity were invoked. Contrary to the popular notion in western cultures that most people act as independent agents, social forces can often play a dominant role in determining human behavior. Parents sometimes place unrealistic and impersonal expectations for academic success on their children and in order to maintain the approval of their parents these students may engage in cheating. Some schools can foster institutional indifference towards cheating, in order to avoid conflict with students and parents. Other schools may impose draconian sanctions on cheaters, which inadvertently encourage the rebel in the class to cheat in protest. Western society could be the biggest factor of all, with advertisers selling the notion that the image of success can be purchased in the form of the right degree from the right college, the right clothes from the right stores, the right house in the right neighborhood, and the right job in the right company. The social pressure to be or appear successful is tremendous, but apparently personal moral and ethical standards are optional and occasionally unwelcome. Despite these forces that inadvertently encourage cheating, what's remarkable is that most students probably choose not to cheat.

Cheating may not be illegal, but as a crime against society it can lead to circumstances that can limit real success and occasionally have criminal consequences. Suppose a student cheated their way into the right degree from the right college in order to please their parents. Maybe they obtained an engineering degree from MIT and were hired by an firm to design a bridge or a new passenger jet. The potential for loss of life could be substantial, especially if a significant percentage of the engineering firm's staff graduated under similar circumstances. If a student attending a private school learns that cheating is tolerated and then goes on to obtain a degree in education, the children who land in this person's class may find themselves inadequately prepared for taking college entrance exams. Students who cheat their way into graduate school may find themselves unable to function in a scholarly environment that requires students to think on their feet using a deep knowledge base acquired through hard work.