College Cheating

“During a test, student look up for inspiration down in desperation and left and right for information.” This quote might sound amusing but often is a common sight in various universities across the nation. The statistics have proven the time, and again that college cheating still prevails deeply in our education system. Rather than coming up with new numbers every time, the need of the hour is to identify the reason behind this practice. For this scrutinizing both the parties whether it is a student or education system is important.

Firstly, there is a massive difference between highly educated student and highly trained student. One of the possible reasons why students are inclined towards cheating is the presence of later in our education system. Today's education system believes in training its students instead of imparting real knowledge. Here, more importance is given to grades and marks become the most important scale for a student’s caliber.

Let’s deep dive into the education system and bad teaching practice that creates this issue. A good teacher is one who can make a weak student a better one. However, its demanding skill so they polish the best bunch of students and leaving behind the weak student. Due to their lack of knowledge in the subject they give meaningless assignments or give cumbersome research paper to read. They do this without even noticing that a concept requires some basic understanding before executing any higher-level concept. This lack of fundamental knowledge in the student leads them to plagiarism when it comes to doing assignments. Because at the end of the day it's all about the grades and not the knowledge.

Another reason comes from the people surrounding the student it could be other student or any random person in a society who compares one student with another one. And when this peer pressure gets mounted on the shoulder of a student, it often breaks their confidence in not performing well during the exam. This problem creates a sense of fear in the student, and he is petrified of the results. Because if this the student doesn't focus on studying for knowledge, but his prime job becomes to please his peer group and other people in the society.

However, it's not always the system needs to be accused of the issue. Like every coin has two sides. The same analogy can be established here. Sometimes some students actively endorse this malpractice just for fun. They try to not to focus in the class and will come up with irrelevant to get the attention of the teacher and student. During class, they are often engaged in such activities, and during exam days they had to rely on cheating. Sometimes, there could be some rivalry because of which they are aroused with anger. In this rage, they purposefully do this malpractice.

It could be because of the student's priorities, a student might be interested in sports, and he has to come up a certain minimum grade to get some scholarship. In this act of desperation, he might lose his way in the curriculum and indulge in the act of cheating.

Most people blame this increasing rate of cheating to technologies. From my personal experience, this is true to some extends. Due to advancement in the field of internet and smartphones, now everyone has access to almost everything. And this is not only confined till here, due to its easy access students have used the smartphones to answer their questions in an exam. And this could be because of sheer laziness to study or whatever but they even score higher marks than students doesn’t use smartphones.

Although, universities have taken various measures when it comes to technology by deploying various CCTV cameras in the class to get hold of students cheating. Also, they are using various software to test for the plagiarism. But still, using these technologies as a medium has not decreased this rate.

But on the contrast, according to a study by Don McCabe, the results are opposite, there has been an insignificant change in the cheating due to the increase in technologies. The real reason is that students are becoming apathetic towards the whole idea of cheating.

To eliminate this whole menace from our education system, there has to be some solid plan of action which needs to be implemented.

Universities should consider using various plagiarism detecting software which matches the student's essay with billions of webpages online. Based on the pattern matching percentage the professor can provide the grade to the students. There is other online software for exam taking that keeps track on the student during exam time using webcams this has solved the problem exam invigilators to a great extent. The invigilator now has to watch the screen where every student faces can be easily identified.

Universities have also started using data to solve this issue by developing a predictive model that uses data of the student and predicts how likely the student will cheat in the exam. That said, the prediction depends on how accurate the data is which includes students age, family's salary, etc. But this model depends on much outside noises that can impact the result of the model to account for that there needs to be great research that needs to be carried out before concluding.

However, many professors have found this over-dependency on the technology an issue. According to them, there have to be simple ways to know the root cause of cheating.

There has been a drastic decrease in the copy-paste plagiarism to this software, but this has led to open the gates of a new problem. In this people are paid to write the essays for the student. Now, it becomes very hard to keep track of this. There could be a possibility where students pen down his thoughts, and somehow unintentionally it gets matched with others thought. This could be a great possibility as we unknowingly go through large textual content on the internet and somehow draw our knowledge from there, so it will somehow shape in the same way as it was online. So, this whole idea becomes a subjective debate.

There are other moral ways through which university try to solve this issue by creating honor codes. And this honor codes very well align with other university principles and motivations. The student has to follow these honor code; any violation in the code can cause serious judicial felony. The whole motive is to create a sense of culture that needs to adhere, and this creates a sense of fear in students due to which there is a significant decrease in the cases of cheating.

The honor code is given immense importance in the whole education system. Although, if a student is caught violating that. The student can appeal to the court, and there are other measures that can be taken against the university. This has led to a whole legal practice that helps students.

According to many types of research the honor code to there best bet when trying to solve the issue of cheating as it involves both the morality and legal implications. And for a student, it becomes a rule to follow them.

However, their other ways to understand this problem may be that it requires a personal touch. “Instead of thinking out of the box, sometimes get rid of the box.” This quote makes an impact on our problem analysis. Just thinking on how to catch the students all the time, there has to be some measure taken to redefine the whole education system which should give more weight to knowledge rather than giving weight to marks.

The problem is humanmade; the solution lies within the individuals. By giving the student a comfort level that only has the scope for knowledge, the world where there is no fear of grades will automatically solve this issue. The education should be about problem solving and skills that are required for that. In the whole process, a weak student might need more attention than a bright one. But that’s the whole idea of education imparting knowledge to one that struggles. And try to come up with the easy ways where even they can grasp difficult concepts easily.

According to Occam's razor, “simpler solutions are likely to be more correct than complex ones.” Understanding his idea and implementing this in real life. Making tedious concepts easier to understand is a skill. And the education system should invest in training the teachers as well. To unlearn the old methods and to learn these new methods that impart pure knowledge into the students and once that is solved the students will stop cheating.

And this process if students make a mistake that mistake should not be punished but that should be taken as a chance to develop a new thought process where the student should make mistakes. They should make as many mistakes in there in education life as this will give them an upper edge and once learned from that mistake they will surely outshine in the real world.

Moreover, parents of the students should also understand the caliber and capability of their kid. They should understand where their kid will perform better, as this will somehow solve our problem. If a student is interested in sports, he should pursue the career there where he will not indulge in the act of cheating.

Other reasons could be the competition, which is directly proportional to the comparison. But somehow in today's world, this competition is taken in a bad way, which leads to cheating in different ways. A healthy competition must be implemented that will result in a better outcome as it helps in unleashing the real potential of the candidate. A healthy competition devoid of any cheating provides the real result and can be evaluated very well. If even at the end student secure last place still he has some learning from the whole journey, that should be the main role.

The whole idea of cheating starts with how easy it is for some students. It is because many universities still follow the old multiple choice question paper concept. Rather they should invest in a project, where student somehow learns directly or indirectly. The language usage also plays an important role. A teacher should always give detail feedback to students strength and weakness. Through this feedback, they can learn about there mistakes and will focus on learning from next time, and I will refrain cheating.

If a student feels trapped in hard situations, there needs to be someone to talk. Providing good quality counselors can leap of faith in students life. This counselor can listen to students problem and provide the best possible that will lead the student astray to intervene in any malpractice.

One should learn these ways from the medieval period. To take one example of maths which is considered the most difficult when it comes to the exam. There various that can be learned to make this cumbersome task a very easy one. With the help of Vedic Maths-various ways of doing mental calculations. These type of art can be easily used in the early student's life, and this will take them very far.

If you take a survey of students, it's not about studying, but it's about what they are studying. In reality, students prefer studying novels and stories over any textbook. The reason is pretty straightforward. They are more interested in creative learning and interesting facts. If the same logic can be applied to our textbook, there can be a significant drop that is possible in the cheating practice.

There has been speculation that cheating is not a crime, as it doesn’t hurt anyone. But in the long run, it hurts the student who is doing it. In the long run, it becomes a habit which is bad to an extent. They will take this learning to the workplace which will hamper the whole integrity. They feel that it is easy to get away with it. But sooner or later it will surely backfire.

Moreover, the student thinks that everyone does it so what's the harm in doing it. Like parents guide their kids that having cigarettes and drinking alcohol is bad things. The same way they should guide them cheating in an exam is a bad practice. And tell them that there other better options out there that are better than cheating. Cheating should be considered as stealing and stealing is wrong no matter what. A sense of satisfaction comes when it's your work and cannot be achieved with the help of cheating.

A journey of thousand miles begins with a single step. Throughout this essay, we have seen why students cheat and what are the measures that are taken to avoid them. These two-stage process has been identified properly. At last, let's take other situations which also comes under college cheating. Universities across the globe held their entrance exams and based on these exams the students are given the admissions. However, there are other ways through which students get admission in college. This is formally called as ‘Management seats’ these specific seats are available only for the students who pay for that seat. This may involve a huge amount. According to universities, these seats are the main seats through which they earn money. And that money is spent on the development of the college.

But, to what extent this claim is true. The claim requires a thorough investigation, because if that comes out as an invalid claim. This whole process is also a kind of college cheating.

Some countries survive on exam cheating, but this is because of political tension in that country or anarchy system in that area that forces them to follow this practice. Many times there were sting operations carried out to know the real quality of the education, and to amazement, the teachers of science don’t know the meaning of H2o. In these places student generally, keep a bill of amount inside the answer sheet and based on the amount the teacher gives them their marks. This whole system is a fraud and beyond the level of cheating. So, it can be analyzed that college cheating differs based on demographics and situation of the country.

Its time for our education system is to revamp the whole concept of education and come up with a new style of teaching and evaluating the student. The process should not be based out of marks, but it should focus on knowledge. There have to be various ways through which the student's ability needs to be assessed. It should include project, research papers and giving them the liberty to come up with some unique idea of their own. And no idea should go unheard but it should give importance, and good quality feedback that will enhance the confidence of the student and in the long run make him a winner.

This process requires the collaboration of teachers, parents, and student himself. Everyone should participate in this transforming journey together. Let us all come together and be the torch bearers of the better world so that our posterity should be devoid of the concept of cheating in college or on any other platform.

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