Jason Stephens, an assistant professor of educational psychology at the University of Connecticut, knows that cheating in high school is rampant.  And he is currently conducting a study on a way to end cheating.  This is the basis of his thesis:

Stephens and others say cheating has become widespread over the last 30 years. In the aforementioned national survey, a full 94 percent of high school students admitted to at least one form of cheating, ranging from allowing someone to copy their homework to cheating on a test, according to Don McCabe, a professor of management and global business at Rutgers University who has done extensive surveys on cheating.

Stephens doesn’t blame students for the phenomenon.

“Virtually all of them are cheating because the pressures of having good grades is extraordinary, more so now today than 20 to 30 years ago,” he said. “It’s not because these kids are morally bad. It’s because the stakes are higher and the time is less.”

The competition to get into a top college is fiercer than ever.

“It’s not enough to get a 4.0 grade point average. It’s also being involved in a varsity sport, volunteering in the community, maybe having a part-time job — along with the social lives these kids live,” Stephens said.

Cheating is an expedient, if deceptive, way for time-crunched students to get it all done, he said.

“Most kids see that as wrong. The sad thing is that most kids do it anyway,” he said.

Underlying all this is a major cultural shift toward achievement and materialism over the last 30 years, he said. A national survey of college freshmen shows that most students now view college as a steppingstone toward the ultimate goal of getting a lucrative job, a radical shift from 1967, when the survey began, he said.

“They’ve gone from looking at college as a place of enlightenment or the development of a meaningful philosophy to being a place where you get status and credentials in order to get a well-paying job. I even had a student refer to himself as a client the other day,” Stephens said.

Stephens thinks that modifying incentives will modify behavior.  I agree with that economic-based behavioral approach, but fail to see how his program can succeed — he wants to de-emphasize grades by moving toward projects rather than tests.  What will keep kids from cheating on projects?  And how can schools that have limited spaces and are competitive by definition evaluate students fairly without some real metric of skills?  And is competition not part of the world?  One could argue that the better incentive process to study would be severe punishment for those that cheat — including criminal prosecution.  If most people cheat because of an ethical lapse plus an apparent need, the criminal code is designed just for such a scenario.  Or one could use a form of social approbation — one caught cheating must repeat a grade and for the remainder of his or her time at school wear a uniform and work as a custodian, even when in class.  I just cannot see softening academic standards as a panacea for a moral failing.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 12th, 2008 at 1:52 pm and is filed under For Educators, For Parents, For Students. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.