2008 Woodie Awards
Young liars
Students find they're better off fudging the truth sometimes
By: Jesse Thiessen
Issue date: 5/29/07 Section: Opinion
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In the past year, 46 medical students at Indiana University were disciplined for cheating on an exam, as well as 34 MBA students at Duke. These were more high-profile cases among a rash of others, and it's just the latest in a trend that's been active for years.
Tim Dodd, executive director for the Center of Academic Integrity, said research shows 20 to 25 percent of undergraduates admitting to five or more instances of cheating. He said, "The fact that we have a quarter or more of our students admitting they've engaged in serial cheating does not inspire a lot of confidence about the credibility of their degrees."
Donald McCabe, a Rutgers professor who's studied cheating for decades, said, "I'm past the 'epidemic' language. I've been looking at this for so long I'm used to it."
And it hasn't just been students who've been dishonest.
Not only did a popular dean of admissions at MIT hand in her resignation after admitting that she had made up her résumé when she first applied to work there, but a report by the think-tank The New American Foundation coupled with an investigation by the New York attorney general revealed that students might not have been getting reliable financial aid advice from school officials.
Numerous financial aid officers across the country have been found to have conflicting interests with loan companies and therefore gave tainted advice to students. I will freely embrace my bias as a student and say that is criminal. The University of Texas even gave the boot to their financial aid director last Monday as a result of these findings. Kudos to them for no tolerance.
As tuition gets more and more expensive and the requirements for a college diploma to even attain middle-class status increase, the stakes for grades, admissions and financial aid are getting dizzily high.
The increase in competitive mindset can be chalked up, at least partially, to a change in parenting attitude that is unique to new generations. Henry Giroux, famous for his work in critical pedagogy, had this to say in an article published in 1998:
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