Why Should Students From A Respected University Cheat

Whenever a cheating scandal pops up in the news, a majority of the people always wonder why. Why would students from a respected university cheat? Who should we put the blame on? A lot of people are quick to assume that it is the student s personal morals, which causes them to cheat. I realized why a lot of student’s cheat, and how certain articles that I read, proposed we fix the cheating issue. The main goal is to prevent future cheating, and you start preventing cheating by looking at what the source of that cheating is. In the articles, â€Å"Harvard Students in Cheating Scandal Say Collaboration Was Accepted† by Richard Perez-Pena and â€Å"Cheating in the Digital Age: Do Students Cheat More In Online Courses,† written by Watson and Sottile,†¦show more content†¦An entire class at Harvard was accused of cheating, however the students fought to validate their cheating actions due to the rigor and misunderstanding of the course. For instance, â€Å"S tudents said they were tripped up by a course whose tests were confusing, whose grading was inconsistent, and for which the professor and teaching assistants gave contradictory signals about what was expected† (Perez-Pena 1). The students cheated because they were confused as to what was expected from them. They needed to pass the class and there did not seem to be any other way but to cheat. This kind of cheating is triggered due to the environment the student is in. Contradictory signals and inconsistent grading can definitely push a student to cheat. This cheating doesn’t stem from personal ethical issues or gender, it comes purely from the confusion of the tests and expectations. The students couldn’t even see their actions as wrong or cheating, since everyone, even teaching assistants, who were giving out the definitions of words during a test, were supporting the cheating behavior. For example, I was just someone who shared notes, and now I’m implic ated in this, said a senior