Insidious, Invasive, Invisible: Academic Dishonesty and on-going assessments in higher education

Abstract

1.IntroductionDespite every effort made by higher education institution authorities to stamp out Academic Dishonesty (AD), it continues to remain a scourge that threatens the moral and ethical foundations of academic endeavour. The threat of AD is now all the more alarming looking at the statistics of AD prevalent in higher education. According to studies undertaken by the International Centre for Academic Integrity, out of around 70,000 undergraduates and 17,000 graduates who had responded to a survey on AD between 2002 and 2015, a shocking 39% of undergraduates admitted to cheating on tests, while 62% admitted cheating on written assignments. Of the graduate students, 17% admitted cheating on tests, while 40% admitted cheating on written assignments. Graduate students are those engaged in educational pursuits at the master and doctorate levels, which in itself, is even more alarming. The researchers who had also surveyed high school students found that:"of over 70,000 high school students at over 24 high schools in the United States... 64% admitted to cheating on a test, 58%admitted to plagiarism and 95% said they participated in some form of cheating, whether it was on a test, plagiarism or copying homework. "(http://www.academicintegrity.org/icai/integrity-3.php) retrieved 9 July 2016This only goes to show that the extent of the insidious nature of this scourge is as deep as it is far reaching; right from school to the highest levels of educational endeavor. Policymakers and stakeholders should take note that this behaviour appears to start at adolescence (high school) which is a notable predictor of the age at which such behaviour starts to rear its ugly head, and devise appropriate and timely interventions to cut off the head of the Hydra before it starts to mutate into multiple heads of unethical behaviours.If the data above is not upsetting enough, it was revealed in a U.S News and World Report that 90% of those polled believed that neither they nor others would be caught for cheating or punished, which means that, in their view, AD would go unpunished. (http://oedb.org/ilibrarian/8-astonishing-stats-on-academic-cheating/ retrieved 9 July 2016).The problem of AD had become endemic enough to have caught the attention of educational institutions and government agencies. For years, AD has been considerably studied and debated (Huang, Yang & Chen, 2015; Desalegn & Berhan, 2014) ) as a topic of concern among university educators. AD, according to Callahan (2004) can be defined as a type of rule-breaking behaviour undertaken by an individual to get ahead of others academically, professionally or financially. That being said, AD is defined as "a student's use of unauthorized assistance with intent to deceive an instructor or other such person who may be assigned to evaluate the student's work in meeting course and degree requirements," (Center for Academic Integrity, Duke University 1999).As mentioned earlier, various studies have been undertaken by researchers across the globe in relation to the prevalence of AD. DuPree and Sattler (2010) reported that based on 1058 students from Texas Tech University, 34% claimed to have "sometimes cheated in tests or examinations", while 26.9% claimed to have "often cheated" while 11.2% claimed to have "very often cheated in assessments". Ahmadi's (2012) study of 132 language students in a university in Iran, revealed that cheating is prevalent 'justified' by various reasons such as "not being ready for exams"; "the difficulty of the exams"; "lack of time to study" and "careless and lenient instructors." A recent study by Desalegn and Berhan (2014) reported that undergraduate medical students in Hawassa, Ethiopia cheated mainly on the entrance examinations and students who cheated in high school had a higher tendency to cheat when entering the university. This finding can be extrapolated to tie in with that of the study mentioned earlier on the report of the cheating among high schools students in the US. …