Academic Misconduct: Causes
Academic misconduct, academic dishonesty or academic fraud describes an act made by any member of an academic community that goes against the expected norms of that community.
Academic misconduct is used against academic honesty which is a kind of code of conduct to be followed by members of the academic community and is a necessary foundation for all academic institutions.
Since 1865, WPI has issued some guidelines for all students, faculty, and staff to avoid fraud and dishonesty in the academic field to obtain the best internships, jobs and graduate school opportunities.
In the previous post, we discussed some important types of academic dishonesty which include: bribery, cheating, fabrication, plagiarism, facilitation, duplicate submission, and sabotage.
There is no single explanation for the occurrence of such conducts in the real world, i.e. schools, universities, or academic institutions.
Causes of Academic Misconduct
Most students are aware that academic misconduct is morally wrong, however, they commit this wrong behaviour under the pressure of various outside factors.
Some common causes of committing academic misconduct are given below:
Poor Time Management
Poor time management is the most important contextual causes of academic misconduct. The ability to manage time is an important feature of successful people. Time management is a skill by which you can best use your time to reach your goals. Students with rigorous extra-curricular activities may feel more pressure and tend to be less committed to their studies, due to their poor time management, and feel a greater incentive to cheat!
Academic Pressures
- To achieve a target GPA: There are some incentives in the academic sense that may encourage students to cheat to achieve them, like financial aid, participate in a competition, and maintaining financial support from families. Maintaining a target GPA will help them achieve these incentives; as a result, they may turn to academic dishonesty as a way to achieve it.
- Anonymity: Some students who feel their teacher does not know them and regard the instructor as distant and unconcerned with their performance are tempted to cheat! They do that because they assume their teacher doesn’t care about what they do.
- Performance Anxiety: Some students fear of failing a test or a course and feel anxiety about academic performance in the school, college or the university. This may lead them to cheat in academic activities to avoid any bad consequences, like failing a course or receiving a bad grade.
Lack of knowledge
Some students are unaware of academic conventions and rules and have no clue what cheating or plagiarism is and what consequences they may follow! As a result, they may commit academic misconduct unintentionally.
Peer pressure
Studies indicate that students whose peers disapprove of cheating are less likely to cheat! There is a famous saying which goes, “misery loves company!” Those who commit academic misconduct can pressure others to do the same in many ways, including cheating, sharing with others and helping them to do the assignments in case of banned collaboration.
Teachers Themselves
In some countries, the government demands schools to consider that “no child to left behind!” For this, schools and teachers are responsible for the results of the students and they feel pressure, causing them to “teach to the test,” using any method that is heavily focused on preparing students for only tests! This will lead to higher grades in the tests the students are prepared for, which is not an honest way in educational terms!
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