Academic integrity and the practice of learning

Contemporary approaches to academic integrity in higher education exhibit a conceptual tension, polarising between deflationary accounts that equate integrity with mere rule-following, and inflationary accounts that bundle together disparate moral and intellectual virtues. This paper proposes a conception of student integrity that avoids both extremes. Drawing on an analogy with professional integrity and the distinction between internal and external goods of practice, we argue that student integrity consists in ethical commitment to the internal good of learning. Through counterexamples, we demonstrate that neither avoiding misconduct nor possessing all intellectual virtues captures what is distinctive about student integrity. Our account reveals why grade-chasing and pandering can violate integrity without breaking rules, while some rule violations need not fully compromise integrity. We develop a taxonomy distinguishing failures of commitment and conduct, failures of conduct, and failures of commitment, showing the imperfect overlap between integrity and rule-following. Finally, we identify “integrity traps”—institutional practices that inadvertently undermine the very integrity they seek to promote. This conceptualisation has implications for how universities understand, foster, and assess student integrity.