The Influence Of Academic Dishonesty On Ethical Decision Making In The Workplace: A Study Of Engineering Students

According to studies conducted over the past four decades, engineering students self-report high frequencies of academic dishonesty (cheating) while in college. Research on college students in all fields has indicated that such behavior is more common among students who participate in academic dishonesty at the high school level and is correlated with other deviant or unethical behaviors, such as petty theft and lying. If, in fact, such correlations do exist, one might hypothesize that there is also a relationship between academic dishonesty in college and deviant or unethical behavior in professional practice. Placing this relationship in the context of higher frequencies of academic dishonesty among engineering students only increases the seriousness of the problem for engineering educators, corporations and society.