Origins of Academic Dishonesty

Growing perceptions that students exploit information technology to evade academic assignments prompted surveys of student attitudes about unethical uses of information technology (e.g., cutting and pasting excerpts from Web sites without attribution) at two institutions. Students at a private church-affiliated college rated cheating behaviors as more offensive than their counterparts at a regional campus of a major research university. However, ordinal rankings of academically dishonest behaviors at both institutions were surprisingly similar (rho = .90). Further, students who rated such behaviors as being more serious, typically valued idealism, the ethical principle of doing no harm to others, and disapproved of high sensation-seeking activities involving alcohol, drugs, and sex.