Dubai: Major surveys completed in the US and Europe suggests cheating at both high school and college level has risen greatly in the last 50 years. Although we don’t have statistics from the local region or from all countries, in recent data, up to two thirds of students admitted to cheating on assignments or during exams.

There are both social and psychological reasons for this increase.

Competition?

It appears cheating is greater when competition for academic places or a cultural focus on academic achievement is high.

For example, recent reports of elaborate cheating plots among Indian students are discussed as a symptom of the severe shortage of academic places in top fields and colleges.

Similarly, cheating was found to be high at the UK’s prestigious Cambridge University and among the competitive fields of business and engineering.

In fact, business students and in particular MBAs seem to repeatedly come out at the top of the cheating pile. A reason for this is the business field perhaps has a reputation — particularly business of the pre-financial crisis era — to focus on the bottom line and not the process.

Therefore, gaining a degree is about the piece of paper at the end, not about the learning process and skills gained along the way.

Social pressure?

Similarly, while parents wanting their children to be a success, is a good thing, it can become pressure to get that success at any cost. The accolade is more important than how you got there.

This is also about students today being more externally motivated (degree gets you a job; a means to an end) rather than internally motivated (degree is knowledge and self-development).

As with employee motivation theories, externally motivated students have little loyalty to the institution or the teachers and only surface interest in the academic knowledge itself.

Normalisation of deception?

Another important issue is the ‘normalising’ of cheating behaviour. Small acts of cheating are committed by our peers in every day life to get movies and music; in countless celebrity reports of infidelity and even committed by institutions and government representatives.

Cheating therefore can in some contexts be justified as ‘necessary’, ‘unavoidable’ or perhaps ‘doing what it takes’. All these attitudes can be seen as either positive or at least a normal response to challenge such as exams and studies.

It is the case that once a student (or anyone) has cheated in some small way; they are more likely to cheat in later assessments or on a larger scale in later life.

Technology?

So cheating is on the rise because of the social and moral climate.

It may also be on the rise simply because technology makes cheating easier.

Much of the cheating students do today is plagiarising, by copy/paste from the web or purchasing essays easily online.

More elaborate schemes for exam assessments are made easier by smart phones, Bluetooth and other small wireless devices.

However, technology is also helping tutors and examiners design more cheat-safe assessment methods, through random sampling of exams so no two students get the same paper and identify cheating plagiarism sites such as turnitin now employed by most universities.

Interestingly, research by Dan Ariely, an American professor of Psychology, among others, indicates the role of technology in cheating may not be its practical ease and ability to cover your tracks.

The importance of technology is that it puts a psychological distance between the teacher and the cheater.

In online assessments you are not looking the tutor in the face or physically and intentionally writing tiny letters on your hand, hoping they do not sweat off with your anxiety.

You are simply pressing some buttons online or opening an extra internet window or taking some photos to pass them around. This psychological distance is the most important factor in allowing us to avoid moral anxiety over our actions.

-Dr Annie Crookes is the Head of Psychology at Heriot-Watt University’s Dubai Campus