Dartmouth students implicated in the College's recent computer science cheating scandal are not alone -- cheating has been on the rise nationally since about 1960, and the problem has only intensified as computers have been integrated into curriculums.
Although cheating and the issues that surround it come up at schools across the country every term, none of the schools -- both inside and outside of the Ivy League -- that talked to The Dartmouth reported a cheating scandal on par with the one Dartmouth is currently facing.
Even oversees universities have been touched by incidents. At Scotland's University of Edinburgh last year, 117 first-year computer science students were found guilty of cheating on an exam -- reportedly the biggest case ever of alleged examination fraud in British higher education.
The accused students have set up a website, vehemently opposing accusations of copying and comparing notes via e-mail.
According to Donald L. McCabe, a professor of organization management at Rutgers University in Newark, N.J. and the founder of the Center for Academic Integrity, computers and the Internet introduce new issues into the realm of academic honesty.
"Computer science makes it easier to cheat," he told The Dartmouth. "The temptation is there. Students convince themselves that it's not really a big deal to copy from somebody else."
He said the issues that surround academic dishonesty are not cut and dry because on many assignments students are, in fact, allowed to collaborate. However, he said sometimes students work together on assignments that are meant to be done individually.
According to McCabe, the only real way for colleges and universities to cut down on the occurrence of cheating is to "convince students that academic honesty is important."
In a recent major study he conducted, he found that the existence and status of honor codes is directly related to the amount of cheating that happens.
He found that six percent of students at selective universities with honor codes admitted to what he classifies as serious cheating while at schools without honor codes, 17 percent of students admitted to cheating on a regular basis.
When asked about the current situation at the College, McCabe said, "In your case, you can question how serious Dartmouth is about their honor code."
He pointed out that some schools like Rice University, Princeton University and Bryn Mawr College have stricter honor codes than Dartmouth's, in which students are violating the code themselves if they fail to turn in cheating peers.
Tough honor codes
At Princeton University, the strict honor code covers all in class exams, requiring students to be academically honest themselves, and to turn in their peers who cheat.
As incoming freshmen, Princeton students must read the honor code and write an essay promising to uphold the principle of academic honesty.
At the university, exam-related infractions go to the Honor Committee, which is a student-run organization, and out-of-class infractions go to the faculty and student-run Discipline Committee.
According to Chair of the Honor Committee Jonathan Right '00, there are isolated instances of cheating at Princeton as there are at every other school.
However, he said there is a high degree of trust between the students and the faculty because of the stringent honor principle. He explained that the principle was instated in 1893 to combat the serious problems with cheating and student-faculty relationships at that time.
"The faculty said 'we will allow you to be responsible if you uphold the standards that we need in order to trust you,'" he said.
When asked whether computer-related violations of the honor principle were big problems at the university, Right said that most computer-science related problems were not under the Honor Committee's jurisdiction, but he said, "that's a new area ... we feel it may fall it under our jurisdiction."
Rice University in Texas also has a strict honor code.
Editor-in-Chief of the Rice Thresher student newspaper Jett McAlister said Rice's students agree to the honor code when they are freshmen. Students are trusted on exams and papers not to cheat, go over the time limit or discuss answers with other students.
"Because of that, we have a lot of liberty," McAlister said. He explained that most finals exams are take-home tests and students can decide when they want to take exams.
He said the honor code makes "people conscious of what's going on around them. People don't want other people to cheat."
Cheating and integrity at other schools
At schools where honor codes exist but are not as integrated into college guidelines or where honor codes do not exist at all, students have less incentive to turn in their peers, but do not necessarily cheat more frequently.
The University of Pennsylvania reported last spring that three out of five students engage in some kind of cheating while at the university. This statistic mirrors the national average.
"You would like to think that Penn students would be less likely to cheat," Kevin Hodges, a Wharton junior and chairperson of the Honor Council said at the time. "I'm just relieved that it was not higher [than the national average]."
The Penn survey last year, which questioned 600 students, mostly undergraduates, showed that 380 -- or 63 percent -- have cheated at some time.
The most common reasons for cheating, according to the survey, were not having enough time to study and too much pressure to get good grades.
Brown University has encountered some problems in the realm of academic honesty, but has not faced any cheating scandals in its recent history. Approximately one-third of Brown's cheating charges come from the computer science department.
According to Brown's Associate Dean of the College Carol Cohen, who chairs the university's Standing Committee on Academic Code, the most common types of cheating are plagiarism and unauthorized collaboration on homework and computer science assignments.
Cohen told The Dartmouth she was not sure whether the frequency of cheating in computer science classes was a result of more academic dishonesty or simply a product of more streamlined, electronic detection.
"There were violations and that's part of how we've learned prevention," Cohen said. "They've beefed up preventative measures more and more."
She said professors receive a letter from the university setting out how they should address the issue of cheating, and students are told what constitutes cheating and what consequences it entails.
"We view [cheating] as an educational issue," Cohen said. She explained that students will be less likely to cheat on tests if professors explain to them the rules and the consequences for academically dishonest actions.
At some schools, including Cornell, Harvard and Columbia Universities, cheating is not a well-publicized issue.
"It's not something that happens much here," Aron Goetzl, a Cornell junior, said. He called the academic integrity code at his university a continuation of high school expectations.
He said he has heard stories about friends and friends of friends getting in trouble for cheating, but he said punishments are kept confidential.
Harvard student Scott Resnick said even though the university does not have an honor code, cheating is "not a huge problem."
He said, "there are rules you're expected to follow," and by and large, students do follow them -- there have not been any big cheating scandals recently.
