Mike Hanski quoted me in his article “Why Students Cheat: 10 Reasons Some Teachers Ignore.”
Academic Plagiarism is the Achilles heel of most educators, and the “why students cheat” question haunts them throughout the work process. They try hard to develop students’ critical thinking and writing skills, but mentees continue to attempt to copy texts and ideas from others, claiming them as their own. It’s like a slap in your face or a kick in your…well, any part of your body, isn’t it? Despite the devastating consequences of academic dishonesty and strong policies against it in most institutions, students don’t realize the problem.
Numbers speak volumes
Back in 2017, Kessler International revealed smashing numbers: 76% of students copied someone else’s assignments, 54% indicated that cheating is necessary to stay competitive, and 42% said they purchased papers from custom writing services. That ugly feeling of betrayal nibbles when you check mentees’ works and disclose their plagiarism, doesn’t it? Some reasons for plagiarism may not be as obvious as they seem, preventing teachers from thinking about efficient techniques that could help solve the problem.
Why students cheat
Are they too lazy to spend time on assignments? Are they poor writers or time managers? Or maybe they don’t know much about the topic you assign? Plagiarism causes and solutions vary, and they may depend on the type of plagiarism (whether it’s self plagiarism, accidental plagiarism, or intentional plagiarism). Unveil them now to understand how to work with students so they wouldn’t even think of academic dishonesty.
So, why do students plagiarize?
1 – Fear of failure
A core reason for procrastination, fear of failure affects student motivation. It appears when students dread to disappoint expectations or aren’t sure of their writing skills and topic knowledge.
“Their words are better,” they think.
“To get high grades, I need someone to write an essay for me,” they suppose.
“I can’t lose my status.” They tremble and go online to plagiarize from available publications there.
Scientists have examined the issue to see how this fear influences student behavior. Published in the British Journal of Educational Psychology, the results raise eyebrows; fear of failure determines the methods your mentees choose to reach their learning goals. In particular, they adopt learning as a way to stroke their own egos. So, they don’t study to master the material but to prove their superiority to others. With such motivation, it’s clear these students are more likely to cheat.
2 – Lack of interest
For some teachers, it’s hard to suspect students of disinterest in their subjects. But let’s face it — while educational technology helps students improve the learning process today, some of them simply don’t care about the topic you assign. They don’t think it’s worth their time and energy, so they choose academic dishonesty to complete it quickly and get back to what they do like.
3 – Pressure
“Many students plagiarize because the academic load and requirements are too heavy for them. Since they need to submit many requirements over short periods, many of them end up plagiarizing to make writing a lot faster and so they can beat the deadline.” -Craig Miller, academician at Academia Labs
Enormous pressure from teachers and parents to complete assignments, compete for scholarships, and eventually place in the job market turns the education process into a turf battle with a focus on results rather than acquired knowledge and skills. Dr. Alex Trevatt, director at Medistudents confirms, “The most common reason we see is external pressure to achieve a particular grade (usually by parents), combined with a lack of confidence in their ability to achieve the grade. Often, if these students had received more support earlier in their studies, they would have had the confidence to produce original work. Learning institutes can tackle this reason for plagiarism by providing more personalized tuition, although this is logistically harder and more expensive, and so it is often neglected.”
And here goes a paradox: the more intelligent your student is, the more pressure they feel. High expectations and unreasonable demands lead students to impostor syndrome and a desire to be the best in everything they do. Feeling like they are stuck trying to handle that pressure, students plagiarize to manage it. Plagiarism appears to be one way to complete all tasks on time, prove competence, and win some time for a recharge.
4 – Hubris
Here’s something we can agree on: the ego of some students is so high that they think no one will catch them red-handed and they are above any consequences. Cynical about grades, they see nothing wrong with plagiarism. The story is as old as Adam: back in 2002, CNN Online revealed some students’ view on cheating where they argued that they were “almost completely judged on grades” and “a person who had an entirely honest life couldn’t succeed.” Hubris itself is not a reason why students plagiarize, but it explains why they continue doing it over and over again.
5 – Thrill
Do you know that we all have a subconscious desire to steal from others? The mirror neuron system of the human brain makes us copy gestures and deeds because we feel happy doing that. And yes, the fear of penalty can’t help to stop it. Evolutionary psychologists call this behavior “a social glue” facilitating connections and interpersonal bonding. When copying others, we feel social participation and trigger happy chemicals in the brain to satisfy our need for excitement.
Dopamine rules when a person expects a reward. (Read: high grades)
Serotonin makes us feel significant. (Read: recognition from a teacher and peers)
Oxytocin takes the stage when we feel trust. (Read: escaping accusations of plagiarism)
Endorphins give a moment of pleasure as a survival mechanism. (Read: completing the assignment successfully)
For some students, plagiarism is a kind of thrill. It’s a challenge to cheat a professor, escape punishment, and therefore, feed their happy chemicals.
6 – Panic
Another reason for plagiarism among students is panic when they feel backed into a corner with strict deadlines. It doesn’t necessarily relate to laziness or poor time management; such a panic may appear when a student is new to the type of work assigned. When you do something for the first time, it’s hard to assume how much time and energy the task requires, and it’s challenging to organize yourself the proper way.
“More often than not, plagiarism is the result of desperation; perhaps the student didn’t understand the assignment or ran out of time to complete it. Because of our education system’s emphasis on grades as a measure of success, some students would rather plagiarize than receive a low score on an assignment.” -Lynn Wolfe, adjunct professor of English at California Baptist University
7 – Misunderstanding the point of learning
Chances are that a student doesn’t understand the idea behind the learning process. They assume that everything they need to do is reproduce what others (experts) have already said. Not only can’t such students cite sources, but they believe there’s no need to do this. For them, scholarly publications are just places to go and find facts, like dictionaries where they look up definitions or correct spellings.
“I thought I could use only the words of experts,” they explain when a teacher asks why they didn’t share their own experience or express their own opinion on the topic. They assume that learning is about collecting ideas from others and summarizing/plagiarizing them to remember. Katherine Williams, a TEFL certified ESL teacher from VerbNow adds, “Most students are unaware they must attribute internet content appropriately and that it constitutes the author’s intellectual property. They don’t understand the need for referencing since they believe that material obtained from the internet is already common knowledge. The same factor contributes to the frequent improper citation of articles from internet sources.”
8 – Sloppiness
This one is about accurate note-taking. During research, some students can be sloppy and then confused about what they copied from the source and what they wrote themselves. Later, while writing, they don’t remember whose words they were; all sources get muddled on paper and in their minds. They rely on notes they believe were their own words. To prevent that, teachers can educate students about efficient strategies for organizing notes. Also, insist that your mentees include citations in drafts. Yep, they say they’ll do it later, but as we all know, they later forget where they go.
9 – Competition
As we know, some institutions practice grade curving, which means teachers grade students by percentile. For example, they say the top 15% get an A, 35% get a B, the other 35% get a C, and the rest of the 15% share D and F. What does a class of 100 students get as a result? The A grade becomes available for 15 people only, which triggers competition with peers for grades.
Such a system ranks students against each other, regardless of actual learning. Craving higher grades, they choose to cheat to improve their work and jump into the A or B wagon. More than that, A students won’t help their peers understand the material, and those peers won’t ask for help but rather go and plagiarize, creating even more pressure. Criterion referenced grading would help eliminate competition as a stressor and reduce cheating.
10 – Feeling anonymous
The classroom is a social context, and social relationships shape behavior. When a student doesn’t have a friendly professional relationship with a teacher and classmates, they feel anonymous and are more likely to cheat. Here’s how it works:
Students who feel valued in class are less likely to cheat because the social costs are high; they don’t want to ruin their reputation or experience emotions of shame and embarrassment.
Students who feel anonymous aren’t subject to these costs; the teacher doesn’t even know or notice them, so they are more likely to cheat, with no worries about the consequences.
To prevent such situations, it would help to learn and use students’ names and, if time allows, organize some time to talk to them; it will create a comfortable atmosphere and help students see that they get noticed.
Reasons why you should not plagiarize: unobvious consequences
Why is plagiarism bad? The ugly truth is most students know the answer but still cheat even at the risk of expulsion. It’s only the most obvious consequence of plagiarism students are afraid of: being caught red-handed and expelled from college.
They hardly size up the problem at full breadth; the effects of such an action are way worse, and it would help if teachers revealed and explained them to mentees. We asked educators to share the unobvious consequences of plagiarism for students to understand. This is what we’ve got.
1 – Reputation loss
“When cheating, a student gets a bad reputation because this behavior tends to be portrayed in different subject areas. Teachers discuss students’ work from time to time, and at this point, habitual cheaters are highlighted. We tend to be somewhat lenient with mentees who plagiarize mistakenly, but habitually plagiarizing in multiple subject areas can hardly be an excuse.” -Camile Clarke, geography teacher
2 – Health problems
“By submitting plagiarized work for review, you can raise expectations that you can’t meet. Your immune system will be weaker from either the fear of getting caught, the stress of guilt, or both. Plus, if one day, long after college is over, you’ll need a security clearance, guess what will crop up?” -David C. Berliner, Professor of Education Emeritus at Arizona State University
3 – Career failures
“An obvious consequence would be the penalties, but cheating, especially if it becomes habitual, can have impacts beyond student life. Students who study medicine, engineering, architecture, law, and other industries need highly specialized skills and knowledge to practice in their respective fields. If they get by in school with cheating and plagiarism, they might make decisions and perform procedures that endanger the public.” -Andre Teixeira, founder of Lusa Language School
4 – Inability to think critically and solve problems
“If you cheat, you are essentially sending yourself the message that you are willing to take shortcuts at the expense of doing a full job. How will that attitude show up and negatively impact your relationships, your health, and your job in the future? When students plagiarize, they deprive themselves of the ability to think critically, solve problems independently, and articulately express themselves. It will end up costing them job opportunities, promotions, and chances at success down the line because when the time comes to perform and there is nobody around to plagiarize, then what will they do?” -Greg Freebury, founder of Think & Evolve Academy
5 – Distrust between teachers and students
“The least obvious consequence is the broken trust between the teacher and the students. When an educator assigns an essay, they place faith in mentees and trust they will work diligently. Students who cheat break that bond and foster suspicion and doubt in the teacher. Broken trust is hard to fix, and the feelings of betrayal can be persistent.” -David Moadel, professor of English
6 – Lack of skills to argue and defend ideas
“A student fails to grow their mind regarding the subject because they don’t get to grapple with the ideas or concepts that, if done right, would produce independent and original thought. Plagiarism shows that students don’t value their thinking. By cheating, they don’t learn to articulate, explore, and defend their own ideas.” -Meredith Granger, teacher with the Ministry of Education
7 – Low self-esteem
“Getting away with cheating teaches you that your own creativity and ingenuity are worthless. It teaches you to get ahead by cutting corners and stealing credit from others, corrodes your own sense of self worth, and trains you to pay lip service to the promises you make and the obligations you take on. It rewards you for selling yourself short. And in the long run, it teaches you to distrust the people around you at work, school, and home.” -Mike S. Wills, assistant professor
8 – Theft
“Although typically viewed as academically dishonest, plagiarism at the cash register is nothing else but an economic crime. A book lifted from one author and sold as another’s is a form of monetary theft. It steals from the true author so that the plagiarizer can make an easy dollar.” -Chad Morris, English teacher
9 – A weakened educational community
“By copying others’ arguments, cheaters fail to put forward their own views on issues. Their personal perspectives are lost, which means their contribution to the academic debate is lost. As a result, well constructed and original positions don’t take place, leading to a narrowing of academic opinion and, as a whole, a weakened educational community.” -Rosemary Edmonds, educational consultant
10 – Deterioration of the mind and wisdom
“The most unobvious consequence of plagiarism is long-term: it’s the distortion of morals and deterioration of the human spirit, mind, and wisdom. We need to get inspired by the knowledge of other people to personify the universal mind in our souls. If not inspired but only ready to use others’ knowledge, pretending it is our own, it means corruption, no development, and a decrease in progress sooner or later.” -Ana Markovic, English teacher and translator
How to minimize student plagiarism at your institution
Is there anything teachers can do to prevent academic dishonesty?
-Teach interpretation and analysis to students; explain how to process the information they find in sources.
-Ensure your students understand why they need to cite sources.
-To make them feel comfortable with writing, tell them about the importance of personal writing style and tone of voice. Explain that you want to see how well they understand the topic rather than gobbledygook of sources they used for research.
-Teach them to state a thesis before they begin researching. Encourage them to outline essays and insist that they include citations in the drafts.
-Debunk the myth of grades’ high importance for future success. Explain that A’s don’t matter if a student doesn’t have the skills to show for them.
-Divide assignments into parts: have students submit outlines or bibliographies before final drafts for better planning and time management. It will help to make tasks less overwhelming for your mentees.
-Teach them how to cite sources properly to avoid unintentional plagiarism.
-Allow students to choose topics and use real life anecdotes in their essays to enhance their interest in writing.
-Explain the difference between plagiarism and paraphrasing. Teach the necessary components of paraphrasing and explain how to use them right.
-Unveil all, including the most unobvious consequences of plagiarism for your students to realize the problem.
-Help students learn how to organize their work, especially if the task is complex and they are novices. Explain by modeling what they should do.
-Always discuss why the assignment is critical in the context of the class and overall learning. Students need to know what knowledge and skills they’ll gain from doing this task.
-Show them examples with uncited summaries and ask them to identify and correct the problem.
Reasons why students cheat are many, and yet none make this issue acceptable.
For students: tips to reduce plagiarism in academic papers
-Learn where and how to place citations and format them correctly.
-Pay precise attention to research, combine different types of sources, and do your best to include alternate opinions on the topic. Say no to citing Wikipedia!
-Embrace academic integrity and learn to be responsible for your deeds in college. If you need help with writing assignments, there are tons of free and legal resources online to get it: social media groups share tips, writing forums assist with research, online libraries and Q&A websites help with resources, etc.
The good news is you can handle it!
