105 Cheat, 18 Expelled From U.S. Naval Academy

Plus, survey shows 141% increase in plagiarism and cheating. Plus, Inside Higher Ed's incorrect academic integrity theater.

Issue 49

Cheating Scandals Persist at U.S. Military Academies as 105 “Likely” to Have Cheated at U.S. Naval Academy

For the elite and prestigious United States military academies - and for those who claim that strong honor codes alone will curtail cheating - the scandals just keep on coming.

This time, the news is that the Navy says at least 105 Midshipmen, students at the United States Naval Academy, “likely accessed unauthorized resources” during an online Physics exam. So far, 18 have been expelled or withdrawn.

Based on reporting, it seems the students collaborated on a messaging platform during the exam.

The Navy news follows a very public cheating scandal at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point (Army) in which 73 cadets were caught and 51 had to repeat a year of school (see Issue 20) and another at the U.S. Air Force Academy in which at least 246 cadets were caught cheating during remote courses (see Issue 4).

That these cheating incidents are happening at the nation’s elite military institutions ought to be embarrassing as well as a warning about the prevalence of misconduct overall and the failure of honors codes alone to address it. If students at the most prestigious academies in the world - where honor and integrity are expected - are cheating, well, that says plenty.

Inside Higher Ed Has an Odd Discussion on Academic Misconduct

Last week, Inside Higher Ed (IHE), held an odd, two-man video discussion about academic integrity.

In Issue 46, I’d noted that the event could be strange theater because it did not include any actual experts or practitioners in academic integrity. I’d also noted that while hosting the discussion on academic conduct, the publication was in the middle of a promotional partnership with Course Hero, one of the biggest and best known cheating companies.

I was right; it was odd - misinformed and odd.

There’s too much to correct to allow a point-by-point. But, to start, the editors seemed very invested in the idea that cheating is not increasing and not very common. In the introduction, IHE editor Scott Jaschik said,

In every generation it seems people, some people, like to write that - oh wow - there’s this new development in higher ed and as a result, cheating has skyrocketed. And I want to push back on that a little just to say that cheating, as I said, has always been with us, will always be with us.

That’s awfully dismissive and disconnected from what experts and teachers say is a genuine and growing problem.

Moreover, it should be obvious that skyrocketing cheating and cheating’s longevity are not the same. They are not exclusive. In fact, both are true. Cheating is unquestionably, unimpeachably on the rise and cheating has always been part of assessment. I’m not sure what one has to do with the other. Saying that “technology did not create cheating,” as the IHE editors did, is obvious - and an obvious obfuscation.

But the biggest error, which the presentation repeated often, was that cheating rates were consistent and low, saying,

We’ve talked about what proportion of students really do cheat and it is comparatively small.

At least three times, the IHE editors said the rate of cheating was 11%, with Jaschik responding to an audience member, “you did hear correctly” that it was 11%. He added,

That number is consistent with other numbers of self-reported cheating.

And that,

It’s more notable that it was 11%. Even if it’s twice the 11%, we’re talking about a minority of students cheating, not the overwhelming majority of students cheating. And I think that’s very important to remember.

Ah, excuse me, it’s not.

The source of that 11% number is this story by IHE editor Doug Lederman. It sources an actual academic integrity expert and says:

Historically, the proportion of surveyed students self-reporting that they have cheated on an exam at least once in the last year "has been at about 11 percent for a couple of decades," Tricia Bertram Gallant, director of the academic integrity office at the University of California, San Diego, said

Obviously, this was only students who “cheated on an exam at least once in the last year.” In other words, 11% is not a metric of overall cheating, as IHE represented. Not even close.

In their book “Cheating in College,” researchers and authors McCabe, Butterfield and Trevino go though a history of deep research on cheating going back to 1964. They say unambiguously:

More than two-thirds of college students report that they engaged in some form of academic misconduct in the previous year.

And:

A significant amount of empirical research supports the conclusion that cheating in colleges and universities is widespread.

Here are just a few examples they cite:

• 1995 (McLeod) - 83% self-reported cheating in college

• 2009 (Yardley et al) - 82% of college alumni report having cheated

• 2009 (Martin, Rao and Sloan) - 61% said they engaged in plagiarism - just plagiarism

In 1964, in what’s considered the first serious study of cheating in America, Bowers found (a revised to) 50% of students admitted to engaging in academic dishonesty. A 1990/91 study by McCabe and Trevino put the rate of self-reported cheating behavior at 74%. A 1993/94 study by McCabe and Trevino identified the cheating rate at 87%. A 1999/2000 study by McCabe and the Center for Academic Integrity pegged cheating behavior at 83%. A 2002-2010 study by McCabe et al found 65%.

The point is, whatever the rate of cheating actually is, it’s not 11%. Not even IHE’s own reporting supports that assertion.

I don’t know what to say about IHE saying matter-of-factly that it is.

More on this in the next “The Cheat Sheet” - including IHE also claiming that punishment for cheating “doesn’t work.”

Survey: A “Drastic 141% Increase in Plagiarism and Academic Dishonesty”

Copyleaks, which describes itself as “a leading AI and machine learning-powered plagiarism detection platform,” put out an international survey a few days ago showing a big jump in plagiarism and other forms of misconduct.

The press release says:

The study found that since educational institutions worldwide embraced the fully online learning model in April 2020, an average of 49.6% of the work from all papers submitted by students was plagiarized.

And:

The data from the study also shows that this past year students were found exhibiting a unique boldness in their dishonest approaches. They went beyond typical plagiarizing patterns, turning to very naive methods such as copying word-for-word. Quantitatively, the amount of plagiarism in student work grew substantially, where the identical match content was reported to have increased by 39%, alongside a 31% growth in the paraphrased content.

I don’t know Copyleaks and have not reviewed their report directly, only what they’ve said about it. They say, for example, that it’s a “study of 1,209 students from across the globe” and “generated via a detailed analytical assessment of millions of datasets from both pre (2019-2020) and during (2020-2021) COVID-19 periods.”

Cool. I will give it review and, if need be, include more on it.

But as someone who’s read tons of research reports and surveys and books on cheating, my first take is that finding that nearly half of all student work is plagiarized seems too much - by a wide gulf. Even so, I do absolutely buy that cheating in general has increased, even substantially. The sheer number of schools reporting a doubling or tripling of recent misconduct cases substantiates that assessment.

In the next “The Cheat Sheet” - a final few points on the IHE thing. Plus, that research on laws banning academic misconduct. Plus, more cheating.