The Best and Worst in Academic Integrity, 2022
Issue NY22/23
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Ladies and Gentlemen, please hold your applause. Here it is - The Best and Worst in academic integrity in 2022.
This is the second year of The Cheat Sheet, covering 175 issues in all. If I counted correctly, which I know I did not. Let’s call it 180. At three segments an Issue, that’s 540 articles in all - some 300 give or take this past year. You are welcome.
But seriously, thank you for reading, for sharing - for being part of this process. For sharing my passion and concern for this issue. With no promotion, The Cheat Sheet now has more than 2,750 subscribers from around the world. I’m surprised and humbled. Thank you.
And Happy New Year.
48 Schools in 2022
I began the 2021 Best/Worst Issue with a list of the schools that had reported issues with or cases of academic misconduct that year. There were, by my estimate, 72 that made news in 2021. Last year, the number was 48, if I counted correctly.
Technical College Dublin (445 cases), Marquette University, Massey University (on the rise), Stuyvesant High School (NYC), North Carolina State University (tripled), University of California Davis (Chegg), Chapman University (Course Hero), University of Nevada Las Vegas (nearly double), Santa Monica College, Yale University, United States Air Force Academy, Tennessee Tech University (Chegg), Palo Alto High School, Brophy College Preparatory, Augusta University, University of Toronto Mississauga (continued to grow, Chegg), University of British Columbia (almost double), California State University Long Beach, University of Pennsylvania (more than doubled), University of Montevallo, Monash University, Deakin University, Swinburne University, Shaw University, The University of Sydney, University of New South Wales, Torrens University, University of Oxford, University College London, Durham University, University of Texas at San Antonio, Indiana University Bloomington, Humber College, Missouri Southern State, University of Auckland (up 27x – x not %), University of Canterbury, Victoria University of Wellington, Auckland University of Technology, University of Waikato, University of Pennsylvania, Trinity College Dublin, University of Galway, Maynooth University, Dublin City University, Randolph-Macon College, Harvard College, Furman University, Xavier College (AUS)
I don’t think fewer is less. This isn’t a reliable metric of anything. Most of the trendlines among these schools are upward. Moreover, these are schools I happened to notice in the news regarding academic integrity cases. Some of these are stories based on cases from 2021, some even older. Only their appearance in the news was this past year.
And I think there were fewer schools in the news about cheating this past year because there were fewer stories about cheating - it was novel in 2021 when the Wall St Journal, The Today Show, NBC News, NPR and others all did big stories on it. This past year, not so much.
Still, my back-of-the-envelope scratching shows one U.S. Military Academy, three Ivy-League schools, Oxford and more. It’s a universal problem.
Finally, the last thing I want to do is shame these schools. Good for them for catching misconduct and, in some cases, publicizing it. I’ve come to see this annual list as more of an honor roll. The schools I worry about are those that claim they don’t have a cheating problem or refuse to discuss it.
The Best and Worst Academic Integrity Research of 2022
When I started The Cheat Sheet, I envisioned it with a mission to summarize, analyze and share academic research on integrity, especially around practice. I have not done that nearly as much I’d like. There’s plenty of it and it takes a long time to read and digest and write up. Also, some of it is bloody expensive. I’ll do better next year.
In 2021, I did not do a “worst” for academic integrity research. I don’t remember why. But I am going to this time.
The Worst
There was some real garbage put out in 2022 on this topic. Maybe it’s that way every year. And, for the most part, I only saw what someone sent me personally or what made its way into news coverage, which is its own problem.
Nonetheless, one dishonorable mention for the worst academic integrity research of 2022 is this freeway pileup of agenda-seeking disguised as objective fact finding by Laura Bergmans, Nacir Bouali, Marloes Luttikhuis and Arend Rensink of the University of Twente in the Netherlands and covered in Issue 153.
It made the rounds on social media as evidence that proctoring companies could be fooled. VICE, predictably, took the bait.
Among the many, many flaws is that its active sample size was six - 6! And these six were self-selected computer science students who were allowed to collaborate and design hacks without any risk of failure. It’s a laugher.
Bottom line, if it’s anti-proctoring it will find an audience, as this did. It should not have.
The winner for the worst academic integrity research of 2022 is this complete junk from eight authors from Rutgers University, New Jersey Institute of Technology, the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center and other institutions.
As I mentioned in Issue 85, I wasted hours of my life doing a full research brief on this randomly-aligned mixture of letters and alphabet shapes on paper. I said I’d share that brief but never did. I’ll quote very, very sparingly from it now. What I actually wrote was 3,500 words covering nine pages. It was that bad.
In the title, the authors ask why it is that science students think their peers are cheating more in online classes than in face-to-face formats. Seems reasonable. Yet, as I wrote but never published:
the answer seems obvious. The reason students think their peers are cheating more online is because they are. They think it’s happening because it is happening.
Even so, the authors not only don’t test that idea, they never mention it as a possibility. As such, from the outset it’s a complete failure of honest research.
I was too kind.
You know what? To hell with it, if you’re bored, I moved my brief to this Google Doc - read away.
If you’re not that bored, the authors not only don’t even probe the possibility that students are cheating, they actively dismiss the idea. At one point they literally refer to cheating as “imagined surreptitious behavior.” In other words, they asked students if they think their peers are cheating more online - 81% said yes, by the way - then they set about trying to find recommendations to, I kid you not:
“To transform this perspective and quell student concerns about imagined surreptitious behavior”
Students aren’t cheating. You’re imagining it.
Shockingly, it gets worse from there.
As just one example these “researchers” cite Shea Swauger the blogger who compared exam proctoring to Eugenics, forced sterilization, Nazis, data violence, gender identity and intentional institutional racism (see Issue 166 ) and wrote:
Even algorithms used by proctoring software were biased against students who behaved outside of the programmed “norm” during test taking, incorrectly flagging autistic and blind students for their movements and parents for the noise of children.
None of that is true, obviously. Autistic and blind students? What? But they stated it as fact, published it as research and linked to a blogger who kind of said something like that once. Nice.
And I wish that was the end of it. It’s terrible. As I wrote in the brief linked above, I have no idea how it passed any bar of publication and it should be retracted.
The Best
An honorable mention to this research by Jacob Pleasants of the University of Oklahoma and John M. Pleasants and Barbara P. Pleasants of Iowa State University (see Issue 108).
The key takeaway for me, and I hope for others, is that these researchers reported that in-exam honor pledges or “appealing to students’ honesty” didn’t work to reduce cheating. Cheating subsided in this study only when professors bluffed and said they were using technology that could detect cheating and discussed “harsh” penalties.
Another thing to note is that the researchers:
found that 70% of students were observed cheating, and most of those who cheated did so on the majority of test questions.
But here’s the money bit:
In the absence of warnings of surveillance, we found cheating behaviors to be widespread. Neither appealing to students’ academic integrity nor requiring an honesty pledge were found to be effective
The Best Academic Research on academic integrity for 2022 is this, from Baylee D. Jenkins, Jonathan M. Golding, Alexis M. Le Grand, Mary M. Levi and Andrea M. Pals of the University of Kentucky (see Issue 138).
It’s a pretty straight forward survey of college students and it found that 75% of students owned up to cheating on “graded material” and that only .5% - one half of one percent - were caught.
And they found yet again that:
the COVID-19 pandemic increased first time cheating, cheating in online classes was higher than that of in-person classes for most types of graded materials, and students are adept and adaptive at dealing with faculty attempts to combat cheating.
If you have time, go read this paper’s literature review. It ought to be required reading.
Then there is this from the research team which also ought to be embossed in the academic integrity textbook:
Put another way, college students are particularly savvy about when they cheat—it is not a simple case of cheating versus not cheating.
Yes, again. Cheating is incredibly common and highly rational or rationalized behavior.
This research is pretty darn good.
The Best and Worst Reporting on Academic Integrity 2022
As mentioned, there was just less coverage of academic misconduct in 2022 than in 2021. Still, plenty of it was pretty bad. Some, pretty good.
The Worst
There are two dishonorable mentions.
The first goes to Fast Company for giving love to industrial cheating profiteer Course Hero (see Issue 115). Fast Co even gave Course Hero a “World Changing Ideas” award in 2022. Not a single word about cheating, of course.
The second dishonorable mention is for the New York Times for this lousy effort on remote exam proctoring. First, the Times literally put out an open call for students with this:
Did Student-Monitoring Software Accuse You of Cheating on a Test?
You may think that the Times knows that software does not accuse anyone of cheating, but you’d be wrong (see Issue 110). Anyway, after asking openly for proctoring software mistakes we got the massive, misinformed misfire of reporting linked above (see Issue 122).
What stands out is that a month after that open call for proctoring software incorrectly accusing people of cheating, the Times found: 0. At least they did not report on any. Instead, they reported on a single student who, in fact, probably cheated.
The student was correctly flagged; two faculty members reviewed the video and determined a violation occurred. But, about this, the NYT reported the student was:
wrongfully accused of academic dishonesty by an algorithm.
Two teachers say the student cheated. She says she did not. That, according to paper, is “wrongfully accused by an algorithm.” How embarrassing.
But the winner for the absolutely worst reporting on academic integrity in 2022 was, it breaks my heart to say, from NPR - National Public Radio and KQED in San Francisco.
The full review of this biased and bad story is in Issue 138. As I wrote in July, it should have been retracted:
The errors are abundant and embarrassing. It’s so bad, you’d think it was actually written by a cheating company.
The article miscites research in exactly the way a study’s very authors say it should not be used. They get basic facts about the SAT wrong. They interview not a single academic integrity expert. They refer to remote proctoring as “automated racism.” They repeat talking points of the cheating companies. And they end with this knee-slapper about “authentic assessment:”
Teachers are finding a way to make tests totally cheat-proof
It’s beyond embarrassing and hands-down the worst reporting on academic integrity of the year. It’s offensive to call it reporting.
The Best
Honorable mention to Epoch Times and Financial Times.
The Financial Times piece (see Issue 91) is excellent. Early in the year it covered Chegg’s stock collapse and reported:
A deeper fear is that by creating more direct routes to learning for students, some companies are enabling students to cheat their way to qualifications.
Look at that - a financial paper talking about stock value and looping Chegg into cheating. Imagine that. My New Year’s wish is that American financial outlets were so honest (see Issue 163).
The FT also got Chegg’s CEO on the record, trying to defend his company against the obvious, saying:
it cooperates with university investigations into cheating allegations and has launched an “honor shield” tool to stop students looking up specific questions during exams. “It has nothing to do with looking up answers,” Rosensweig said.
That was when Chegg did cooperate with investigations. It doesn’t anymore (see Issue 152).
Honorable mention two is this quality work from Epoch Times. It interviews a medical student who is cheating his way to his M.D.:
At the end of the day, I just feel like if I get good grades, I get good grades, and that’s going to get me to my goal.
Yup.
A solid mention also to this article at Insider, which took a long took at IT credentials and quoted experts saying half of them are cheated (see Issue 165). It was a “must read” of 2022.
The Best Reporting on academic integrity of 2022 is this stellar piece from Physics Today entitled, “Teaching in the Time of Chegg.” Seriously, it’s lit. Or whatever the kids say now (see Issue 146).
I really want to share the whole thing. Go read it.
Among other professors, it quotes Tracy Hodge of Berea College in Kentucky:
“The biggest problem is the ethics these [for-profit] services teach students,” she says. “They teach that the goal is to get the right answer and get points rather than to master the material. They teach that it’s okay to cheat. Chegg gives students a shortcut that doesn’t help them. The company is out to make money.”
Boom. Should have been the quote of the year. But there was very stiff competition.
Anyway, Physics Today. For the win.
Person of the Year in Academic Integrity
This one is always tough.
An honorable mention to Sara Elaine Eaton, a professor, scholar and commentator on academic integrity at the University of Calgary. This past year she published, edited and spoke on key issues as much or more than anyone.
The 2022 Person of the Year in Academic Integrity is David Berkovitz, professor at Chapman University in California.
Professor Berkovitz made national news in March when he sued his students in an effort to get cheating provider Course Hero to identify who had cheated in his class (see Issue 102).
You may remember the story. Students apparently cheated using Course Hero. Professor Berkovitz asked the company to identify them. Course Hero refused, telling the professor he’d need a court order. So, he got one.
Good for him.
For a couple more relevant notes on Course Hero see Issue 106 and Issue 146.
Bad School Policies of 2022
This is a new category, suggested by an active reader - to highlight some schools with bad or out-of-step academic integrity policies or practices. Here are a few that caught my eye in 2022.
I’ll start with American accreditors.
They are absolutely asleep at the switch on this issue, doing absolutely nothing as 75%, 80%, 90% of college students report cheating. Colleges have major incentives to look away. Accreditors are obligated not to. Yet they are.
For me personally, why accreditors are twiddling their thumbs on this crisis is the biggest untold story of academic integrity. So, you want a bad policy? Having no policy whatsoever - that’s a bad policy.
For institutions specifically in 2022, Illinois State University stood out.
In January, the school hosted a panel on academic integrity (see Issue 82). And, as has been my occasional practice, I asked the school to share information about integrity cases at their university. Here was their reply:
Mr. Newton,
The University is closed until January 3. At that time, you can submit a FOIA request at publicrecords@ilstu.edu.
As I said at the time, I get why schools don’t want to talk about this issue - even while hosting a public panel on it. But telling someone to submit a FOIA request, that’s a new level of “go away.” Not great.
Then there’s the $15 at UNLV
The University of Nevada Las Vegas policy stood out in 2022 too (see Issue 102). At UNLV, the school confirmed that in first-time cases of misconduct, it’s “common” for students to pay $15 to take an “Online Academic Integrity Tutorial.” Oh, and write a “reflection letter.”
Seriously - what are we doing here?
When students know that’s the consequence if - and only if - they’re actually caught, you tell me what the disincentive is. Then tell me why a professor would bother filling out the papers.
And then there is Marquette University.
This issue stretched over December 2021 and January 2022 (see Issue 81 and Issue 82) and started when the school’s President penned a self-congratulatory opinion piece on his school’s commitment to integrity.
It did not take much digging to discover that, at Marquette, their policies consisted of little more than an integrity pledge and an honor code, which amount to nothing special at all. Moreover, even when students were caught at Marquette, the system was shockingly weak.
Over several years, the school resolved the majority of its cases - between 60% and 75% of them - through what it called an “expedited review offer.” Here is what that is:
the [reviewing academic integrity] Council makes an offer to the student to bring their case to a swift conclusion with a genuine but not severe class sanction (e.g., receiving a zero for an assignment where misconduct occurred, rather than, say, the loss of an entire letter grade for the course).
Further, the school says it “dismissed” 38% of its misconduct cases in 2020-21. More on this in a second. But that means that nearly every case of referred misconduct was either dismissed or the penalty was a zero on the assignment. A zero, by the way, is no penalty.
The school said also that between 2018 and 2021:
No students were suspended or expelled for Academic Integrity reasons this Academic Year.
None.
And on that whopping 38% dismissal rate in 2021, the school said that was because, I kid you not:
the Council’s Investigative Officers (IOs) understood that certainties were few during the pandemic, and that erring on the side of caution was prudent.
Certainties were few. On cheating. My goodness.
2022 Academic Integrity Quote of the Year
This is my favorite category and, as with 2021, the competition was intense.
In Issue 93, we found this gem from a student at Iowa State University who, when comparing cheating during in-person classes to cheating in online versions said:
“I think within in-person classes it's a lot easier just because you have to meet with the teacher and stuff, which is nice,” [the student] said. “Whereas with online classes and things, there the only person holding you accountable is you and I don't always trust me.”
I don’t always trust me. Classic.
Then there is this absolute star from a research paper published this last year by scholars in Australia (see Issue 169). They actually wrote, about a survey of students who took an online exam:
Students who cheated placed lower importance on academic integrity than students who did not cheat
Amazing.
There’s also this sparkler from Sean Michael Morris, the guy who hates anti-cheating technology and just so happens to work for Course Hero. In Issue 143, he was quoted as saying:
As a representative of Course Hero, I would say, try to get your university to not block us anymore. That would be great.
Not even I can make up stuff that good.
Morris later contacted the outlet to say that was a joke. My take: it sure is.
But the winner for the Quote of the Year for 2022 is the below from the student at Cleveland State University who sued the school over his remote exam room scan before taking an online test (see Special Edition 2).
Before he utilized the help of a lawyer, the student filed the legal challenge on his own and in that filing wrote:
[The school’s] conduct was so egregious as to go beyond all bounds of decency and was such that can be considered utterly intolerable in a civilized society.
And
The mental anguish suffered by [him] has existed since he was subjected to [the school’s] illegal policies and searched against his will and is of a nature that no reasonable person should be expected to endure.
Beyond all bounds of decency. Utterly intolerable in a civilized society. No reasonable person should be expected to endure.
This, from a process the judge in the case described as “minimally intrusive” while also noting that the student himself directed the camera and had two hours notice to remove any sensitive materials. Which he did not do.
Anyway, impossible to beat that for the Quote of the Year.