Curing Plagiarism
Academic dishonesty is spreading like an epidemic across colleges and universities. Its symptoms range from copying a friend’s homework to looking at another student’s answers during a test to turning in a term paper that is plagiarized. Plagiarism, which is taking credit for someone else’s words or ideas, in particular has increased at an alarming rate. Schools and colleges seek to understand not only the causes for rampant plagiarism but also ways to treat it more effectively. The remedy lies in cooperation between instructors, administrators, and students: instructors should improve how they teach academic honesty, administrators should revise and publicize policies treating academic misconduct, and students should value ethics over grades.
Statistics show a tremendous increase in academic dishonesty across the nation. According to a study conducted by Plagiarism.org 58.3 percent of high school students in 1969 allowed others to copy their work. In 1989, about 97.3 percent allowed their work to be copied by other students. Even more students today are copying homework answers and cheating on tests to maintain high grades.

There are many causes of plagiarism. One reason is the pressure on students to achieve, varying from maintaining a high GPA in high school to get into a good college to keeping up grades while in college to hold on to scholarships (Durkin). A second reason is the competitive nature of grading: a student must be not just acceptable but better than others (Fanning 8). Plagiarism also occurs because it is socially acceptable: many students do not consider it to be cheating because all their friends are doing it. In addition, cheaters are convinced that they are not going to get caught (Lincoln 47); 95 percent of high school students who cheated were never found out (Gomez 42). Finally, rigorous course loads have led many