Competition?
It appears cheating is greater when competition for academic places or a cultural focus on academic achievement is high.
For example, recent reports of elaborate cheating plots among Indian students are discussed as a symptom of the severe shortage of academic places in top fields and colleges.
Similarly, cheating was found to be high at the UK’s prestigious Cambridge University and among the competitive fields of business and engineering.
In fact, business students and in particular MBAs seem to repeatedly come out at the top of the cheating pile. A reason for this is the business field perhaps has a reputation — particularly business of the pre-financial crisis era — to focus on the bottom line and not the process.
Therefore, gaining a degree is about the piece of paper at the end, not about the learning process and skills gained along the way.
Social pressure?
Similarly, while parents wanting their children to be a success, is a good thing, it can become pressure to get that success at any cost. The accolade is more important than how you got there.
This is also about students today being more externally motivated (degree gets you a job; a means to an end) rather than internally motivated (degree is knowledge and self-development).
As with employee motivation theories, externally motivated students have little loyalty to the institution or the teachers and only surface interest in the academic knowledge itself.
Normalisation of deception?
Another important issue is the ‘normalising’ of cheating behaviour. Small acts of cheating are committed by our peers in every day life to get movies and music; in countless celebrity reports of infidelity and even committed by institutions and government representatives.
Cheating therefore can in some contexts be justified as ‘necessary’, ‘unavoidable’ or perhaps ‘doing what it takes’. All these