THIS PAST Sunday, "60 Minutes" broadcast a segment on the prevalence of cheating on American college campuses and the University had the dubious honor of being used as the example of student immorality. Using the headline story about the cheating scandal in Prof. Bloomfield's class in 2000, the show seemed to suggest that recent cheating scandals are indicative of a change in the morality of American youth. The segment's producers seemed to be searching for an appalling revelation with which to condemn the college students of today as unrepentant liars. Unfortunately, "60 Minutes" missed the boat, as so many others do, about the real problem plaguing higher education -- the commodification of the diploma and the need to do whatever it takes to reach one's goals.
For our parents' generation, it was a question of going to college or not. But for many American high school students, it is not a question of if, but where. Although there are countless examples of brilliant people who excelled without college degrees, there is an increasing discrepancy in pay between those with a graduate and/or bachelor's degree and those without. In a society where going to the right college and the right graduate school and getting the right first job seems to make or break futures, it is no wonder cheating is so prevalent.
There is this misperception that cheating is something new, but it's not. In the past few years alone, there was the Steinmetz academic competition scandal, grade tampering at the Christian school Gardner-Webb and the Bloomfield scandal here. In 1993, 87 percent of students admitted to cheating on written work (http://www.ncpa.org/pi/edu/jan98o.html). Cheating is not something that was invented yesterday -- the truth is that past students probably cheated but just weren't caught. People have deceived since the beginning of time and it is naive to believe that cheating has not been a part of academia
-- and, yes, the University -- for a very long time. Only after technology allowed more open and public means of cheating did cheating become an "epidemic." In Asia, the GRE Computer Science test was compromised after students shared answers online with other students.
There is no defense for cheating because it breaks the fundamental principles of fairness and honesty, but there are intense and sometimes irresistible coercive demands placed on students that lead them to cheat.
In a much publicized incident in 1995, Chicago's Steinmetz High School was stripped of its championship in an Illinois academic competition after it was discovered that students had studied a version of the test before the competition. The students cited unfair disparities in educational funding which made the competition impossible to win for some schools. The incident highlighted the growing inadequacies in the sometimes unbalanced educational systems around the country. The students who cheated unjustly deprived other hardworking students of deserved prizes. But if they aren't given the same educational resources, they can't get equal prestige and equal job opportunities.
The sad fact is that many students pursue higher education for one reason -- that piece of paper they get at the end of four years. There are students who genuinely enjoy learning and take courses to satisfy curiosity and their intellectual appetite. However, many see college as a perfect four-year dodge of the real world -- one which provides them with well-paying jobs when they are done. Because some required courses have little practical value to some students, they cheat without hesitation or regret. Settle for a B on the exam and a 150 on the LSAT and say goodbye to being a millionaire lawyer out of the University's prestigious law school -- or break the rules and get the A and a 170 and receive that admission letter to the best law school.
College is a necessary means to the end of finding a good job, acquiring financial security and pursuing a fulfilling life. Colleges and graduate schools accept a shrinking percentage of applicants every year and the competition for such slots turns students into statistics. Going to the University can make it much easier to get a job in the business world than going to Joe Schmoe College, and if it requires cutting a few corners, the sacrifice of integrity can be inconsequential to those students desperately fighting for a chance. If this is what students must do, society has a bigger problem than cheating.
Many factors place an unfathomable and untenable burden on young people and point to an increasingly competitive world in general: parents placing babies on waiting lists for good pre-schools, a crazy impersonal admissions system which may very well be run by a monkey picking names out of a hat, disparities in funding of systems and consequent disparities inopportunities, society's demand for having the right diploma and the increasing perception of necessary success in academics. Before future generations of Americans are dismissed as the offspring of a generation of liars, a further examination needs to be done on why society drives students to cheat so excessively and so unapologetically. America isn't a meritocracy and only those who understand it win in this world. Means never justify ends, but they do make us reevaluate those ends.
(Brad Cohen's column appears Thursdays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached
at bcohen@cavalieradaily.com.)
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