Cheating is on the rise on college campuses across the country according to a new study from Marshall University.
Dr. George Watson, a professor in the College of Education said data shows it may be worse than colleges say.
When the pandemic hit, many professors began what some called “emergency remote teaching.” They quickly shifted from in-class learning to an online platform.
“There has been consistent and compelling evidence that cheating has significantly increased over the past year due to online teaching and online testing," said Dr. Ashley Norris, Chief Academic and Compliance Officer of ProctorU.
A proctored exam is defined as exams that are timed that you take while proctoring software monitors your computer's desktop, webcam video and audio. The data recorded by the proctoring software is transferred to a proctoring service for review.
Professors say students took advantage of taking tests from their dorm rooms with notes or searching their computer for answers without anyone looking over their shoulders.
“Students take inappropriate shortcuts for many reasons such as academic or social pressure, to win an advantage over their classmates, or simply because they think cheating is easier than studying and learning the material. At ProctorU, we safeguard online tests and assessments by providing trained human proctors for test sessions - someone who can help students get to and through their online tests while also deterring and detecting cheating. We make sure an online test is fair for everyone,” said Dr. Norris.
According to the latest report of Academic Misconduct from the Ohio State University from the summer to Spring 2020, 41.8% of students accused of cheating came from the College of Arts and Sciences and the College of Engineering. More than 56% of students caught cheating were in the subjects of Math (234 cases), Chemistry/Biochemistry (194 cases) Computer Science/Engineering (194 cases), and Statistics (59 cases).
“Those courses also happen to have the most students and are the most offered classes which is why they stand out”, according to the Chair of the Committee on Academic Misconduct, Deborah Grzybowski.
“Academic misconduct has been impacted by COVID-19. There is no doubt about that. Students were stressed, saw an opportunity and ended up committing academic misconduct,” she said.
The university found when it comes to academic misconduct the top reasons students were charged involved, violations of course rules or assignment guidelines (1,105 charges), submitting plagiarized work (292 charges) and copying the work of another (271 charges).
The university found most of those accused of cheating did so in the lower-level courses. One-thousand-level courses represented 31.7% of cases while 6000-level courses and above represented about 1% of academic misconduct cases.
But studies show that across the country, cheating is also happening at the graduate level where the pressures are even greater to get good grades as older students are not only balancing their schoolwork but holding down a job and taking care of their own families.
“They tend to cheat a bit more,” says Dr. Grace Liang, Professor at Kansas State University who studies academic misconduct.
CBS News highlighted how some students are hiring people from other countries to complete their coursework.
Columbus State Community College also reported higher cases of academic misconduct year over year. During the 2019-20 academic year, Columbus State reported 206 cases compared to 441 during the 2020-21 academic year.
Capital University said it tracks academic conduct but when 10TV requested to see the numbers it claims, “as a private institution, we would not release that information,” said Denise Russell Director of Communications.
“As for universities, the best things they can do are to acknowledge the problem of increased cheating and make investments in educating students about misconduct and put preventions and consequences in place. They need to be sure that when students do cheat, there are consequences. Ignoring the problem only encourages it,” said Dr. Norris.