Six times as many in five years
While there were only four students in the whole of 2002 that were found guilty of cheating, 17 have been «convicted» between January and April of this year.
Publisert
Sist oppdatert
In 2002, the year before the Quality Reform of higher education was introduced, only four students at the University of Oslo (UiO) were caught cheating. Two years later the number has risen to 21, and since then there has been between 18 and 26 cases per year. It looks like 2008 could be the worst year yet. By April of this year 39 students were suspected of cheating, and 17 of these were found guilty. UiO currently only has statistics as far as April.
While students previously only had one exam a year, the reform led to the number rising to a minimum of six. In addition to this there are obligatory essays and assignments.
– I think that the increased work pressure that came with the demands relating to study progression may lead to more students choosing to take shortcuts, says Monica Bakken, Director of Academic Affairs at UiO.
– Cheating is disrespectful
The high number of accusations for 2008 is connected to the fact that there have been two major cheating cases at the university so far this year. In February, 11 PhD students were accused of cheating on a home exam on medical ethics. In addition to this, 20 informatics students are suspected of cheating after the assignments they handed in gave results in the Department of Informatics’ own anti-plagiary programme, Joly.
Heine Skipenes, Leader of the Student Parliament, thinks that cheating should be severely punished.
– To be honest, I do not think that cheating has decreased up through the years. Cheating is a nuisance and it is disrespectful and dishonest towards teachers and fellow students, says Skipenes.
Monica Bakken agrees with Skipenes that attitudes towards teaching may have changed over time.
– Cheating is probably more commonplace than before, due to more career competition and pressure to perform than previously and also due to the fact that attitudes towards taking short cuts in order to reach goals have changed, says the Director of Academic Affairs.
Testing control methods
During the last few years, the university has been working on finding a programme that will be able to discover plagiarism by searching databases containing the syllabus and other academic material, and checking against each essay. The programme, which is called Ephorus, has been tested at several faculties, and at the Faculty of Law it helped to unveil several attempts at cheating in 2005.
Last summer the Faculty of Social Sciences also started a pilot project in which they tested out the programme in connection with assignments that were handed in using Classfronter. Anne-Lene Andresen, Head of the Department of Academic Affairs at the faculty, says that she is positive to introducing the programme on a permanent basis.
– We have had a Ephorus pilot project during the last semester and we are considering whether to keep using it.
8 out of 10 cheat in USA
A survey carried out by psychology researchers at Ohio State University that was made public during the weekend, shows that 24 per cent of students at the university in Ohio replied that it was likely or very likely that they would cheat in one or more of their subjects during the next 30 days. At the same time, the researchers refer to other recent studies in which up to 80 per cent of students claimed to have cheated once or more during their studies.
Heine Skipenes is appalled by the statistics.
– If these numbers are correct, then I find it hair-raising. I may sound naïve, but I do not think that attitudes towards cheating are that bad at UiO. But if things turn out to be anything as bad as this in the future, then that would be very unfortunate. Cheating should not happen. Period.
