Have you ever cheated on an exam? Be honest. For those of us with guilty consciences, the stress that comes with cheating (or the idea of getting caught cheating) is enough to dissuade us from acting on the impulse to do so. However, there are others who are fine with the practice.
According to a study published in the September issue of the Academy of Management Learning and Education, which defined cheating as “copying the work of other students, plagiarizing and bringing prohibited notes into exams,” graduate business students in the United States and Canada are more likely to cheat on their work than their counterparts in other academic fields. The study of consisted of 5,300 graduate students in the United States and Canada and found that 56 percent of graduate business students admitted to cheating in the past year, with many saying they cheated because they believed it was “an accepted practice in business.”
But, business students weren’t the only ones tested. The study found 54 percent of graduate engineering students admitted to cheating, as did 50 percent of physical science students, 49 percent of medical and health-care students, 45 percent of law students, 43 percent of liberal arts students and 39 percent of social science and humanities students.
“Students have reached the point where they’re making their own rules,” said lead researcher Donald McCabe, professor of management and global business at New Jersey’s Rutgers University. “They’ll challenge rules that professors have made, because they think they’re stupid, basically, or inappropriate.”
McCabe said it’s likely that more students cheat than admit to it.
And he’s what I thought was an even more revealing (dare I say, disturbing) discovery made by researchers: according to survey comments, business school students described cheating as “a necessary measure and the sort of practice they’d likely need to succeed in the professional world.”
Sadly, these are the types of people who are running some of the world’s largest corporations and implementing the same slimy tactics they were able to get away with in college. They figure: “what’s important is getting the job done… how you get it done is less important.”
Do you know someone like this?