Rampant Cheating Forces College to Change Honor Code
by Jim Brown
September 10, 2004
(AgapePress) - A university affiliated with the Church of Christ has changed its honor code after an anonymous student survey showed nearly half of its students admitted to cheating.Officials at Lipscomb University in Nashville, Tennessee, were shocked by the survey's revelations that 47 percent of the school's students admitted having cheated. The old honor code relied on students policing each other's academic integrity by turning in classmates who were suspected of cheating. But Lipscomb is now shifting the burden of catching cheaters to professors, who have been instructed to spend more time explaining to students what is and is not allowed.
Provost Craig Bledsoe says the university is taking a more proactive approach than it has in years past. "National statistics show that many faculty, whether ... at a Christian university or any university, are not interested in really dealing with cheating situations," he explains.
"Maybe as high as a third might ignore it, according to the Center for Academic Integrity," Bledsoe adds, but says, "We're not going to ignore it. We're going to address it head-on."
The provost says many Lipscomb students come from a culture that did not address the issue of cheating or view it as unethical. He believes the university's former academic integrity policy placed an unrealistic expectation on students.
The school's new approach, however, is designed in part "to take the burden away from the students and place it more squarely with the faculty member in his or her class," Bledsoe says, "so the faculty member becomes a little bit more responsible -- actually a whole lot more responsible -- for what's going on in the class."
Under Lipscomb University's new honor code, faculty members will now be required to discuss cheating and its ramifications with every class, and the instructors will not be allowed to leave the room while a test is taking place.
