Crackdown on UNL cheating is welcome

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The new emphasis on catching cheaters at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln is an appropriate response to a disappointing trend. The Internet has made it easy for students to copy other people’s work with a few clicks of the mouse.

Sixty-five cases of plagiarism — more than the previous two years combined — were handled by the Student Judicial Affairs Department last year.

The trend is nationwide. The Center for Academic Integrity reported earlier this year about one-fourth of students in its survey admitted to serious test cheating in the last year. About half admitted to serious cheating on written assignments.

Internet plagiarism is widespread. In 1999, only 10 percent of students admitted to copying material without citing a source. Now almost 40 percent of students admit to the practice. Seventy-seven percent of students “believe such cheating is not a very serious issue,” according to the center.

In one sense the rise is academic dishonesty is not surprising. Cheating increasingly is common in high school. The center reported that studies of 18,000 students at 61 public and parochial schools showed that 70 percent of students reported serious test cheating and 60 percent admitted to plagiarism.

One of the most significant measures taken at UNL is providing professors access to Safe Assignment, an Internet-based service that checks papers turned in by students against an enormous database of previously checked papers. The Safe Assignment software underlines suspect material and allows the professors to check it themselves.

Despite the prevalence of cheating on college campuses, many professors still allow the cheaters to slide through without taking action. In surveys of 10,000 faculty in the past three years, 44 percent failed to report the student to the appropriate campus authority, the center reported.

“Students suggest that cheating is higher in courses where it is well-known that faculty members are likely to ignore cheating,” the center noted dryly.

It’s encouraging to know that on the UNL campus there are professors such as Psychology Professor John Flowers who unabashedly describe themselves as “sticklers” on issues of academic honesty.

Students who cheat their way through the university are cheating themselves. They will arrive in the workplace without essential skills for expressing themselves. Plagiarists will have little experience in distilling and organizing raw material — in essence they will have failed to learn how to think.

The Internet may have made it easier for students to cheat, but the same tools can be used to catch them. Honest students at UNL will appreciate the effort.