The Art of Cheating in the 21st Millennium: Innovative Mechanisms and Insidious Ploys in Academic Deceit

Abstract

Cheating is rampant throughout academia, with no hard evidence suggesting that such pedagogic deceit will wane. Cheating is most insidious on the college level, where such academic deceit has evolved from perhaps its basic pattern of merely peeking at another student’s examination, to planned deceit employing sophisticated subterfuges and interplay between two or more co-conspirators. Importantly, cheating per se may not necessarily be student initiated, but fostered by college/university staff for purposes of institutional or personal financial gain. Statistical studies (e.g., demographics) in complement with sociological and psychological factors associated with cheating have been previously described. This review does not attempt to embellish the plethora of earlier reviews or research on the subject, but stands unique in that specific case reports and recent findings are presented describing techniques or mechanisms used in the performance of academic deceit to by-pass university codes of ethics. The purpose of this work is to acquaint adjunct staff, tenure track, and perhaps senior faculty in the biological sciences and other disciplines to those mechanistic approaches used by students and college staff as well, in the commission of academic fraud. Suggestions are proposed to help detect and reduce academic deceit