Parsing words seems to have become an art form. This story in the Duke Chronicle shines a light on the troubling issue of academic dishonesty — cheating — and the fact that a lot of students surveyed don’t think, for example, that “unauthorized collaboration” is actually cheating. From the story:
The survey compared Duke to “code schools,” those with an honor code, and “non-code schools,” those without an honor code, in seven different categories of academic dishonesty. In every category, code schools had lower rates of cheating than non-code schools.
Duke performed similarly to code schools in all but two categories. According to the study, Duke students reported a 5 percent higher rate in unauthorized collaboration and nearly double the rate of falsifying lab data.
Among surveyed students from the Pratt School of Engineering, 36 percent admitted to falsifying lab data. But of the students who had completed lab work in the Trinity College of Arts and Sciences only 26 percent admitted the same breach.
Approximately 40 percent of upperclassmen in both schools considered the act trivial cheating.
Ethics class, anyone?
