Why Good Students Cheat

Surprise: It’s Not Because They’re Lazy

Traditionally when we think of college students who cheat, we think of frat houses with file cabinets full of A papers and recycled multiple choice tests. We associate students who cheat with laziness, stupidity, and duplicity. As an English professor, I come down hard on cheaters: zero for the assignment, possible failure of the course.

However, my attitude has evolved in recent years. I still make a big deal out of any instance of cheating, but I also try to understand what happened and how I can help that student not make the same mistake in the future.

Since I teach writing, my assignments are usually essay or journal based, and I try to make them plagiarism proof by not simply giving routine assignments (i.e. Why is the death penalty right or wrong?). My assignments normally revolve around whatever reading or viewing the students have been doing and are specific enough that they can’t simply look up a review or buy an essay from one of the essay services. That doesn’t stop a few of them from trying to sneak something past me.

My students who cheat are not lazy, nor are they stupid. They are always female — probably because I have a preponderance of female students — and they are almost always B or A students already. The craziest part is that sometimes when they cheat, it’s on an assignment that is only worth a few points!

Now let me be clear: in the first week of class I talk a lot about plagiarism. I ask them how they feel about cheating in general. Most of them won’t forgive romantic infidelity but a few think it may be okay to cheat once in a while in school. Then I explain that it’s not helping them if I’m correcting someone else’s writing. I tell them that just because the leaders of our country these days cheat and lie, it doesn’t make it a good idea in a college class. They’re here to learn and they can’t do it if they aren’t turning in their own work. Why would they waste their money, I ask.

We then spend some time talking about how to cite sources and the importance of not stealing anyone else’s ideas or words. I explain that using a thesaurus to replace words in someone else’s work not only constitutes plagiarism, it also lends itself to awful writing. I give them the example of a student in one of my film classes who stole a passage about Psycho from the Internet and then used the thesaurus to change the term “extreme close-up” to “extraordinary near-up.” She also described the movie as “a tension frightfulness film,” replacing the phrase “a suspenseful horror film.” Dead giveaways.

Then we discuss the consequences of cheating. I inform them that for the first offense they will fail the assignment and not be allowed to make it up. Two instances of plagiarism will result in failure of the course and a report to the honor council. (In the old days, I didn’t even allow second chances.) I also explain how cheating can damage their reputations.

“You know how you all talk about us among yourselves — who’s a good teacher, who’s an easy A, et cetera. Well, we talk about you, too. Mostly we brag about the great work you do, but word about cheaters spreads fast,” I tell them. That thought hadn’t occurred to them.

Finally, I deliver the coup de grace: “I don’t write recommendation letters for cheaters. And as a fiction writer, I write some of the best recommendation letters on campus.” This always gets a laugh.

And yet. After all that, one overwhelmed, earnest young woman will still try to pass off someone else’s work as her own at some point in the term.

One year, one of my favorite students, a bright, beautiful young woman born and raised in a developing country for most of her childhood, brought in a draft of a paper for peer review. Peer review works this way: three or four students read each other’s papers one at a time and discuss each paper, making comments and asking questions. I always have a student other than the writer read the paper aloud so the writer can hear his or her work.

In this particular instance, I was sitting in the group listening to a student read the paper by this particular student. About halfway through, the tone changed and the language suddenly became quite elevated. I immediately opened my laptop and within minutes found the entire paragraph on the Internet.

“Wait,” I said. “Hold on.” I turned to the young woman and asked her to define “antipathy,” one of the words from the plagiarized passage. She hemmed and hawed and stuttered and stammered. I immediately sent the other students out of the room. I was fuming. How could this intelligent young woman be so stupid as to think she could pass this writing off as her own? She could have cited the source but she chose not to. I read her the riot act and said the worst thing I could think of: “I am so disappointed in you.” Shaken, she mustered what was left of her dignity and left with the knowledge she had just failed the assignment.

I was disappointed. But I also understood something about what had happened. This girl wasn’t lazy. Rather, she desperately wanted to look smart. She wanted to excel. She wanted her professors to think well of her. She wanted to be perceived as someone with superior academic ability. And she simply didn’t understand that the whole point of college is that you acquire those abilities with time and practice — and lots of reading. She probably also felt at a disadvantage, not having grown up in the U.S. Though she was fluent in English, it wasn’t her first language.

She also didn’t yet understand the power of an apology.

For the next class, we went out on a field trip to a museum, and I took her aside.

“Do you have something you want to say to me?” I asked.

She blinked her eyes and then a light dawned in them.

“I’m so sorry,” she said.

“You’re forgiven,” I said. Her smile could have lit up the darkest night.

I’ve had this student in several classes since then, and not once has she ever attempted to submit anyone else’s writing as her own. I may have to change my stance on recommendation letters.

Recently in my film class it happened again. The assignment was a five-point journal, and one of the questions I asked had to do with the use of “western tropes.” One of my students had missed that particular class where we discussed the concept of tropes, but she wrote the journal anyway.

When I read her assignment, I knew immediately the work was not her own. It was extremely well written — the kind of writing that only experienced, published writers produce. But she hadn’t stolen the whole thing from one single source. She must have spent an hour or so putting it together with pieces from The New Yorker, the Smithsonian, and three or four other sources. If it had been a research paper and she’d actually cited her sources, it would have been a fairly decent paper. If she’d just written her own ideas, it would have taken her a fraction of the time.

So after lecturing the whole class once again about plagiarism, I asked her to stay after class with me (on Zoom). She knew she’d been caught. The expression on her face was one of utter resignation with a hint of defiance. Instead of berating her, I asked her why she had plagiarized. She said she simply didn’t know what to write.

“Well, what are you supposed to do when you’re struggling with an assignment?” I asked.

She shrugged and said she didn’t know. Her response threw me. I make it clear to my classes that I am always open to questions, and I will happily Facetime with any student who would like a conference with me. It happens regularly enough that I know my students are aware of this policy.

“I didn’t think you’d help me,” she said. Again, I was nonplussed. Really?

“But that’s my job,” I said. “I get paid to help you.”

“Nobody else does,” she said.

I knew that wasn’t true. Most professors love to be asked for help if only because it makes us feel relevant. However, I also realized that she might not know that. It made perfect sense to me that as an African-American student, she might feel that a white professor wouldn’t understand her situation and wouldn’t be willing to help her — not because of any overt racism but because we come from different worlds.

At the university where I teach, we have a lot of first generation college students. This young woman — like many others who have resorted to cheating — is intelligent, hard working, and thoughtful. She is the first among her siblings to graduate high school. But she hasn’t been raised to know how to approach a college teacher, she sees me as an authority figure there to judge her, not to help her, and she wasn’t born with easy access to the language of the academy.

For generations, language has separated the priviliged from the oppressed. If there is only one acceptable way to express ideas, it can leave students feeling helpless — and voiceless — when they don’t know how to use that language.

My upbringing was different from many of my students’. Both of my parents graduated from an Ivy League college, and I grew up surrounded by books. My older brothers read Whitman, Nietzsche, and Kierkegaard. In school I could always rely on my command of language even when I had no idea what the hell I was talking about. I will never forget receiving an A on a paper about phenomenolgy. To this day, I can’t tell you what phenomonology is, but I could sure bullshit for a thousand words about it at the time. I may not be inherently more intelligent than my students, but because of my circumstances I automatically know how to navigate the world of words.

Again I managed to elicit an apology and this time I reiterated: I am always here for you. I want to read your ideas, your thoughts, your words — even if you don’t think you have the “right” answer, even if you don’t always sound particulary sophisticated. Honestly, I prefer my students’ own raw modes of expression to the stilted dialect of the academy.

She failed the assignment, but I think she learned the greater lesson. Her journals since that one have all been written in her true voice, and she’s made the full points on every one of them. I believe that next time she’ll ask her professor if she’s confused about an assignment, and I hope she’s one step closer to trusting her own intellect.

My students cheat because they feel at a disadvantage, and it makes sense to them to overcome that disadvantage however they can. They want approval. They want to feel accomplished. They want to be seen as equal to their peers. And sometimes they’re just overwhelmed with work, money problems, or family issues. They don’t want to look like slackers, so they take a short-cut.

It’s my job to meet them where they are, to honor their ideas, to provide resources for improvement, to be flexible when life comes at them too hard, and to be stern and yet forgiving when they stray.

Understanding why my students cheat has made me a better teacher — and maybe a better person, as well.