Alumni Perspective: Don’t Cheat Yourself

By Nic Bullock

College is great, for your mind and hopefully great for your prospective job opportunities as well. Unfortunately for students here in the United States higher education is also very expensive so it has always baffled me to see that classmate who shamelessly leaves a puddle of drool on their desk as they sleep through every lecture. That’s not to say that most of us have never nodded off a time or two during a class, but you know the type of student I am talking about… The one who is either sleeping or playing on their phone and then will ask you for help on an assignment, or worse- cheat. 

About 17 years ago I was sitting in class during a World Civ II lecture and the professor was explaining how traditional classrooms would most likely be replaced with digitally mediated class formats. He was not entirely wrong since you can now earn degrees without ever having stepped foot on a college campus. With this new way of learning there are new ways of cheating your way through classwork. In fact, it is not difficult to find answers on Google for exam questions, which many times the questions can be found online word for word. I spoke with a childhood friend of mine, Dr. Krishna Hart Pattisapu, who has been a professor of Communication for several years at the University of Denver and an affiliate instructor at Front Range Community College in Colorado about her experience with students who have attempted to cheat on assignments. To my amazement she told me, “One time I read a paper where someone actually plagiarized something I had written.” 

With the proliferation of online learning, there has been an increase in reported cheating. According to a study by Bowers (1964) about 26% of participants admitted to cheating compared to a study in 2007 study (Klien et al.) in which about 70% of participants admitted to cheating. While it can be useful to have resources with which to study, I can’t help but to feel like it is a major waste of money and time and defeats the purpose of seeking an education to just copy and paste answers. 

My friend, Dr. Pattisapu, made a good point, saying, “I think a lot of times cheating happens because folks have low self-confidence, or they are very strapped for time and desperate to find a way to juggle it all.” At different times I could relate to all of those reasons, and again, the cost of classes is a reason to do what you can not to fail. Ultimately, however, it does not serve the student to engage in the practice of cheating. For now, Google is free, but critical thinking skills and instant recall of information you’ve learned is worth more than the student loans on which you’ll most likely make payments for the majority of your remaining lifetime.