Gerry Nkombo Muuka, Timothy Todd, Bellarmine A. Ezumah
(Murray State University, Murray, KY 42071, USA)

 

Abstract: Universities worldwide have one unifying core mission and moral imperative: teaching, in such a way that our national and international students can learn relevant content knowledge and skills necessary for them to be confident and competent professional citizens of the world. In pursuit of this overarching goal, students, for their part, have a moral, professional and economic obligation to exhibit academic behaviors that are beyond reproach. This paper discusses one of the most consequential academic issues of our time: academic dishonesty among university students, citing the case of one long-standing AACSB-accredited College of Business in the Ohio Valley Conference. The paper details the school’s Academic Dishonesty Policy (ADP), and sheds light on the additional dishonesty challenges encountered in 100% online programs. Key findings include the fact that 351 students have cheated over a 9-year period, most of them disproportionately male; that international students cheat in numbers that are disproportionate to their low enrollment profiles on campus; that a preponderance of cases involve freshmen; and that undergraduates account for the bulk of cheating incidents. The school has dealt with these cases in a variety of ways including warnings; failing students on exams, quizzes and in entire courses; and the dismissal of one undergraduate student in 2007. It includes a warning that if cheating among students is not aggressively addressed by universities, the long-term consequences could be a major moral and ethical failure that would make the 2001 Enron Scandal look like a minor slap on the world’s professional and economic conscience. The paper ends with a major recommendation by way of a 10-point framework for dealing with academic dishonesty in colleges and universities. This includes the need for an effective assurance of honesty policy and honor code, ethics education, rehabilitative teaching moments, a customized honor code orientation for international students, and a comprehensive campus-wide all inclusive effort aimed at tackling one of the most consequential issues of our time.

 

Key words: assurance of honesty; academic dishonesty; plagiarism, cheating incidents; online business
courses; undergraduate students; graduate students; assurance of honesty strategy

JEL codes: I210