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Persuasive Speech

Without a doubt it is something that we have all thought about doing. Many of us have done it in one way or another whether we are willing to admit it or not. It has been and will continue to be an issue for school communities through out the nation. What I am referring to is academic dishonesty.
Academic dishonesty is not something that started with the increasinguse of the internet. Cheating can be traced back many years and takes place all over the world. One incident in China reported that civil service exams were given in cubicles and the participants were searched in order to prevent cheating. In this case the death penalty was going to be enacted to violators. Following the test it was still reported that some of the participants found a way tocheat and risked the consequences.
In America research has been done to see if the frequency of academic dishonesty has been increasing, but there has been little evidence to prove this. Despite this information it is believed that in higher education institutions academic dishonesty has become more of a problem. This is due to the belief that college students are not as concerned withlearning the subject as they are with the grade they will receive in the course. The Carnegie Council of Policy Studies in Higher Education identified an ethical decline in the attitude of college students, and that they believe it is necessary for them to cheat in order to make the grades that are required. Multiple surveys have been given testing how much cheating actually occurs in college. Thenumbers vary depending on how many students and universities are studied but between different surveys somewhere between 50 and 70 percent of students admitted to some form of academic dishonesty.
I than took a look at where academic dishonesty occurs the most in universities. Donald McCabe of Rutgers University Business School did a study on the different schools in universities and wherestudents were considered to be the worst with cheating. The highest ranking belonged to journalism majors where 27 percent of students admitted to stealing answers directly on tests. Business majors were not far behind where 26 percent of students admitted to cheating on tests. The lowest ranking school belonged to the sciences where 19 percent of the students reported cheating during exams.These numbers seem low compared to the 50 to 70 percent of students who committed some form of academic dishonesty, but these figures are just from tests which means that most of the academic integrity violations occur with plagiarism and other violations.
These numbers may seem high, but when taken in to perspective they become more believable. The different offenses include cheating, plagiarism,fabrication or falsification of data, misuse of academic resources, alteration of records, academic misconduct, and complicity. Some of these categories even have sub-categories with different offenses that are related. With all of these standards and codes to meet, the high percentage of students that have admitted to committing some form of academic dishonesty becomes more believable.The question then becomes why the number of violations in academic integrity is so high. There are a few main reasons which include situations where students feel cheating is needed, personal qualities that make some students more inclined to cheating, and an effort to make better grades. These reasons all seem like viable excuses to violate academic integrity. I know that all of us have feltthe pressure and the temptation to do whatever it takes to meet a grade even if it means cheating, plagiarizing or any other violation, but it is important that this temptation does not get the best of us because the consequences for getting caught can be much worse than the benefit of one grade.












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