Academic Dishonesty in Graduate Business Programs: Prevalence, Causes, and Proposed Action

Abstract

Little is currently known about cheating among graduate business students. We collected data from more than 5,000 business (mostly MBA) and nonbusiness graduate students at 32 colleges and universities in the United States and Canada during the 2002-2003 and 2003-2004 academic years to test a series of hypotheses regarding the prevalence of graduate business student cheating and reasons why these students cheat. We found that graduate business students cheat more than their nonbusiness-student peers. Correlation results found cheating to be associated with perceived peer behavior, as well as the perceived certainty of being reported by a peer, and the understanding and acceptance of academic integrity policies by students and faculty. But, regression analysis results suggest that perceived peer behavior has the largest effect. Drawing from these findings and past research on undergraduate students, we propose strategies that business schools and faculty can use to promote academic integrity in graduate business programs.

Hidden Facts and the Role of Truthfulness in Academic Dishonesty

“…The presumption would be that some noble courses like Medicine and Engineering that deal with matters of life and death would be free of the finding that only 55.8% of medical students are truthful; just slightly better than tossing a coin on whom to believe! One would be tempted to augment this finding with the fact that the participation level of 60.9% is perfectly within study findings of a range 13-95% for the others 1 and made more colourful by an awareness of 80% and witnessing of the vice in progress at 75.6%. It is possible that the trends on academic dishonesty are no respecters of any given profession and this might explain why we are increasingly getting litigations aimed at respected professions like Medicine and Architecture 9,10 .…”

“…Studies done on academic dishonesty have all along been counting on the honesty and truthfulness of the respondents while at the same time exploring on a vice acknowledged to be complex and widespread [1][2][3][4] . We now have a situation where students consider dishonesty as a way of life "because everybody does it" 5,6 .…”

“…Academic dishonesty is rampant across geographical regions 1,2 and there is concern that it is rapidly rising due to technological advancement 3 . With prevalence between 13% and 95% (1), academic dishonesty is an elusive practice with hidden facts not readily discernible.…”

Identifying and profiling scholastic cheaters: Their personality, cognitive ability, and motivation.

“…We caution that this finding not be taken to suggest that fear of punishment has no impact: Indeed, there is a wealth of evidence to suggest that punishment does in fact deter students from cheating (Cizek, 1999). Rather than fear per se, it may be that perceived likelihood of being turned in by a peer is the psychological mediator (McCabe et al, 2006).…”

Enhancing Student's Learning and Satisfaction Through the Use of Social Media

“…Watson et al presented a case study of the in-class use of a video game for teaching high school history [21]. However, the use of technology may have negative impact [22][23][24][25]. Bray and Tangney [6] conducted a study to evaluate the impact of using mobile technologies in students' engagement; they found that the use of mobile technologies increases student engagement.…”