The Unbearable Lightness of Academic Fraud: Portuguese Higher Education Students’ Perceptions

Abstract

The perception that academic fraud is widespread in higher education affects the credibility of higher education schools, giving rise to doubts concerning the quality of learning and the students’ preparation for their professional life. Academic misconduct is presently a common research area. However, higher education schools still seem unable to contain academic fraud, given its prevalence and scope. Therefore, understanding students’ perceptions and attitudes remains critical for schools to define effective policies in promoting and defending academic integrity. Towards that aim, the results from a set of focus groups of students from a higher education school are presented. Students do not link academic fraud with unethical professional behaviour, propose more sanctions for those who commit academic fraud, and consider that certain evaluation methods favour unethical behaviour.

Economic Motives and Willingness of Young People to Participate in Fraud

“…However, the influence of gender in the conducted research is of low intensity, which is confirmed by Kramer's contingency coefficient. Also, there is no statistically significant difference between gender and: respondents' willingness to pay a bribe if it would lead to employment (χ 2 (1, n=517)=0.002, p=1.000), respondents' willingness to pay a bribe if it would lead to not paying a fine for a traffic violation (χ 2 (1, n=515)=0.896, p=0.344), respondents' willingness to pay a bribe if it would lead to faster medical intervention (χ 2 (1, n=515)=0.231, p=0.631), respondents' willingness to participate in fraud under pressure from their superiors at work (χ 2 (1, n=516)=0.638, p=0.201) and respondents' willingness to participate in fraud if this would save the company from bankruptcy (χ 2 (1, n=517)=5.601, p=0.018) (similar results can be found in Hamilton & Gabriel, 2012;Agustina et al, 2019;Mack, 2016;Ramos et al, 2020;Sunday et al, 2015).…”

“…In procedural terms, the research included: a) creating a research framework based on the study of existing literature, including identifying potential motives and tendencies of young people towards fraud; b) designing the questionnaire following the set objectives and the data collection process; c) analyzing the obtained data and drawing conclusions. The analysis of relevant literature, i.e., research papers (Hamilton & Gabriel, 2012;Agustina et al, 2019;Mack, 2016;Ramos et al, 2020;Sunday et al, 2015) made it possible to identify potential motives and tendencies that determine the readiness of young people (respondents) to participate in fraud. After that, a questionnaire consisting of 22 closed questions was created.…”

“…Young people as the target group are chosen because, according to some research, they are more prone to fraud (Hamilton & Gabriel, 2012;Agustina et al, 2019;Mack, 2016;Ramos et al, 2020;Sunday et al, 2015). These are people that feel the need to prove themselves in order to progress, so the question arises as to how ready they are to reach the goal in an immoral and illegal way and what is particularly important for society and forms the starting point is to examine the foundations of future social development.…”

Comportamientos fraudulentos entre el alumnado de grado en época de COVID-19

“…El fraude académico se puede conceptualizar como un intento deliberado de engañar (Ramos et al, 2020), constituyendo un acto ilícito. Dentro de este comportamiento, se incluyen, entre otras, prácticas como el plagio, la falsificación de información en una actividad o también la suplantación de identidad, la copia mediante el uso de materiales no autorizados o el intercambio fraudulento de información con un/a compañero/a (Agud, 2014;Burke y Sanney, 2018).…”

“…Si bien, el fraude académico en los procesos de evaluación ha sido ampliamente documentado en España (Comas et al, 2011;Foltynek, 2013;Espiñeira-Bellón et al, 2020;Sureda-Negre et al, 2020). En la última década se han concentrado la mayoría de las investigaciones realizadas sobre esta temática, ya sea porque el problema se ha agudizado por la falta de conocimiento sobre cómo contenerlo, o como resultado de la masificación de la enseñanza superior y la creciente heterogeneidad de los estudiantes que acceden a ella (Ramos et al, 2020).…”