In this two part blog series, I am exploring a spate of recent reports that indicate academic misconduct is more prevalent among international students. Part I focuses on the definition of misconduct and summarizes the main points presented in these recent publications. Part II more directly addresses the implications of these claims and examines what, if any, role the IAU might play in mediating these concerns.
| Academic misconduct is the performance/nonperformance or attempt at an action that might result in an individual receiving an unfair academic advantage or creating an unfair academic (dis)advantage for others in the academic community. These can include, but are not limited to, attending classes for another person, sitting for someone else's exam, plagiarizing, or offering compensation in exchange for college admission, copies of exams, grades, or degrees. |
| Teddi Fishman, director of the International Center for Academic Integrity, stated that approximately 60% of all students on U.S. campuses owned up to cheating at least once in the last year, with the majority of it never resulting in the filing of a formal complaint. She continues on to explain that cheating at that level has been the norm for 23 years. The Open Education Database presents 8 Astonishing Stats on Academic Cheating. These include an informal poll of U.S. college students that supports Fishman's findings on the admission of cheating, 16.5% did not regret it, 41% of Americans and 34% of college officials considered academic cheating a serious issue, 85% feel cheating is essential, 95% of cheaters don't get caught, a single website providing free term papers to students averaged 80,000 hits per day. |
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| This summer the Wall Street Journal released an article about the prevalence of "cheating" among international students is 5.1 allegation reports per 100 students than the one report out of 100 for domestic students. Earlier in the year, The Times of London reported that almost 50,000 cases of "cheating" over a three year period with students from countries outside of the European Union being four times as likely to "cheat" on coursework and exams. During the 2014-2015 academic year, the Department of Immigration in Australia revoked 9,250 student visas citing academic misconduct. In the first seven months of the following year, they had already cancelled 9,000. The Department of Homeland Security reported that 586,208 international undergraduates attended a higher education institution in the United States in 2015-2016; 28% from China, 9% from South Korea, 9% Saudi Arabia, 4% from India. Why are we seeing international students in such large numbers? It all comes down to money. Those student pay up to three times the tuition and fees of domestic students. Many public universities welcome this additional revenue because of the ever-shrinking educational subsidies provided by the states. The potential consequences of large spread academic misconduct on the part of international students could have a significant impact on an institution. |
| In a 2015 piece about academic integrity, the Times Higher Education attempted to explain why international students may differ from their U.S. peers when it comes to approaching ethical decisions, biases, and strategies. “A comparison of the effects of ethics training on international and US students” (Science and Engineering Ethics) found that international students displayed lower level skills for ethical decision making. They proposed this may be due to 'a tendency to oversimplify dilemmas.' In an interview with Logan Steele, first author on the study, he states that international students tend to rely on "rules, guidelines, and principles" when making critical ethical decisions and are not as adept at working with the complexity of ambiguous situations. In a recent article published by University World News, a great deal of attention is paid to differences in academic cultures. Students coming from countries where authoritarian learning dominates the educational systems may be less willing to consider to question and reflect on ethical decisions. They may struggle to understand the U.S. standards of academic integrity or simply not accept them; in several countries student collaboration is a norm rather than a "cheating" incident. An insufficient command of the language, paper structures, or emphasis placed on academic writing were also included as further reasons for cheating. One interesting idea put forth was that ethical decisions may be more difficult for students from countries with endemic corruption. In a study of public universities in Russia, it was found that an awareness of and participating in unethical practices increased as students advanced through their academic careers. In many of the above articles about academic misconduct, it is noted that there is intense financial, social, and familial pressure on international students to perform at high levels regardless of the emotional, psychological, or physical costs. With scholarships, visas, housing support, and future employment tied to academic performance, the temptation to cheat in order to gain an advantage is incredibly tempting. |
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 Facing up to international students who cheatAcademic misconduct with the students’ involvement includes various types of cheating, such as attending classes or sitting for exams on another student’s behalf, plagiarism, as well as services, gifts, informal agreements or payments in exchange for admission, grades, advance copies of exams and tests, preferential treatment, graduation and sham degrees.  | International students 'oversimplify' ethical dilemmas.Training needs to recognise US and overseas students’ different approaches to decision-making, study concludes  Foreign Students Seen Cheating More Than Domestic OnesPublic universities in the U.S. recorded 5.1 reports of alleged cheating for every 100 international students, versus one report per 100 domestic students, in a Wall Street Journal analysis |
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