We need to take a tougher stance on cheating students

As the UAE tries to build a meritocratic society, cheating cannot be tolerated, says Ayesha Almazroui.

The sad truth is that cheating is common in our education institutions. It is an epidemic that has a negative impact not only on our schools and colleges, but also on the country’s institutions.

A recent study by Zeenath Khan, a PhD student at the University of Wollongong Dubai, found that about 80 per cent of the 2,000 students from six private and public institutions surveyed admitted to cheating by either copying other students’ work and submitting it as their own, or paying someone to write their papers or do their exams for them.

It is easy to deny that the problem exists and refuse to accept this shocking figure. But the survey confirmed what anyone who has studied – or is studying – in UAE universities would have witnessed: there is a widespread culture of plagiarism among UAE students.

The issue is a "taboo", as the researcher correctly told The National, and so there has been very little research into the problem in the country. But we know it exists, many of us just treat it as "normal" or as a reality that cannot be altered.

Cheating is, and probably will always be, part of life. But does that mean we should do nothing about it?

Unfortunately, many students cheat because they don’t take their education seriously.

From my experience, I think that many of them are there because they have to be – to get a degree, get a job and move on with their lives. Many of them are bored with their college experience and just want to get it over with.

It’s easy to see why students these days end up believing that cheating is an accepted part of success. Peer pressure plays a major role in enforcing such ideas. The study found that one of the main reasons students cheat is the significant amount of pressure to be a part of a group in the university experience. By “helping” other students, as some of them put it, they help themselves succeed academically and socially.

Even those who don’t want to cheat could be influenced by seeing their friends cheating, or worse, because it’s common and “everybody does it”, some of them end up cheating. Those who study and refuse to cheat are often looked at as “selfish” and struggle to get along with other students.

The advancement in technology provided students with innovative ways of cheating that never existed before. Traditional detectable ways are no longer the most popular.

The study found that students have become “more savvy” after the growing popularity of plagiarism-checking software among professors. Many of them are paying companies to write their essays and papers for them.

I’ve noticed this even during my graduate studies.

Because most students have full-time jobs and usually don’t have (or make) time to write, they resort to specialised academic-writing companies to get the work done for them. Some of them even talked openly about it.

In an email exchange that was sent to The National, some academics expressed concerns that online bespoke writing services have become very common among UAE students.

One academic adviser said that the topic came under discussion with a few of her students, who told her that Emirati college students are large clients of these companies, which guarantee confidentiality and not being detectable by any anti-plagiarism software used by professors.

Some of them even offer to tailor the writing style to the client’s way of writing based on a few samples.

Advanced electronics can’t be blamed for our increasing willingness to tolerate this kind of behaviour. The study found that some teachers could even “accept that it happens but do not feel it is their responsibility to police it”. Some others “avoid the subject entirely because they feel it reflects badly on them”.

Cheating, in any case, must never be tolerated. In order to build a meritocratic society, we ought to start from these fundamental things that some people do not take as seriously as they should.

Ending cheating, or at least reducing it, requires more than plagiarism-checking software. It requires the willingness of the administrations and faculties of all local universities to take a stance against it.

It will also require bringing back the notion that integrity is a crucial element in being an honourable person and establishing a good reputation.

Students should understand that college is more than a job fair; it’s about gaining knowledge and building character.

Cheating needs to be dealt with as a cultural problem. It is up to us to make it intolerable not only in our education institutions, but throughout society.

Every time we let it pass as something unavoidable, we help in ensuring that the culture of cheating is passed on to the next generation.

Do we really want that?

On Twitter: @AyeshaAlmazroui