Cheating

I've written a few times recently about students who cheat.  They took the easy way out.  With apps, the internet, and distance teaching it's become entirely too easy to cheat and a reckoning cannot help but come, especially when our college and university students resort to it so frequently:

Our economic system is based on integrity. The reliability of our financial systems, such as banks, insurance companies, and the stock market, depends on people keeping their word. We expect deposits to be reflected in account balances, insured property that gets damaged to be replaced, and stock purchases added to portfolios. Inescapably, when dishonorable people choose to deceive, sooner or later there is a cost. 

Today, the convenience of cheating has made it more ubiquitous on college campuses, and it will eventually cost us all. Just as the economic value of four-year degrees shows signs of declining, students are leaving college unprepared academically and ethically to enter the workforce. This threatens to diminish our culture, economy, and competitiveness. An infusion of integrity is sorely needed.

Here's a staggering number:

Penn State professor Linda Treviño estimates that approximately two-thirds of the student population cheats in her book Cheating in College. As she notes, it is hard to get reliable information because you’re expecting an honest answer about cheating from someone who may well be dishonest.

Read the whole thing.