Not many professors deny that cheating occurs in their classrooms, but few professors are reporting such offenses.

Despite the almost three-year university push for academic integrity awareness, only 37 undergraduate academic integrity violations – .003 percent of the student body – were reported to the newly formed Academic Integrity Office in its first semester, according to Ruth Stein, interim director of the AIO.

This is even fewer than before the creation of the AIO, when individual schools and colleges handled violations, according to figures from the College of Arts and Sciences and the Martin J. Whitman School of Management.

Such numbers might seem to suggest cheating isn’t a big problem.

But a staggering 74 percent of Syracuse University undergraduates – more than 9,000 students – admitted to cheating in some form, according to a January 2005 survey.

‘That has to be a drop in the bucket of what is really happening,’ said Whitman professor Eletta Callahan, of the 37 violations last semester.

This gap between confirmed cheaters and reported offenses suggests students are getting away with cheating or simply not being reported to the central office. Academic integrity officials say there is little they can do to prevent the underreporting – that vigilance must come from the professors themselves.

‘We as the faculty need to understand that it is part of our job not to look the other way,’ said Callahan, who chairs the Vice Chancellor and Provost Committee on Academic Integrity. ‘It is part of the educational process to face academic dishonesty when we see it and to address it.’

The whole purpose of the new central AIO and uniform policy is hindered when violations are not reported, said Sandra Hurd, associate provost, who oversees the AIO.

One of the main reasons the policy was created was to better catch repeat offenders across all of the schools and colleges, which cannot be accomplished if the office is not informed of these cheaters.

In addition to the need for proactive professors, last semester’s reported offenses also show: plagiarism was the most common offense; most violations reported are in Arts and Sciences classes, but are committed by members of many different home schools and colleges. And the most violations reported were committed by seniors, which suggests they may have gotten away with cheating in the past.

Before the AIO

Prior to the creation of the AIO at SU, violations were reported to administrators within the individual schools or colleges. About 35 to 40 cases a semester were reported within Arts and Sciences alone, according to an April 2005 forum, as reported in The Daily Orange on April 21, 2005.

Twenty-seven of last semester’s reported violations were committed in Arts and Sciences classes, which leaves less than one violation, on average, in each of the 11 other schools and colleges at SU. The offenders, however, were members of various home schools and colleges.

In Whitman, between the fall of 2001 and spring of 2006, there was an average of nine violations per semester, according to figures provided by Stephen Matyas, acting assistant dean for undergraduate programs.

As to the decrease in offenses, Callahan said Whitman and Arts and Sciences were the only schools with readily available statistics on cheating prior to the AIO, and that many schools said they had very few or no offenses reported.

The School of Education has record two official offenses in the past five years before the AIO, said Karen Hiiemae, chair of the college committee on academic affairs, in an e-mail. She said there were a few other additional offenses resolved without the involvement of the dean.

The problem

SU academic integrity officials say enforcement of the new policy must come from the instructor, but study results show this simply doesn’t always happen.

About one-third of SU professors said they had suspected a case of academic dishonesty but had not followed it up, according to the VPCAI study, which Callahan called ‘not an encouraging thing.’

Hurd attributed the low number of violations to two main reasons.

No. 1: students who escape punishment completely.

There are types of cheating that are very hard to catch, Hurd said. It can often be very difficult in some cases to prove that a student is cheating.

‘There is a layer of cheating that simply doesn’t get caught,’ she said.

No. 2: professors who choose not to report violations to the central office for various reasons.

‘It either doesn’t occur to them or doesn’t get to the top of the list of things to do to actually do the report and file the paperwork,’ she said.

Stein agreed she is not seeing all violations that occur.

‘I am sure there are some faculty who are finding problems and they are failing the student or whatever they are doing and they aren’t reporting it to me,’ she said. ‘There is no way I can find out, but I’m sure that happens.’

A national struggle

SU is not alone, however, in the struggle with getting professors to report cheating offenses.

On more than 60 college campuses nationwide, about 70 percent of undergraduate students said they had cheated in some form, according to a 2005 study sponsored by the national Center for Academic Integrity.

But in the same study, 44 percent of professors said they had been aware of student cheating in a course in the last three years, yet had never reported a student to the proper campus authority.

A look at other universities also shows while more established academic integrity offices – though a fairly uncommon feature – may have slightly higher numbers, students escaping punishment is not solely an SU problem.

The Academic Integrity Office at George Washington University, which has an undergraduate enrollment of about 10,000, receives about 100 cases a year – 1 percent of the student population – a number which has stayed pretty consistent for the last few years, said Tim Terpstra, director of the office for the last 10 years.

The first few years of the office did start with even fewer reported violations, Terpstra said.

GWU’s policy requires that faculty report all academic integrity violations to the AIO so that both sides receive due process, Terpstra said.

Professors at SU, however, are ‘strongly encouraged,’ but not required to report their violations, according to SU’s policy, Stein said.

Similar to SU, the University of Minnesota Twin Cities’ Academic Integrity Office also ‘strongly encourages’ professors to report violations, which is due to its huge undergraduate enrollment – which reaches almost 40,000 undergraduate students, said Sharon Dzik, director of the office. Some of the many schools and colleges may choose to handle violations separately, she said.

Its office saw only 138 reported undergraduate violations last year – .003 percent of the student body, Dzik said.

Similar to GWU, Dzik said violations were lower in the office’s first few years.

Both Dzik and Terpstra said SU should expect to see slightly higher numbers once faculty get used to having a central office for academic integrity.

‘I think it was harder to get faculty to report in the beginning simply since it was unknown,’ said Terpstra, who also attributed the office’s growing pains to having two directors in the first year.

Lack of awareness of what an academic integrity office is and what it does causes underreporting of violations, Dzik said.

The exception

Of course, not all SU professors are lax about academic integrity enforcement.

Political science professor Thomas Raven has viewed cheating as a grave offense for his entire life.

As a college student, after peer reviewing a fellow student’s lengthy research paper, Raven said he felt something seemed fishy. A trip to the library confirmed it was indeed a case of plagiarism. Raven eventually turned his fellow student in, which led to the expulsion of the cheater – a second semester senior.

‘I took it that seriously as an undergrad,’ Raven tells his class at the beginning of each semester about academic integrity. ‘And I take it even more seriously now.’

Though in his two years at SU, Raven has not yet had a case of academic dishonesty. He said he would not hesitate to enforce the new policy if he felt a student was cheating in any way.

Even vigilant professors can have a hard time enforcing academic integrity, since in some cases it can be hard to prove a student is cheating, Raven said.

The rise of Internet usage is only making cheating easier, especially when it comes to paper writing, Raven said.

This can be seen by the 26 violations from last semester, which were cases of plagiarism, more than 60 percent of the total violations, Stein said. Other less-common violations included cheating on exams, working together on individual assignments and falsifying names on sign-in sheets.

‘I am aware that this stuff goes on, but to an extent, there’s not much more you can do about it,’ said Raven, adding he changes his tests and paper topics each semester, to try and prevent cheating.

‘We are vigilant to the extent of which we can be,’ he said.

The cheaters

Along with finding many SU students admitted to cheating, the VCPAI survey also found those who cheated – did it often, with 84 percent of those who had cheated saying they had done it more than once.

This is one of the big reasons the committee recommended the creation of the AIO. The intent was for students who cheat in classes at different schools and colleges to be caught.

The AIO director at Minnesota agreed.

‘Catching repeat offenders is one of the main reasons for having a centralized office,’ Dzik said. ‘Without an office, there is no way to catch repeaters – people who are habitual cheaters.’

Of the 37 undergraduate violations reported at SU last fall, there were seven first years, 10 sophomores, five juniors, 13 seniors and two newly reported violations, which are of unknown years. An additional five graduate student offenses were also reported.

The high number of seniors suggests they may have gotten away with cheating in the past, Stein said.

Callahan said she hopes the existence of the AIO will deter both repeat and first-time cheaters, but that this will only happen if professors do their job as well.

‘I hope that what will happen in the long run is that faculty, instructors and staff become more familiar with and comfortable with the university system, that they will be more likely to report cases,’ she said. ‘I also think that this is very much linked to the educational efforts of the AIO and the need for education of not just students but everybody else.’

The future of the AIO’s effectiveness seems to lie in the hands of the professors who enforce its policies.

‘That’s where the system is going to break down,’ said Stein, of violations that don’t get reported. ‘That’s a real problem.’

Published on March 6, 2007 at 12:00 pm