I am reading an article at MSN about a survey to be published in Academy of Management Learning and Education Journal indicating that 56 percent of graduate students admitted as cheaters. According to the article there were 5,300 survey respondents from US and Canada coming from 54 colleges and universities. 623 of these correspondents are students in 32 graduate business programmes. Worst, it was suggested that a lot of this respondents were actually afraid to say they were cheaters and as such 56 percent may be even higher in actual.
The reason for cheating is a result of a highly competitive environment and keeping clean means ending up at the bottom. In an excerpt:
The most significant reason for cheating, he believes, is that students see their peers being dishonest, in a highly charged competitive environment where the prize is the best company internship or Wall Street job. “The moment they see somebody cheating they are placed at a disadvantage.” They act by cheating themselves, he says.
Mr McCabe, who has been conducting studies on cheating in US colleges for the past 16 years, believes the strongest deterrent is for the business school to have a strong honour code in place, something that is missing at most business schools today.
I never thought that cheating occurs in MBA programmes especially when students are already expected to exercise a high degree of integrity and professionalism required to run businesses in the future. As it turned out, the level of competitiveness left them with no choice but to go with the flow or get buried.
Though majority of the students are cheaters, there are still people who uphold integrity amidst outside pressures, needs and continuously play the game fairly. I hope they have strong personalities and drive to convince the 56 percent of the population to compete without cheating
Continue reading the story here.
[tags]Business, Business School[/tags]
