• What does academic dishonesty mean to you? Using all four Components of Ethical Behavior (pp. 67-87 in text), describe why academic dishonesty has increased, using examples from the article to support your argument.

             Academic misconduct is an occasion whereby someone engages in cheating in any official academic exercise to achieve a higher grade. Academic misconduct can include cheating, plagiarizing, deception, or sabotaging. Cheating is an act where a person and mostly a student seek help from a partner in order to get a good mark in any formal type of academic exercise. Plagiarizing is typically an act where a student adopts the work of another person without acknowledging the owner of the work copied. A deception is an act whereby a person gives false information about a certain activity, for example, claiming to have submitted homework while in the real sense it is a lie. Sabotaging is act whereby a person hinders other people from completing their given tasks.

Academic dishonesty has increased at a high rate in the recent times due to many reasons one of them being the availability of cheap access to the internet, which is a moral sensitivity, act. The internet offers a reliable source of information whereby a person can just copy, paste and download information directly and submit as own work. In terms of moral motivation, which is an act where individuals are likely to act ethically only when evaluated with questions on how well they can relate to important values, for example, the institutions, which claim to cheat in order to achieve a higher recognition. Moral judgment is an act where an individual make a decision that what they consider is wrong or right, for example, a case where students discuss their assignments in groups against the instructions and consider it as a no offense act. Moral character as a component describes an act where during the execution of a plan persistence is required, for example, a case where a teacher or a parent does not give strict caution about academic misconduct, which leads to increased level of cheating with tolerance.

• We have studied several moral theories so far (social contract, objectivism, relativism, egoism, altruism, & untilitarianism). Which moral theory best explains the increase in academic cheating? Explain your answer using examples from the article to support.

 

            The best theory to apply to the cheating activities by the college students is that of the objectivist theory, which state that knowledge exists independently in humanity. The obligation of a learner is to get the knowledge and this is not the case with certain individuals. For example, the students at the top always cheat to thrive whereas those that are struggling cheat in order to survive. With the cheap source of information such as the internet, students are tempted to cheat just to raise their grades higher but with less understanding of the academic required response.

• If you were President of Texas A&M, describe how you could reduce academic dishonesty at Texas A&M? Use information from the article. What moral theory describes the Aggie Code of Honor?

 

There are several methods that can be used in reducing the student cheating activities at Texas A&M. One of the ways is by encouraging the parents to be stricter and not offer any help in terms of responding to any assignments given to their kids. This will help reduce the numerous cases where a student has the assignments done by the parents of which the assignments are full of plagiarized information. The teachers also should now become very serious in any case where a student has been found to have plagiarized or copied information and submitted the same as a personal response. Parenting has now changed from the norm of being obedient respectful and this is an issue that should be addressed to change this perspective.

Aggie code of honor is an effort to bring together the goals of all the Texas A&M grownups towards a higher code in terms of ethics and the dignity of a person. This code can be well explained by the social contract moral theory, which states that personal morals are independent with a view of forming a comfortable society for all in which they all live.