The Problem of Student Honesty
T HAT cheating occurs in most college classrooms will be readily admitted by most students. However, the questions of how much and why students cheat have been debated for many years without making a great deal of headway. A recent press report disclosed that in one of our southern institutions cheating had become a rather general practice in the student body and that even members of the honor council had been found guilty of dishonest conduct. As a result, the "honor system" of the institution has been under fire and is due either to join the long list of defunct organizations which have failed during the past few years or to undergo a radical change. The fact that the so-called honor systems are failing to function effectively in so many of our institutions should cause college administrators to give serious consideration to this problem. Before much headway can be made, it will be necessary to carry on a number of careful surveys such as the one referred to at the southern institution in an effort to discover why such conditions exist. Specifically, it is the writer's belief that the time is ripe for a series of extensive investigations to be made for the purpose of discovering the "why's and wherefore's" of student dishonesty. The purpose of this article is to suggest a somewhat crude approach to the problem. It is the writer's hope that other similar studies may be made so that the cumulative data may be used as a guide in analyzing the causes of student cheating. The two problems with which this study deals are the frequency of cheating in a typical college classroom, and the factors that condition or are associated with such conduct. Although this investigation was made primarily to satisfy the writer's curiosity, he hopes that the results of the study will be of interest to other teachers and educators who are concerned with the scientific study of behavior problems. Some of the data of this study corroborate the findings of other investigations; other points presented are peculiar to this study. It might be well, before proceeding with the discussion of the technique and findings of the study, to propose a few assumptions which are believed to be basic for a proper understanding of the material included in this report: First, that the cheating described in this study represents a type of undesirable behavior. Second, that