Academic Dishonesty

Academic dishonesty on college campuses has always plagued modern learning intuitions. Today with the internet making plagiarism as easy as research students must make integrity choices for themselves. Universities have begun to push “honor codes” on students hoping to curb cheating by students. The effectiveness of this strategy remains to be seen and many believe that this is a clear indication that the nation’s moral compass is off.
In the military each branch of service has core values that help instill members with simple and clear guidelines for helping them become better soldiers and leaders. The first Air Force core value is “Integrity First” because integrity is the essential element or the foundation on which other values are built. This is important because military members represent our nation to the world and the poor choices by a few can become international incidents. Lack of integrity can lead to failure of the team or lives lost. On college campuses I believe that “honor codes” on campuses are not worth the paper there written on.
Students must make integrity choices themselves and signing a piece of paper at the beginning of the semester can easily become a distant memory when it is 3:00 a.m. and your grade for the semester is riding on what you have delayed working on until now. The choice on which path to take will be made on how you were raised and what you believe in. Not a piece of paper from the school. Dishonest or lazy students will not be deterred from cheating if their belief in completing school is more important than how they did it.
I do agree with students being clearly informed of the consequences of poor choices. Colleges that use Turnitin.com or Safeassign.com provide students with instant feedback on what they have submitted compares to millions of other sources. “Honor Codes” are only a small piece to curbing academic dishonesty but this need to be used in conjunction with clear consequences to cheating in anyway.