The Art of Cheating in the 21st Millennium: Innovative Mechanisms and Insidious Ploys in Academic Deceit

Abstract

Cheating is rampant throughout academia, with no hard evidence suggesting that such
pedagogic deceit will wane. Cheating is most insidious on the college level, where such
academic deceit has evolved from perhaps its basic pattern of merely peeking at another
student’s examination, to planned deceit employing sophisticated subterfuges and interplay
between two or more co-conspirators. Importantly, cheating per se may not necessarily be
student initiated, but fostered by college/university staff for purposes of institutional or
personal financial gain. Statistical studies (e.g., demographics) in complement with
sociological and psychological factors associated with cheating have been previously
described. This review does not attempt to embellish the plethora of earlier reviews or
research on the subject, but stands unique in that specific case reports and recent findings are
presented describing techniques or mechanisms used in the performance of academic deceit
to by-pass university codes of ethics. The purpose of this work is to acquaint adjunct staff,
tenure track, and perhaps senior faculty in the biological sciences and other disciplines to
those mechanistic approaches used by students and college staff as well, in the commission of
academic fraud. Suggestions are proposed to help detect and reduce academic deceit.