NationStates Jolt Archive

And engineering and med students are also more likely to cheat as well...

BOSTON (Reuters) - Graduate business students in the United States and Canada are more likely to cheat on their work than their counterparts in other academic fields, the author of a research paper said on Wednesday.

The study of 5,300 graduate students in the United States and Canada found that 56 percent of graduate business students admitted to cheating in the past year, with many saying they cheated because they believed it was an accepted practice in business.

Following business students, 54 percent of graduate engineering students admitted to cheating, as did 50 percent of physical science students, 49 percent of medical and health-care students, 45 percent of law students, 43 percent of liberal arts students and 39 percent of social science and humanities students.

"Students have reached the point where they're making their own rules," said lead author Donald McCabe, professor of management and global business at New Jersey's Rutgers University. "They'll challenge rules that professors have made, because they think they're stupid, basically, or inappropriate."

McCabe said it's likely that more students cheat than admit to it.

The study, published in the September issue of the Academy of Management Learning and Education, defined cheating as including copying the work of other students, plagiarizing and bringing prohibited notes into exams.

McCabe said that in their survey comments, business school students described cheating as a necessary measure and the sort of practice they'd likely need to succeed in the professional world.

"The typical comment is that what's important is getting the job done. How you get it done is less important," McCabe said. "You'll have business students saying all I'm doing is emulating the behavior I'll need when I get out in the real world."

http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=oddlyEnoughNews&storyID=2006-09-21T120800Z_01_N20379527_RTRUKOC_0_US-LIFE-CHEATING.xml&WTmodLoc=NewsArt-L3-Oddly+Enough+NewsNews-3

It says a lot about the current state on North America when MBA, engineering, and MD students are cheating more than law students. :eek: :(

Or maybe law students are just less likely to get to caught

It starts when they're kids.

Combine two messages from your parents:

1. Do everything you can to get ahead.
2. Lying and cheating is ok, as long as you win.

I've met quite a few well-educated young people who think that contracts are something you wipe your ass with while plundering a company.

Who would probably sell their own mother on the street.

And I've met even younger kids who are even more ethically challenged.

Well business students cheat...yeah!

Just at the undergraduate level most of the business students I have met (not all by any means) are preposterously incompetent and many regularly cheat or at the very least dose themselves on psychoactive drugs so they can read an entire book in one night and remember it for the test tommorow or somesuch.

Or maybe law students are just less likely to get to caught

Or just more honest about it? It is by the students admissions after all...

56 percent of graduate business students admitted to cheating in the past year, with many saying they cheated because they believed it was an accepted practice in business.

It starts when they're kids.

Combine two messages from your parents:

1. Do everything you can to get ahead.
2. Lying and cheating is ok, as long as you win.

I've met quite a few well-educated young people who think that contracts are something you wipe your ass with while plundering a company.

Who would probably sell their own mother on the street.

And I've met even younger kids who are even more ethically challenged.

You got that right.

Reminds me of the scandal that occured in my former scout troop a couple of years after I left.

An Eagle candidate, at his board of review, admitted he'd never cooked a meal - ever - even though he'd earned both the cooking skill award and cooking merit badge. His father was the only buisness type my troop had. He recieved those on his fathers watch.

I always found it odd that honesty would be celebrated in anyone's, let alone an esteemed professional's, lengthy obituary, assuming a dead man worth half a page of print necessarily possessed such a hardly exotic quality. I haven't seen obituaries for mailmen, doctors, bartenders, plumbers, stuntmen, boxers, singers, astronauts, lumberjacks, chefs or ballroom dance instructors lauding their honesty. The focus is on how loving, decent, caring or "wonderful" the person was. Law is the only field where the professional community makes a conscious effort to rehabilitate the deceased, as though his title soiled him with Original Sin, or compliments would pay his fare across Styx like the coins Greeks used to put over the dead's eyes. "Alfred was a great lawyer, but he also told the truth." Call him honest three times and maybe Phlegyas'll put the old coot in business class - the only way Al traveled.

Most people dismiss these queer obituaries as pap coughed up by PR pros. There's a perception lawyers rip and smear their competitors' reputations. Some do, but they're generally fools. Most lawyers wax melodramatic ad nauseum about how upright and honest their colleagues are. The primary Pavlovian basis for this effusive gushing is simple economics - every other lawyer is a potential source of referral business. Best not to shit where you eat. But there's a little more to it than that. The honor among thieves allows lawyers to feel human, to pretend they're not angling, scheming, and backstabbing in every aspect of their lives... that they can be decent, complimentary, docile people. They want to believe they can pervert procedure, twist facts, file frivolous actions and lie to clients and the court for money, yet remain morally beyond reproach.

http://www.philalawyer.net/archives/witness_preparation_part_1.phtml

People are more likely to cheat when there is a lot at stake.

Or maybe more lawyers just lied on the survey.

I'm an undergraduate business student, looking at getting my MBA soon after graduating. Of course we cheat. I didn't much sleep, and I'm in a daze from classes all day, but I'll try to explain why.

We try to take a situation and make the best of it. We are in a constant state of competition (most business schools use a curve where only a certain percentage of the class gets the A, so you can't just be smart, you have to be smarter). So we look for every possible way to achieve a better grade. This includes copying work, sharing old tests and notes, working together on assignments, even those meant to be individual, and general cheating in any manner we won't get caught in.
In addition, most business students, graduate and undergraduate, have jobs, lives, and careers that we need to succeed in just as badly as we do in school. We don't always have time to do things legitimately, so we do our best to get by, and minor ways of cheating just make life easier (at least this is my philosophy)
And finally, Med students need to know what they're doing or they don't become doctors or malpractice kills them. People studying law absolutely devote themselves usually and therefore don't need to cheat. In business school, you learn basic ideas and theories, but application and usage varies between each company, so we never really need to directly apply what we learn in school. I'm not going to school to learn things that will help me in my career - I'm going to get a nice diploma that someone will see, say that kid is smart, and hire me... more or less.

I'm an undergraduate business student, looking at getting my MBA soon after graduating. Of course we cheat. I didn't much sleep, and I'm in a daze from classes all day, but I'll try to explain why.

We try to take a situation and make the best of it. We are in a constant state of competition (most business schools use a curve where only a certain percentage of the class gets the A, so you can't just be smart, you have to be smarter). So we look for every possible way to achieve a better grade. This includes copying work, sharing old tests and notes, working together on assignments, even those meant to be individual, and general cheating in any manner we won't get caught in.
In addition, most business students, graduate and undergraduate, have jobs, lives, and careers that we need to succeed in just as badly as we do in school. We don't always have time to do things legitimately, so we do our best to get by, and minor ways of cheating just make life easier (at least this is my philosophy)
And finally, Med students need to know what they're doing or they don't become doctors or malpractice kills them. People studying law absolutely devote themselves usually and therefore don't need to cheat. In business school, you learn basic ideas and theories, but application and usage varies between each company, so we never really need to directly apply what we learn in school. I'm not going to school to learn things that will help me in my career - I'm going to get a nice diploma that someone will see, say that kid is smart, and hire me... more or less.

And frankly, that right there is the reason to kick all business programs out of universities. They don't belong.

And frankly, that right there is the reason to kick all business programs out of universities. They don't belong.

Amen to that.

Law students are very honest and decent people.

And frankly, that right there is the reason to kick all business programs out of universities. They don't belong.
Amen to that.

And yet, the irony is that these students are engaging in practices that is present in the business world. Anything to get ahead in your career...

And yet, the irony is that these students are engaging in practices that is present in the business world. Anything to get ahead in your career...

But why do they need to contaminate the university system? I've long been for abolishing business programs (and many others that have no place at university) in favor of good old fashioned working your way up.

Hmmm there could be truth to that.

I believe Michael Milken taught "business ethics" at Harvard for awhile.

Or maybe law students are just less likely to get to caught

Law students aren't stupid enough to confess anything without a deal in writing.

People are more likely to cheat when there is a lot at stake.

I'd say med students have more at stake than business students. More years of education at stake, more prestige, etc. Business schools are simply a pretty much amoral environment ... do anything to get ahead. The guy who won the gold medal for my graduating class in business was a known cheater ... the students knew it, the adminstration had caught him red-handed, but he still graduated with top honours.

I'm not going to school to learn things that will help me in my career - I'm going to get a nice diploma that someone will see, say that kid is smart, and hire me... more or less.
Actually, I'd say that you have. You've learned to be ruthless and how to get away with not following the rules. You're learning how to fight it out in a cut-throat environment, but you've also learned when and how to set aside your need to compete in order to get assisstance on difficult assignments.
If you make it through school, near the top and in one peice, that means you should be able to pull that stuff off in the corporate environment as well.

And I'm going to agree with the general consensus that Business students are just being more honest because, for them, "cheating" is actually part of the course. The ability to get away with breaking the rules in medicine, however, isn't a very desired skill, and so Med Students would be less likely to admit to it.
And lawyers are trained from the beginning never to make a guilty plea without some sort of deal on the table.

Actually, I'd say that you have. You've learned to be ruthless and how to get away with not following the rules. You're learning how to fight it out in a cut-throat environment, but you've also learned when and how to set aside your need to compete in order to get assisstance on difficult assignments.
If you make it through school, near the top and in one peice, that means you should be able to pull that stuff off in the corporate environment as well.


And people wonder how Enron happened ...

And people wonder how Enron happened ...
Indeed, they were supposed to go to business school to learn how not to get caught.
After all, in business you can get away with being Stupid and Honest or Clever and Dishonest, but you can't be Stupid and Dishonest, it just won't fly.

Also (and this probably has more to do with the cheating than anything else) Graduate Business Programs have lower entrance standards than either Medical or Law Programs.

Indeed, they were supposed to go to business school to learn how not to get caught.


Those kind of business practices will always catch up with you in the end. That is why teaching them to business students is folly.