CCR 720: McCabe (2005) "It Takes a Village"

McCabe, Donald L. "It Takes a Village: Academic Dishonesty and Educational Opportunity." Liberal Education (Summer/Fall 2005). 2 Dec. 2005. < http://www.aacu.org/liberaleducation/le-sufa05/le-sufa05feature2.cfm>

Summary:

McCabe argues that what makes a difference in academic integrity in schools is their commitment to creating a culture that values academic integrity by “making academic integrity a clear campus priority and placing much of the responsibility for student integrity on the students themselves” (2). He uses surveys of students to argue that there is a large amount of cheating occurring in universities and suggests that it is because faculty and administrators are not actively educating students and are not reassessing their own policies regarding academic integrity. He calls for treating academic dishonesty as educational opportunities where students can learn about the policies and practices for academic integrity.

Methods:

· Data: 1990 survey of student in 31competetive colleges (47% of students in school with no honor code admit to cheating; 24% of students with honor code admit to cheating; comparison to Bowers (1964) survey; 2001 survey on-line (21% admit to cheating on an exam; 51% admit to plagiarism; 4 of 5 plagiarists copy/paste from online). NO methodology is outlined.

· Anecdotal: even though the author calls on his conducted surveys, the data collection and analysis is not described and therefore often seems anecdotal. He also uses anecdotal evidence of his own experiences and the experience of an anonymous person in the intro and conclusion.

Notable Notes:

· McCabe does not provide details of his methods or methodologies. It’s difficult to assess his interpretations seeing how we don’t learn his modes of analysis.

· It’s interesting that he cites a study of his completed with co-author Trevino, yet he takes sole authorship of the survey: “In 1993 (McCabe and Trevino 1996), I surveyed nine medium to large universities” (2). Note the use of first person.

· Since he advocates that in order to help make our students more responsible regarding academic integrity faculty must set standards and consider academic integrity to be an institutional value, he is assuming that teachers don’t already.

· While his data collection and interpretation is unclear, and while it’s challenging to uphold his claims he makes from this data, I find some merit in his argument that we should use plagiarism as educational opportunities since students often do so out of ignorance and time/stress constraints (5). Still, it is hard to blindly accept his arguments that “strong rules” might help foster idealistic values later.