A recently published study, finding graduate business students more likely to cheat than their academic counterparts, is not an accurate description of AU, said graduate business students and professors who fear its findings could harm future career opportunities.
The study, conducted by CNN, found that 56 percent of graduate business students polled reported having cheated in the past year, compared to 54 percent of graduate engineering students, 49 percent of medical and health care students and 45 percent of law students.
Frank DuBois, associate professor of international business, said he believes the real problem posed by the study was the near 50 percent average of reported cheating across all fields of study.
"The study also says that nearly 50 percent of medical students admit to cheating," he said. "Cheating on a tax return seems less serious than cheating on a brain exam."
As a first semester graduate business student in Kogod, Shyka Scotland said she didn't think the study seemed consistent with what she'd seen so far at AU. She said she feared the implications the study could have on the business world.
"It did worry me that this is a notion that is out there because you don't know how employers are going to react," she said. "Are they going to think that maybe you cheated?"
"There's so much fluff already in r?sum?s," said Gisele Cloutier, assistant director of career management education for graduate students at Kogod. "Sometimes it borders on total fiction. Everyone wants to articulate why they're the superior candidate. Employers might now say, 'I can't trust what I'm reading!'"
Brent Young, also a graduate student in Kogod, said the study wasn't consistent with what he'd witnessed in the classroom.
"I think the problem is actually worse in undergraduate work," he said. "There's a lot of group work in graduate school, which makes cheating really hard."
The faculty have the responsibility to control cheating, DuBois said.
"It's very much about managing expectations," he said. "The faculty has to put in the time and the effort to resist temptation. There needs to be more caution on the part of the faculty."
DuBois said when he was young, using someone else's paper meant borrowing it and retyping it.
"I have seen professors assign the same research paper over and over again," he said. "But it's now so easy to cut and paste."
However, some responsibility lies in the hands of students, DuBois said.
"We don't have an honor code," he said. "The Student Government should get more concerned with creating an honor code."
While the Washington College of Law operates under an honor code, AU has an Academic Integrity Code that lists the standards of academic conduct, states the definition of academic violations and describes the adjudication of academic offenses, according to AU's Web site.
