Cheating in school has always been around, but with rapid technological growth in the last few years and the effects of COVID, students now care more about the points than the learning.
According to a study done by the International Center for Academic Integrity, more than 60% of college students have admitted to cheating in some form.
I did not start to think about this concept until I was sitting in my first class of this semester and my professor said to us, “I know you are going to use Chat GPT or AI.”
This was interesting to me because it has come to the point where professors may even acknowledge the fact that students can and will cheat using AI.
I was only a freshman in high school when COVID started, but I feel like the online learning that happened during this time was the start of the cheating trend.
I would find myself lying in bed just trying to get the assignments done as quickly as possible. I didn’t care about what I was learning. In my opinion, this was the start of the laziness that has continued to grow as students still participate in online learning.
Many of my friends or even classmates I don’t talk to very often have expressed to me that they would prefer an online class because it is easier to cheat. We have now grown to only search for points and no longer take the time to learn.
With programs such as Chat GPT and AI, it is now as easy as copy and paste to finish an assignment, write an essay or even take your test. Technology has made it accessible to us, but the real problem is that many students no longer believe in academic integrity.
We tend to look at it as “I finished the assignment” rather than “I learned something from doing this assignment.” It is no longer about memorization or knowledge, it is about all of the ways I can finish my assignment without actually having to do anything.
I am not saying that every student cheats all of the time and on every assignment, but the technology that is now accessible has made it much easier for students.
If this phenomenon of cheating and laziness continues, I worry about what may happen to the future of students and the careers they may end up in.
Some of these students are going to go on to be doctors, lawyers, politicians, etc. and may be missing out on crucial knowledge by taking the easy way out of their assignments.
It is important that we as students bring back our integrity, and aspire to learn not just receive points. Our grades no longer reflect our abilities, but they now reflect how well we can cheat.