“Survey Documents Decade of Moral Deterioration”

“Cheating Scandal Roils Mississippi State U.”

Headlines such as these from the national news might make a professor paranoid. Is dishonesty rampant on Emory campus? Last year the President’s Committee on Academic Integrity surveyed undergraduates to find out.

According to Emory College’s Associate Dean of Student Academic Affairs Sally Wolff King, “The number of reported cases in Emory College [thirty to sixty per year] is fairly low
for the size of our undergraduate body. We don’t have a complete count of alleged violations, however, since some professors do not report cases, and some cases may never come to light. The student questionnaire suggests that many undergraduates view Emory College as a community of academic honesty, on the whole, and that’s encouraging.”

And what do professors think? Below are some results from
the committee’s Spring 2002 survey of faculty members,
prepared by Daniel Teodorescu, Director of the Office of Institutional Research.

Approximately three-quarters of the respondents consider academic integrity in the Emory community as “strong” or “very strong.”

Forty-nine percent of the faculty who have been at
Emory for more than a year say the occurrence of dishonest behaviors has increased in recent years, 47 percent
report no changes, and only 4 percent believe such
behaviors are less frequent.

Fifty-seven percent of the respondents report that the current honor system in their school works well. Forty-three percent would like to see the current system changed.

Fifty-six percent discuss the Honor Code as a routine part
of class orientation, 50 percent reference it on their course syllabi, 26 percent discuss it only when a relevant issue arises, and 12 percent do not discuss it at all.