Importance of Academic Honesty

Importance of Academic Honesty

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Importance of Academic Honesty

This paper will explain the importance of academic honesty in students’ life. “Academic honesty means the performance of all academic work without cheating, lying, dishonesty of any kind, getting any unauthorized assistance and favors from anyone” (Valdosta State University). Academic honesty helps to motivate students to become better human beings. It is very important aspect of life to be honest with you. Academic honesty provides knowledge and skills as well as helps you to shape your personalities.

Academic honesty is to provide credit to those who worked for it not to those who cheat. Therefore, academic honesty has two major goals for instance keep students from cheating and recognize those who provide education. Academic integrity comes from honesty in education, research and learning. Academic honesty is one of the best moral practices and will make you truthful and reliable in your life time. It teaches you to become responsible and establish respect of others and their values.Academic honesty plays an imperative task in the growth of students and help them to keep pursuing their educational goals with dignity, integrity and admiration for college campus. Academic integrity importance is not only effective, but also beneficial in maintaining the high standards of scholarship in the college.

In any higher learning institution academic freedom is a very basic right. These are the important preconditions of honesty and integrity for the academic freedom. “Academic integrity finds its genesis in the fundamental values of honesty, tolerance, respect, rigor, fairness, and the pursuit of truth” (Lewis & Clark, n.d.). Dishonesty is very hurting to everyone andadds distrust in addition to antipathy to academic competition, and it distorts the sense of grades. If academic deceitfulness is extensive or established even tacitly, it can weaken and dishearten our frequent efforts. “In terms of perception about what constitutes cheating and the origin of faulty perceptions, students often blame their cheating on teachers’ failure to explain cheating adequately or to enforce academic honesty” (Honz, Kiewra and Ya-Shu, 2010).

Most of the student thinks that cheating is harmless but in reality it has far-reaching effects. If you cheat, however, you accomplish it, you are doing something that is ethically wrong and unfair to yourself and to other students. Academic dishonesty will also shortchanges your ability to learn, and that may result in serious penalties, including course failure and even expulsion from school, a cheating can easily become a habit.

One of the most important educational responsibilities of an institution of higher education is to teach all who enter its halls a habitual integrity in the handling of subject matter. Learning what constitutes academic honesty is too important to leave to chance. Academic honesty is a fundamental value held by universities and colleges. When students act honestly in their academic endeavors, the students’ knowledge and skills can be accurately evaluated and they will be more likely to successfully begin their new careers, ultimately benefiting their employers. Thus, academic honesty not only benefits the students’ professional future, but also creates good for society while maintaining the university’s or college’s reputation.

The ethics of academic honesty is another important ideological mechanism. The ethics of academic honesty implicitly claims that because cheating is wrong, the work performed by students is actually very important for the society and for the student. Of course, “the academic ethics’ explicit claim is reversely constructed: the work is important, therefore, one shall not cheat. Most ethical claims, however, try to prove their premises rather than conclusions” (Sidorkin, 2005).

One of the most important educational responsibilities of an institution of higher education is to teach all who enter its halls a habitual integrity in the handling of subject matter. Learning what constitutes academic honesty is too important to leave to chance. Moreover, the foundations for such honesty are less and less likely to be brought into the academy by habits inculcated by the culture at large. Many distinguished institutions underscore the importance of academic honesty through an honor system, requiring each student to pledge that work submitted for a given assignment has been done without illegitimate assistance or unauthorized appropriation.

Many schools are now focusing on taking steps to reinvigorate their honor code policies and evaluate the chances of implementation of honor codes for the first time. According to McCabe, Trevino & Butterfield, 1999, “Recent research demonstrates that well-implemented honor codes can be effective in reducing cheating and maintaining standards of academic honesty and integrity”.

Conclusion

Solution of cheating culture is honor codes and techniques for academic integrity which are important parts of the solution. It is the responsibility of students as well as faculty and administration to establish an environment where honest students do not feel that they are at risk or disadvantage. “Just as cheating can become normalized at a school, so too can academic integrity efforts move the pendulum in the other direction and create a climate where cheating is not cool” (Callahan, 2005). Academic integrity and good decision making lead in only one direction which is toward personal and academic excellence of every college.

References

Callahan, D. (2005), Gudinding students from cheating and plagiarism to honesty and integrity:

Strategies for change. Retrieved from

Honz, K., Kiewra, K. & Ya-Shu, Y. (2010), Cheating Perceptions and Prevalence Across

Academic Settings. Retrieved from Mid-Western Educational Researcher, vol. 23 Issue 2, p10-17.

Lewis and Clark graduate school of education and counseling. Retrieved from

McCabe, Donald L. Trevino, Linda Kiebe (2001), Dishonesty in Academic Environments: the

influence of Peer Reporting Requirements. Retrieved from Ohio state University Press.

Sidorkin, A. M. (2005), The student error, p137-145, Retrieved from Philosophy of Education

Yearbook.