Why do students cheat – an economic approach

Why do students cheat? I ask myself this every single semester as I inevitably encounter a few intentional or unintentional academic misconduct cases. The question surfaced strongly at the start of the pandemic with our usual guardrails unavailable. At the time, I went to some (online) workshop somewhere that presented an approach to thinking about academic integrity that really stuck with me. I wish I could reference the exact source for my inspiration, but it has now been several years and the citation is hopelessly lost in my memory. 

So why do students cheat? Consider this question through the economic fraud approach, treating academic dishonesty as a rational decision made by individuals in their circumstances. In what follows, we assume intentional attempts and not honest misunderstandings of where the boundaries are. All in all, there are three types of motivations that guide academic misconduct. 

Pressure or necessity: “Do I need to cheat?” 

Pressure. Directly copying someone else’s solution is almost inevitably faster than producing your own as it requires no thinking or processing of any kind. Indeed, we often notice that when students do copy, they copy all of the material fully and directly – including the placement of writing on the page. Human photocopying is efficient, if nothing else. This process yields immediate results with minimal effort. So in high-pressure situations when the brain enters “survival mode”, efficiency becomes priority. A looming deadline, fear of failure, fear of consequences caused by failure – students under duress are likely to resort to directly available shortcuts to meet academic expectations. 

Necessity. In a similar vein but with a slightly different angle, students resort to cheating when they feel there is no viable alternative. When the assignment is perceived to be too difficult or the deadlines too short (often in the context of other competing priorities, such as part-time job, full academic schedule, extracurricular commitments), there seems to be no other way to succeed. When the cost of doing the work honestly is perceived to be too high, cheating becomes a sensible alternative.

Opportunity: “Is it easy to cheat?” 

Students are more likely to engage in misconduct when there are two parallel factors at play: when they perceive the barriers to cheating as low and the risk of consequences as minimal. Our students are great experimental scientists and experimentation plays a major role in this scenario – they observe a behaviour, they make a hypothesis regarding this observation, they try it out, collect feedback, adjust and repeat. Does an instructor re-use old exams, do only odd problems from assignments get graded, does everyone get the same set of questions on an online test or a take-home exam, is the instructor not at all vigilant during the exam writing? Students then test out applicable solutions: how to split up collaborative work without raising red flags, where to obtain solutions to old exams or textbook problems, which tools can outsmart plagiarism software or go undetected by the prof. Once established, the rinse-and-repeat cycle takes over: why expend effort on coming up with new ideas when the already tested shortcuts work well?

Pattern recognition is one thing, but lack of detection and consequences is another. When cheating strategies are successful and unpunished, they become templates for future use. The signal that the environment is permissive is there and it will be exploited. At this point, academic misconduct is no longer a gamble – it is a calculated strategy with a proven track record. If the probability of getting caught is low and the penalty is not severe enough to outweigh the benefits, then the rational choice (in purely economic terms!) may very well be dishonesty.

Rationalization: “Is it ok to cheat?” 

Students can use a plethora of excuses to justify their dishonest behavior as they find ways to feel okay about bending the rules. In fact, we all do it in various life circumstances: how often have you justified to yourself that going over the speed limit isn’t actually breaking the law because everyone is doing it or because the speed limit in a specific spot is too low or you are in a rush, or, or, or. The same logic applies to students and misconduct. They may tell themselves that the system is unfair, that the workload is unreasonable, that the course is a barrier that isn’t relevant to their future careers, that the instruction is unsuitable for their needs, that others are doing it so cheating is just leveling the playing field. These mental narratives allow students to justify the misconduct while protecting their self-image. It becomes possible to cheat and still think of oneself as a fundamentally good and honest person. 

So where do we come in? 

If we take cheating as a rational decision, then as instructors we can shift the course of our students’ actions by addressing the above categories. Here are a few quick ideas. 

Address Pressure/Necessity:

• Break up large tasks into smaller and/or staged submissions to reduce last-minute panic. Students are less likely to look for shortcuts if the work feels doable. 
• Offer low-stakes assessments where possible. They act as fire drills allowing students to assess their skills and prepare them to perform under pressure before it really counts.
• Provide flexibility, such as deadline extensions and alternate submission formats. Small extensions or drop-lowest policies do not weaken structure – they make it livable.
• Normalize help-seeking and make resources (office hours, tutoring centre) highly visible. Students need to feel that asking for help is not a sign of weakness.

Address Opportunity:

• Vary and refresh assessments: new problem sets, individualized prompts, authentic tasks. When the work feels relevant, interesting and personal, shortcuts lose their appeal.
• Clearly communicate expectations around collaboration and the use of various tools. Don’t leave it up to students to play lawyer with your syllabus wording.
• Signal vigilance and demonstrate follow-through when misconduct occurs. It’s a bit like how Genghis Khan kept the Silk Road safe: the route became robbery-free not because people suddenly became honest, but because they knew that if they robbed a merchant, they’d be dealt with (quickly and decisively, I might add). 

Address Rationalization:

• Be transparent about the purpose and relevance of assessments. If students’ values are reflected in the required work, they can no longer justify cutting corners.
• Connect honesty to professional identity and long-term trust rather than just rules. It’s a lot harder to cheat if you’re already rehearsing for the role of an engineer who signs off on bridges people will actually drive across.

I have to admit that I originally wrote a much longer piece with specific ideas and assignments that I use to battle some of the above categories. If you’d like to see those, email me and I will consider writing a Part 2.

As instructors, we are the conductors of our students’ course experiences. So here is some homework for you. Consider your approach to course administration and instruction and ask yourself: when do you put students (intentionally or not) in each of the above situations? What can you do to make it less so?