Cheating by College Students

Moore makes some sweeping generalizations in an attempt to support a thin excuse for students who choose to plagiarize and steal another’s work. According to Moore, the fault is not with the student, but with the higher education system, which fails to provide an education that is “stimulating.” Blame is also to be placed on “traditional professional laziness (read: tenure)” of faculty.

There is no question that higher education has many issues requiring attention, from an overemphasis on publication at large research-oriented universities, to prescribed curricula that may be out of touch with student needs in a changing world. But to accept the excuse that students cheat because of the system is to misplace the focus on the educational experience.

Learning is an active enterprise. It requires the full participation of both the teacher and the learner. If a professor is teaching “at” students, the students have the responsibility to become involved in the process, to ask questions, to raise issues, to participate.

It is ludicrous to suggest that America is losing its competitive edge because the university is not teaching and that this situation excuses cheating. I fear that a far more insidious impact upon America’s competitive edge comes from students who blame others for their own lack of responsibility in making moral choices.

PEGGY S. McLAUGHLIN

Associate Dean, College of Agriculture

Cal Poly Pomona