How many students do you think admit to cheating… 10%, 25%, 50%? The answer, according to a 2005 Duke study, is a shocking 75%… 90% admit to cheating if you count copying homework. Not only do a majority of students cheat at some point, but who cheats and why has changed a lot in a generation. A San Francisco Chronicle article provides great insight.

It used to be that cheating was done by the few, and most often they were the weaker students who couldn’t get good grades on their own. There was fear of reprisal and shame if apprehended. Today, there is no stigma left. It is accepted as a normal part of school life, and is more likely to be done by the good students, who are fully capable of getting high marks without cheating. “It’s not the dumb kids who cheat,” one Bay Area prep school student said. “It’s the kids with a 4.6 grade-point average who are under so much pressure to keep their grades up and get into the best colleges. They’re the ones who are smart enough to figure out how to cheat without getting caught.”

Academically strong students aren’t the only ones, of course. Athletes bring a win-at-all-costs mentality to the classroom according to the article.

In a survey of nearly 5,300 high school athletes conducted in 2005 and 2006 by the Josephson Institute of Ethics in Los Angeles, 65 percent admitted to cheating in the classroom more than once in the previous year, as opposed to 60 percent of nonathletes, a percentage that institute founder Michael Josephson says is statistically significant. And varsity athletes were more likely to cheat than nonvarsity.

This is a great article and one worth reading and talking about with your middle or high-school-aged student. As the piece concludes, quoting ethicist Josephson, “No one is putting the flag in the sand and saying, ‘This is wrong! It’s dishonest, it’s unacceptable, I don’t care what the stakes are and why you’re doing it, it’s wrong, and we will not permit it.”