Recent articles in The Athens News and The Post have reported what appear to be significant decreases in academic dishonesty among OU students especially in the undergraduate population. Cheating decreased by half in one year for undergraduates from 44.7 percent to 21.6 percent and for graduate students, 17.7 percent in 2006 to 13.7 percent this year. Percent of faculty observing academic misconduct dropped from 68.3 percent in 2006 to 52 percent this year. Although encouraging, it appears that cheating is still at a relatively high level. Also for those faculty reporting these observations, were they serious enough to be reported to judiciaries, or were they based on suspicions and went officially unreported?
I find these results to be remarkable considering that other universities and colleges, some of which are among our peer-comparative institutions, are reporting increases in plagiarism on their campuses. For example, prior to the publication of OU's results, The New York Times reported that 34 Duke graduate business students face a range of disciplinary actions for recent cheating allegations concerning cooperative efforts on a take-home examination. Nine of these students were recommended for expulsion, whereas the others face lesser but rather severe disciplinary actions.
Being a science researcher for more than 40 years and a publication reviewer for several journals has caused me to be objective in my analysis of research findings and to develop a skeptical, suspicious attitude toward research data gathered by either verbal and/or written self-reporting questionnaire methodology. So often responders to this type of research inquiry tell the questioner what they think the investigator wants to hear as opposed to telling the truth, especially if the topic is as controversial as academic cheating, and the author of the OU results acknowledges this as a possible flaw in the investigation. In addition, it appears that only about 2 percent of OU's students responded for the questionnaire study, and, furthermore, proportional reporting of students and faculty from specific colleges, schools and departments were not identified. I hope that the release of these data was not at the urging of some members of OU's administration to report some good news following a wave of recent bad news about OU. As a research skeptic, I find the report hard to believe.
' Fredrick Hagerman is a professor emeritus in the College of Osteopathic Medicine's Department of Biomedical Sciences.
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Letter to the Editor
