60% of U.S. High School Students Cheat, 28% Steal, Study Finds
By Emily Sachar
Oct. 14 (Bloomberg) – Sixty percent of American high school students cheated on a test, 28 percent admitted stealing from a store and 23 percent said they stole from a parent or other relative, according to a national study in which the students also gave themselves high marks for ethical behavior.
The 2006 survey of 36,122 students was released by the Josephson Institute, a Los Angeles-based partnership of 700 educational and youth groups trying to improve teen ethics.
``Unacceptably high rates of dishonesty have become the norm,’’ said Michael Josephson, president and founder of the institute.
Ninety-two percent of the students said they were satisfied with their personal ethics and character, and 74 percent agreed with the statement, ``When it comes to doing what is right, I am better than most people I know.’’
``It doesn’t bode well for the future that so many kids are entering the workforce to become the next generation of corporate executives and cops, politicians and parents, journalists, teachers and coaches, with the dispositions and skills of liars, cheaters and thieves,’’ Josephson said.
How accurate are the students’ responses? Twenty-seven percent of those surveyed said they lied on at least one of the questions, Josephson said.
Higher Rates Found
Other national surveys have found even higher rates of student cheating.
More than 70 percent of students admitted to cheating at least once on a test and more than 60 percent admitted to plagiarism in a survey published in 2005 by Donald McCabe, professor of management and global business at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. The four-year survey involved 18,000 pupils at 61 schools.
``A number of students have a very different definition of when borrowing something from the Internet rises to the level of cheating than their teachers or school do,’’ McCabe said in an e-mail interview.
A study of graduate students published last month found 56 percent of business students acknowledged cheating, as did 54 percent in engineering, 48 percent in education and 45 percent in law school.
The high school study and the graduate student study were by McCabe for the Center for Academic Integrity at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina.
High Rates of Lying
Among other findings in the survey:
-Eighty-one percent of students said they lied to a parent about something significant.
-Sixty-two percent said they lied to a teacher within the past 12 months.
-One in three students said they used the Internet to plagiarize for a school assignment.
-Nineteen percent said they stole from a friend.
The Josephson Institute has surveyed teen ethics every two years since 1992. Data for the 2006 survey was gathered through a sample of public and private high schools, Josephson said.