Academic Honesty. Academic Essay

Academic Honesty

Academic honesty is among one of the topics that seems all people knows about it.However,most of us merely know it by words,and regard it as something quite theorectical,as a consequence,the majority pay little attention to the issue.While actually,academic honesty is everywhere in our life as a college student and we may find out that we ourselves cannot meet the severe standards of acedemic honesty.

To start with the discussion,we should first of all have a well-rounded understanding of academic honesty.Academic dishonesty or academic misconduct is any type of cheating that occurs in relation to a formal academic exercise,which includes plagiarism,fabrication,deception,cheating, bribery, sabotage, frofessorial misconduct, personation,etc.[1]

At the present time,academic honesty should be attached to great importance for the fundamental reason that it is such a rare quality among the academic world,especially in colleges.For instance,in almost every college nowadays,students accomplish their essays or homework by simply copying and pasting the entire passage they found from baidu or google,and for students who are looking forward to a higher grade,they tend to read a few dozens of essay focused on the particular topic and then they make their own one by picking some useful parts from different eaasys,add a few original ideas and piece them together.Whenever you step into a test room,there is a possibility finding some test takers cheating.Even among professors in colleges,it is not uncommon to find that their dissertation appears to have changed the original data or the experiment results to meet their own points.

According to a recent survey,in college only 7.8% of the students could complete their homework indenpendently,75% of the respondents admitted that they copied essay from the Internet,whilst when the experiment results were not reasonable,only 42% chose to redo the experiment while 29% chose to copy their classmates’data and 30% just made up their own data to finish the task.[2]

Worse still,even students would like to act honesty,they have no idea about the specific standards of academic honesty,i.e. they offend the academic honesty without realizing it.For example,when write an essay,some of the students cite sentences from other paper,while they do not know that they shoud mark it and give the detailed information about the paper.

Several factors lead to the current situation.To begin with,the academic evaluation is closely connected to economic interest.In college,the number of research results is the main determinant of the researcher’s pay,as well as bonuses,houses and other related wellbeings.As a result ,most researchers pursue number instead of quality to gain more economic profits.This trend is a disaster to some basic disciplines and significant theoretic theories as these subjects require a long period of time.Most of universities require a certain amount of essays from its professors,which also aggravate their burden and distort the original intention.

Secondly,to strive for key disciplines,master sections and doctor sections or to become a study base of a certain field,most research institutions introduce the quantified system,whose original goal is to stimulate the researchers and evaluate the results more efficiently,which may,however,give rise to the lack of standardization and rigor.

Thirdly,the society lacks honesty,nearly all fields have the problem:politicians may cheat in the selection,businessmen may produce inferior products to gain profits and writers may plagiarize other’s workshop,as a consequence,the academic circle can hardly remain unaffected.

Effective measures must be taken before the situation get worse.It is highly suggested that the society devote attention to the formation of honesty,especially enhancing the management and supervision of academic magazines as these magazines have un imaginative effects on the beginers of academic research which may affects the next generation of researchers of a nation ,thus deciding a country’s future to some extent.

A right attitude towards academic research should be formed at the start stage,and the rewards and punishment system should be practical,as some types of research may last for a long time,we shoud not judge the accomplishment of researchers based merely on the final results,and the process should be valued as well.

While for students,the education process should be a long,maturing and progessive one,various for their education stage and attach different points.

For students both in primary school and secondary school,academic honesty is not far and the education should make youngsters well-prepared for the coming college life.At this stage,students should be taught not to copy from others and finish the homework independently.

For college students,there should be classes focused on the academic honesty and tell them what to do and what should and should not do.They should learn some basic practice of academic norm,such as how to quote.As simple as it may seem,most of us actually do not konw the rules of citation.The citation of essays from various kinds of magazines and newspapers is quite different and the rules of citing Chinese and English literature are diverse as well. During the learning process, students can learn the rigor ,meticulosity and accuracy of scientific research and have a better understanding of scientific spirit.When students firstly step into scientific research,they should be correctly guided,especially when the experiment’s result is not as wished, they shouldn’t change or forge the original data,instead,they should keep the data and study why it comes like this.Students should be taught what academic honesty means to science and human progress,and reinforce the ability to overcome setbacks,because most of the students do not mean to commit academic cheating,they do this under the pressure of all kinds of pressures.It is natural requirements of college to advocate scientific spirit of practice and truth,formulate sense of academic honesty which may affect the young generation profoundly.

At the same time,students should know the severe consequences if they fail to act academic honesty.As long as the price is high enough,the academic dishonesty can be curbed effectively.

Honesty is the basic quality of a person and academic honesty is as well an elementary quality of a resaercher.If we cannot abide by the requirements of academic honesty ,the whole world suffers because it is the suicide of science and human beings have no future without the social progress.

[1]Academic Honesty.Wikipedia. Retrieved December 8th,from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_honesty.
[2]Du Jingbo. A Survey of the Current Situation of Academic Honesty among College Students, Journal of Liaoning Administration College.124.