ARE MY COLLEAGUES SOFT ON (ACADEMIC) CRIME

INTRODUCTION Most universities publish a statement addressing academic honesty. Usually, this statement will be a centerpiece of a university honor code; these codes hold that that the pursuit of knowledge requires unwavering honesty among all members of the academic community. The codes typically mention various infractions including plagiarism (word-for-word copying, the mosaic, the paraphrase), cheating on examinations and even various forms of bribery (buying, receiving, or offering some material consideration to obtain a grade). Honor codes are important in steering students toward a culture of honor in the pursuit of knowledge. Codes at the military academies, Ivy League schools, and such schools as UVA and Washington and Lee frame their entire academic cultures with their honor codes, but such ambitious foundations for academic integrity are the exception. Nonetheless, academic honor codes have garnered interest, and some of this interest likely derives from a perception of an increase in academic dishonesty over the past couple of decades and from a wide range of corporate and public ethical failures. These perceptions, and curiosity about how those perceptions might manifest themselves at a mid-size regional university in the Southeast, encouraged this research. How do faculty perceive the level of academic integrity at the university, and how might those perceptions impact faculty performance, and expectations, in the classroom? How would those perceptions differ across business schools and "general" colleges of arts and science? Findings will be important to the student, faculty and administrator. Some background on cheating and stakeholder perceptions of cheating is provided in the next section. The third section describes the survey and data collected for this study. Descriptive statistics are provided. We then conduct a traditional cross-sectional study of our data employing a standard limited dependant variable PROBIT model - seeking to discover the importance of faculty perceptions of cheating in describing the detection and punishment of academic dishonesty. We report our results, suggest and conduct a series of tests for robustness, and examine the implications of our findings for the various university stakeholders. We conclude the paper with a summary and a set of encouragements for subsequent research. BACKGROUND McCabe and Trevino (1997) argue that institutions with formal honor codes that "are widely distributed and understood by members of the academic community" are "an integral part of the campus culture," as with UVA and W and L. The converse might also be implied: if academic honesty is not highlighted early and often for the entering college student, it might not become a part of that student's academic "fabric." Kidwell and Wozniak (2003) surveyed students about cheating at a small liberal arts college and found that over 70 percent of those surveyed reported cheating, plagiarism or other forms of academic dishonesty; many reported multiple violations. Other studies (Baird, 1980; Singhal, 1982; Franklyn-Stokes and Newstead, 1995) confirm the same, with over half of students admitting to cheating and a similar portion of faculty reporting that they have observed cheating in their classroom (Stevens and Stevens, 1987; Stern and Havlicek, 1986). Greene and Saxe (1992) suggest that students acknowledge cheating as typical and see "no harm, no foul." Other studies consider what, exactly, students consider to be cheating and the factors associated with greater amounts of cheating. While students are conflicted about whether many behaviors constitute cheating, prior research generally indicates that students agree that the most obvious cheating behaviors (such as copying answers off your neighbor's paper during an exam) are, indeed, cheating. Whitley (1998) and Kerkvliet (1994) find that GPA, inordinate focus on grades as opposed to learning, greater perceived grade pressure, fewer hours spent studying, working more hours outside of class, membership in a fraternity or sorority, and too frequent partying and alcohol consumption all contribute to cheating. …