Bill Clinton, Martha Stewart, Richard Nixon, Jude Law, Mark McGuire. Cheaters are everywhere -- in sports, company board rooms, high levels of government and at home. Have you heard from your spouse today? Just asking.
With final exams and college graduation upon us, prime cheating season has officially begun. Today, CollegeHumor.com, the definitive source for irreverent student humor and co-ed pop culture, is releasing its first-ever "CollegeHumor Cheating Survey" (www.collegehumor.com/cheating ).
The CollegeHumor Cheating Survey polled over 30,000 students around the country to find out which schools cheat the most, the effectiveness of honor codes, the most common cheating methods, the most effective cheating method, and the average GPA of cheaters vs. non-cheaters. The survey also looked at whether cheating behavior is influenced by other factors, such as religion, political affiliation, gender, Greek membership, and the tendency to cheat in a relationship.
"Oddly enough, we found that cheaters usually win and winners usually cheat," says Ricky Van Veen, editor in chief of CollegeHumor.com. "I guess our parents never conducted an extensive anonymous online cheating survey."
According to the survey, 61% -- more than half of the college kids polled -- cheat, with only a small fraction (16.5%) having strong feelings of remorse for their actions. At schools with an honor code, cheating rates skyrocketed to almost 68%, as opposed to a much lower number (42%) at schools without standards of conduct. Other interesting findings conclude that the most popular method of cheating -- looking over someone's shoulder (14.5%) -- was followed closely by storing the answers in a calculator (11.1%) and getting a test from a friend (9.2%), although many students (45.6%) use a combination of cheating methods.
"You would think that cell phones or calculators would be the most common method of cheating in this day and age. But it's the old tried and true method of looking over your neighbor's shoulder that's still in high fashion," Van Veen commented. "It's good to know that some traditions are still being preserved on college campuses today."
