Academic Integrity Resources

What's the Problem with Academic Integrity Violations?

Academic integrity is a fundamental value because violations of it cause real harms to real people.

Harm to Student

• Cheating robs students of their educations. Students are here to learn. If students cheat in a course or another academic exercise, they are taking away from themselves the opportunity to learn, and they’re not getting what they’re paying for.

• Students may be caught. The faculty holds the highest standards of academic integrity. If a student is caught cheating, the sanction can be anything from a lowered grade on an assignment to expulsion from ASU.

• ASU has a grade, the XE, which can become part of a transcript and records and explicitly means that the student failed a course because of academic dishonesty. Here’s the Student Academic Integrity Policy’s explanation of the XE:

1. The XE grade denotes failure through academic dishonesty. The XE grade will be recorded on the student's official and unofficial transcript with the notation "failure due to academic dishonesty.” The XE grade shall be treated in the same way as an E for the purposes of grade point average and determination of academic standing.

2. No student with an XE grade on his or her transcript shall be permitted to represent that University in any extracurricular activity or to run for or hold office in any recognized student organization.

3. Generally, the XE grade will remain on the transcript permanently.
 

• Cheating may not improve students’ grades. Here’s an example. A student turned in a paper written by a friend. The paper received a poor grade.

• ASU degrees could mean less. If ASU develops a reputation for academic dishonesty based on high levels of student cheating, students’ future employers, colleagues, and others could have less respect for their accomplishments at ASU.

Harm to Other Students

• Cheating creates an unfair grading environment for others. Whether or not a course is graded on a curve, a student who cheats, turns in high-quality work, and is not caught raises the expectations about work quality for all students.

• Cheating can directly affect other students. For example, if a student plagiarizes on a group project, all the students in the group may be sanctioned for an Academic Integrity Policy violation.

 
Harm to Future Employers, Clients, or Patients

• Cheating can hurt the people students will work with in the future. Many students are preparing for careers where they will provide services to others—legal, journalistic, medical, research, etc. If these students fail to learn how to do this work because they cheat at ASU, they have cheated their future employers and clients of a knowledgeable professional. Who wants to go to a doctor who got into medical school by cheating?
 

Harm to ASU

• Cheating violates fundamental values of the University community. ASU is an intellectual community focused on teaching, research, and the values of the New American University. The creation, transmission, sharing, and applying of knowledge are central activities of the community. By cheating on academic assignments, students are lying about or stealing knowledge, one of the most important things in an academic community.