Plagiarism as Cheating: Examining the Motives of University Students

This essay explores the issue of plagiarism among university students, focusing on whether the pressure to achieve higher grades is the primary motive. It argues that plagiarism is a form of cheating driven by increasing competition and the desire for better results. The essay discusses how universities use technology to detect plagiarism and the various factors contributing to academic dishonesty, such as peer pressure, poor time management, and lack of confidence. It also addresses the role of technology in facilitating cheating and the consequences students face when caught. The essay concludes that while pressure for good scores is a significant factor, inadequate time management, lack of interest, and overly difficult assignments also contribute to plagiarism.

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Plagiarism is a form of cheating and it occurs in university students with the motive to
get engaged in plagiarism is the pressure to achieve higher grades
I completely agree on the fact that plagiarism is a form of cheating that is commonly
seen these days in university students. The increasing competitions in the universities drive
students to use their colleagues file so that they can achieve better grades. The pressure of
scoring best result promotes them to copy the work from the student who has scored good
result. Plagiarism is a form of cheating as students undertake this shortcut to get better
grades. It is the solution for the situation that brings pressure, as there is no other option left
to complete the work (Hu and Lei, 2015). Failure to finish the work can lead to problematic
situation thus students at the last moment look for those friends who have completed their
work. Students have adopted the habit of copying from other files in the hope of achieving
better results and grades. Universities have advanced technology as they can check that the
assignments are done by individual efforts or they are copy pasted from some others
assignment. It is a form of cheating and is easily detected. The motive behind this is to
achieve better grades or complete the work in short span of time (Medway, Roperand
Gillooly, 2018). Some of the students cheat because they do not have the confidence and they
believe that they do not have ability to complete the assignment according to the legitimate.
To save the time and submit the assignment on time, students generally follow alternative
approach to submit the assignment. This leads to plagiarism in the assignment. It is a form of
cheating that is used to overcome from the pressure to achieve higher grades.
Cheating has become one of the biggest concerns of all the educational institutions as
it involves use of information, facts and materials of other students by some unauthorized
means. The reason behind cheating by many students is found to be peer pressure from
family or teachers or due to poor time management. There is a high volume of academic
work given to students that need to be completed in a predefined time thus they make use of
other approaches to complete the work (Lynch, Everett, Ramjan, Callins, Glew and
Salamonson, 2017). The reason behind this academic cheating is to impress their parents so
that they can get better rewards. In this competition world they hope to achieve better
outcomes so that the overall grade improves (Mit, 2017). Academic cheating is defined as an
illegal activity used by students to achieve better educational score. This is done by
performing illegal operation (De Lambert, Ellen and Taylor, 2016). The form of cheating
which can lead to plagiarism is using the notes of other students without their permission.

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Factors that enhance academic cheating is to get better grades and increase their
image among teachers and other students (Cronan, Mullins and Douglas, 2018). The anxiety
to complete the work before time also motivates students to copy and paste the work.
It can be concluded that technology has made cheating easy. Technology adds up
flexibility and offer easy way to share files. Due to advance technology cheating is increasing
day by day among students in universities. As the issue of plagiarism is increasing with time,
universities and schools found out the solution to detect the cheated content. The means
through which cheating was investigated was turnitim.com and many other websites that
flagged out the students work who have copied by detecting the actual plagiarism content. All
the universities completely rely upon these website and policies to catch the student while
cheating so that they could be disqualified from future academic programs. Sometimes
students do not have knowledge regarding the particular assignment thus they directly take
the content from the internet or tries to copy from others assignment (Hosny and Fatima,
2014). The other reason can be lack of communication and writing skills. The student having
poor writing skills have the fear of failing in the university. Thus, students’ choose the second
option that is cheating. Students know that cheating is wrong but still they do it by either
hook or crook. Plagiarism is followed to get academic achievement by breaking the laws of
integrity, honesty, fairness and trust. Students often suffer from pressure to get good grades
this often leads to high stress. To overcome from this stress students practise cheating so that
things become easy. Students also have family pressure to achieve good score which
provokes student to cheat from the students who have scored high marks. Some of the reason
due to which academic cheating increasing is fear of missing deadline. As the deadline is one
of the factor that cannot be missed by the students, with the fear of missing deadline and
losing marks promotes student to cheat. The reason for cheating can be high time pressure,
competition with other, laziness, improving grades, family pressure or fear of failure. Lack of
confidence on their own knowledge promotes students to cheat. The poor teaching
environment can also be a minor reason, as poor teaching environment causes lack of
knowledge. Due to lack of knowledge they are not able to complete assignments on their own
which promotes them to copy from other sources.
It can be concluded that, the main response of plagiarism is due to high competition
for good score, inadequate time to complete the assignment, lack of interest in the curse and
overly difficult assignment. To cope up with this issue they undergo cheating so that they are
safe from creating poor self-image, lack of job opportunities and lack of personal integrity.

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Eh ineffective time management skills or overloaded assignments lead to plagiarised work.
Students generally have ineffective study habits in colleges and universities, thus at the end
moment to complete the work they undertake wrong habits.

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References
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perception of student plagiarism in Taiwan. Ethics & Behavior, 27(1), pp.53-73.
Cronan, T.P., Mullins, J.K. and Douglas, D.E. (2018). Further understanding factors that
explain freshman business students’ academic integrity intention and behavior: Plagiarism
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De Lambert, K., Ellen, N. and Taylor, L. (2016). Academic Dishonesty Among Students in
Tertiary Institutions: A Literature Review. Waikato Journal of Education, 11(2).
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Hu, G. and Lei, J. (2015). Chinese university students’ perceptions of plagiarism. Ethics &
Behavior, 25(3), pp.233-255.
Lynch, J., Everett, B., Ramjan, L.M., Callins, R., Glew, P. and Salamonson, Y. (2017).
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Medway, D., Roper, S. and Gillooly, L. (2018). Contract cheating in UK higher education: A
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Mit, (2017). Copying and Other Forms of Cheating. Available from
https://integrity.mit.edu/handbook/copying-and-other-forms-cheating Accessed on 26 july
2018.