cheating homework college

How Cheating in College Hurts Students

Academic integrity is important, experts say, as plagiarism and other cheating may have severe consequences.

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Experts say the number of students engaging in academic dishonesty during the coronavirus pandemic is soaring.

Cheating in college is risky business loaded with potential consequences – failing classes, suspension, possible expulsion – yet it's common and perhaps more accessible than ever.

"A lot of people cheat a little," says David Pritchard, a physics professor emeritus at Massachusetts Institute of Technology who has studied academic dishonesty in online classes. "There's also a few people who cheat a lot."

Though it may be tempting and feel harmless, experts caution college students to think twice before cheating on coursework. Here's how to know what is typically considered cheating and the potential consequences.

How College Students Cheat

Cheating is a multibillion-dollar business, with some educational technology companies making money off students who use their products to break or bend academic integrity rules and others earning revenue from colleges trying to prevent academic dishonesty.

Students also use classic classroom moves like scribbling hidden notes somewhere or using technology such as smartwatches. Copying a classmate's assignment or plagiarizing parts of published works for a paper remain popular methods.

Many of those tactics appear to have been replaced by artificial intelligence and generative language models like ChatGPT and Google Bard, which offer some services like writing, editing and idea generation for free.

Pritchard notes that ChatGPT has performed well on exams in certain subjects, and the American Bar Association reported in March 2023 that it passed the Uniform Bar Exam by "a significant margin." While some professors say they're keeping an open mind about ChatGPT and similar tools, others say it's impossible to ignore the reality that students are using them to cheat.

ChatGPT "is the future of cheating," Pritchard says.

Rebecca Hamlin, a professor of legal studies and political science at the University of Massachusetts—Amherst , recently joined the university's academic honesty board and has seen cases of students caught cheating with ChatGPT. She caught 12 in her own classes during the spring 2023 semester.

“If students are genuinely interested in learning how to become writers, I’m very resistant to the idea that ChatGPT can help them," she says. “It’s really risky because it’s actually way more obvious to someone who reads really good writing all day long. I can immediately tell."

But plenty of students slip through undetected or cheat in other inconspicuous ways, she says.

Most instructors underestimate just how rampant the issue is, says Eric Anderman, a professor at The Ohio State University and interim dean at its Mansfield campus. "We think we're underestimating it because people don't want to admit to it."

Here's what academic integrity experts say college students should know about the immediate and long-term consequences of cheating.

The Consequences of Cheating in College

Regardless of the cheating method, students are only harming themselves and their learning process, experts say.

“I know that sounds really cheesy, but I kind of don’t really understand why someone is going to waste their time and money going to college if they don’t want to learn how to write," Hamlin says. "That’s probably one of the top two to three skills that you gain when you go to college."

Students also deprive themselves of a genuine feeling of achievement when they cheat, says Russell Monroe, director of academic integrity at Liberty University in Virginia.

"There’s a sense of dignity in knowing that I got a grade that I earned, whether that’s for an assignment or a class," he says. "You can look at your degree with pride knowing this is something I achieved on my own merit and didn’t have to outsource anything to anyone else or steal or plagiarize."

Some penalties can have a lasting effect and financial repercussions. They are often less severe for first-time offenders, but colleges keep records of such behavior. Students who continue to cheat and get caught risk failing a class, receiving academic suspension or being expelled from the school, which may come with a note on their transcript explaining why they were dismissed. This designation will likely make it harder to enroll at another college , experts say.

Students who fail a class due to academic dishonesty are usually allowed to retake it. If it's a class required for graduation, they don't have a choice. Either way, that means more money out of pocket, perhaps in student loans .

Failing a course also typically harms a student's GPA , particularly if they don't retake it and earn a higher grade. This could jeopardize eligibility for financial aid or scholarships and lead to academic probation .

Each school has its own policies and disciplinary measures, and professors may vary in how they address academic dishonesty. Some may handle it on their own while others may send it to a disciplinary committee. It often depends on the severity of cheating, Monroe says. For example, cheating on a discussion board assignment isn't seen as as serious as plagiarizing a dissertation or final exam paper, or cheating on a credential or certification exam, he says.

Plagiarizing on capstone course papers or other assignments tied to graduation is a particularly egregious offense that could jeopardize a student's ability to graduate, experts say.

“We are putting our stamp of approval on you to move on to the next step," Monroe says. "That next step might be graduation, but if we’re doing that based upon bad information or false information, that’s a serious problem.”

Even students who think they got away with cheating may suffer consequences, such as missing out on foundational information that they need to learn and apply in higher-level classes.

Additionally, graduates who cheated and perhaps even ended up with good grades may find themselves starting their career unprepared and lacking needed knowledge and skills. And for jobs that have a safety component, unprepared workers could put themselves and others at risk.

Then there are occasions when academic dishonesty is revealed later and torpedoes a career, sometimes in a public and humiliating way.

Know What Is and Isn't Cheating

While some students are well aware that they're cheating and see it as merely a means to an end, not all forms of academic dishonesty are intentional. In many cases, it's an accident made while under stress or when a student has procrastinated , experts say.

Sometimes students make mistakes because they aren't properly prepared to engage with college-level work. For example, improperly citing sources on a term paper can lead to charges of plagiarism.

"I think part of what happens is students aren't always taught in high school how to cite and evaluate information from the internet," Anderman says. "And I think a lot of them, when they get to college – and this is not an excuse – truly don't realize that you can't just look something up on the internet and put it in your paper, that you still have to cite it, and they get caught."

Colleges commonly use a variety of plagiarism-checking software, such as Turnitin, which flags written work that may be uncited or improperly cited. These tools help keep students honest and significantly decrease plagiarism, experts say.

Some forms of cheating, such as intentional plagiarism, buying papers online or paying someone to complete course work, should be fairly obvious, experts say. This is often referred to as "contract cheating," Monroe says, and it's an offense that can lead to expulsion from Liberty.

"It’s very difficult for us to know when that’s happening, but when we do find out, we view that very seriously because there are significant portions of your entire degree that may not have been done by the student at all," he says.

Other areas aren't as clear-cut, particularly what is permissible when it comes to collaborating with classmates, sharing information and using AI products. Monroe says Liberty doesn't ban the use of AI or tools like ChatGPT, but there are boundaries around their ethical use. Students can use these tools to edit and get inspiration, but any assignment turned in must be the student's original work.

Experts also caution against using online companies that position themselves as tutoring organizations but largely help students cheat. Colleges offer many academic resources that students can use instead, and at no extra cost.

“I would definitely encourage a student who’s facing a tough situation or feels that they can’t do their work on time to contact their professor and see if there’s some kind of alternate arrangement that can be made," Monroe says.

Many professors are willing to accept work late, he says. Liberty’s policy is to take 10% off of an assignment's overall grade if it’s late.

“We definitely prefer a timely submission of work," Monroe says, "but contact your professor. They are definitely willing to work with students within the scope that they’re allowed to. That would definitely be a better situation than turning to cheating."

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The Real Roots of Student Cheating

Let's address the mixed messages we are sending to young people..

Updated September 28, 2023 | Reviewed by Ray Parker

• Why Education Is Important
• Find a Child Therapist
• Cheating is rampant, yet young people consistently affirm honesty and the belief that cheating is wrong.
• This discrepancy arises, in part, from the tension students perceive between honesty and the terms of success.
• In an integrated environment, achievement and the real world are not seen as at odds with honesty.

The release of ChatGPT has high school and college teachers wringing their hands. A Columbia University undergraduate rubbed it in our face last May with an opinion piece in the Chronicle of Higher Education titled I’m a Student. You Have No Idea How Much We’re Using ChatGPT.

He goes on to detail how students use the program to “do the lion’s share of the thinking,” while passing off the work as their own. Catching the deception , he insists, is impossible.

As if students needed more ways to cheat. Every survey of students, whether high school or college, has found that cheating is “rampant,” “epidemic,” “commonplace, and practically expected,” to use a few of the terms with which researchers have described the scope of academic dishonesty.

In a 2010 study by the Josephson Institute, for example, 59 percent of the 43,000 high school students admitted to cheating on a test in the past year. According to a 2012 white paper, Cheat or Be Cheated? prepared by Challenge Success, 80 percent admitted to copying another student’s homework. The other studies summarized in the paper found self-reports of past-year cheating by high school students in the 70 percent to 80 percent range and higher.

At colleges, the situation is only marginally better. Studies consistently put the level of self-reported cheating among undergraduates between 50 percent and 70 percent depending in part on what behaviors are included. 1

The sad fact is that cheating is widespread.

Commitment to Honesty

Yet, when asked, most young people affirm the moral value of honesty and the belief that cheating is wrong. For example, in a survey of more than 3,000 teens conducted by my colleagues at the University of Virginia, the great majority (83 percent) indicated that to become “honest—someone who doesn’t lie or cheat,” was very important, if not essential to them.

On a long list of traits and qualities, they ranked honesty just below “hard-working” and “reliable and dependent,” and far ahead of traits like being “ambitious,” “a leader ,” and “popular.” When asked directly about cheating, only 6 percent thought it was rarely or never wrong.

Other studies find similar commitments, as do experimental studies by psychologists. In experiments, researchers manipulate the salience of moral beliefs concerning cheating by, for example, inserting moral reminders into the test situation to gauge their effect. Although students often regard some forms of cheating, such as doing homework together when they are expected to do it alone, as trivial, the studies find that young people view cheating in general, along with specific forms of dishonesty, such as copying off another person’s test, as wrong.

They find that young people strongly care to think of themselves as honest and temper their cheating behavior accordingly. 2

The Discrepancy Between Belief and Behavior

Bottom line: Kids whose ideal is to be honest and who know cheating is wrong also routinely cheat in school.

What accounts for this discrepancy? In the psychological and educational literature, researchers typically focus on personal and situational factors that work to override students’ commitment to do the right thing.

These factors include the force of different motives to cheat, such as the desire to avoid failure, and the self-serving rationalizations that students use to excuse their behavior, like minimizing responsibility—“everyone is doing it”—or dismissing their actions because “no one is hurt.”

While these explanations have obvious merit—we all know the gap between our ideals and our actions—I want to suggest another possibility: Perhaps the inconsistency also reflects the mixed messages to which young people (all of us, in fact) are constantly subjected.

Mixed Messages

Consider the story that young people hear about success. What student hasn’t been told doing well includes such things as getting good grades, going to a good college, living up to their potential, aiming high, and letting go of “limiting beliefs” that stand in their way? Schools, not to mention parents, media, and employers, all, in various ways, communicate these expectations and portray them as integral to the good in life.

They tell young people that these are the standards they should meet, the yardsticks by which they should measure themselves.

In my interviews and discussions with young people, it is clear they have absorbed these powerful messages and feel held to answer, to themselves and others, for how they are measuring up. Falling short, as they understand and feel it, is highly distressful.

At the same time, they are regularly exposed to the idea that success involves a trade-off with honesty and that cheating behavior, though regrettable, is “real life.” These words are from a student on a survey administered at an elite high school. “People,” he continued, “who are rich and successful lie and cheat every day.”

In this thinking, he is far from alone. In a 2012 Josephson Institute survey of 23,000 high school students, 57 percent agreed that “in the real world, successful people do what they have to do to win, even if others consider it cheating.” 3

Putting these together, another high school student told a researcher: “Grades are everything. You have to realize it’s the only possible way to get into a good college and you resort to any means necessary.”

In a 2021 survey of college students by College Pulse, the single biggest reason given for cheating, endorsed by 72 percent of the respondents, was “pressure to do well.”

What we see here are two goods—educational success and honesty—pitted against each other. When the two collide, the call to be successful is likely to be the far more immediate and tangible imperative.

A young person’s very future appears to hang in the balance. And, when asked in surveys , youths often perceive both their parents’ and teachers’ priorities to be more focused on getting “good grades in my classes,” than on character qualities, such as being a “caring community member.”

In noting the mixed messages, my point is not to offer another excuse for bad behavior. But some of the messages just don’t mix, placing young people in a difficult bind. Answering the expectations placed on them can be at odds with being an honest person. In the trade-off, cheating takes on a certain logic.

The proposed remedies to academic dishonesty typically focus on parents and schools. One commonly recommended strategy is to do more to promote student integrity. That seems obvious. Yet, as we saw, students already believe in honesty and the wrongness of (most) cheating. It’s not clear how more teaching on that point would make much of a difference.

Integrity, though, has another meaning, in addition to the personal qualities of being honest and of strong moral principles. Integrity is also the “quality or state of being whole or undivided.” In this second sense, we can speak of social life itself as having integrity.

It is “whole or undivided” when the different contexts of everyday life are integrated in such a way that norms, values, and expectations are fairly consistent and tend to reinforce each other—and when messages about what it means to be a good, accomplished person are not mixed but harmonious.

While social integrity rooted in ethical principles does not guarantee personal integrity, it is not hard to see how that foundation would make a major difference. Rather than confronting students with trade-offs that incentivize “any means necessary,” they would receive positive, consistent reinforcement to speak and act truthfully.

Talk of personal integrity is all for the good. But as pervasive cheating suggests, more is needed. We must also work to shape an integrated environment in which achievement and the “real world” are not set in opposition to honesty.

1. Liora Pedhazur Schmelkin, et al. “A Multidimensional Scaling of College Students’ Perceptions of Academic Dishonesty.” The Journal of Higher Education 79 (2008): 587–607.

2. See, for example, the studies in Christian B. Miller, Character and Moral Psychology. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014, Ch. 3.

3. Josephson Institute. The 2012 Report Card on the Ethics of American Youth (Installment 1: Honesty and Integrity). Josephson Institute of Ethics, 2012.

Joseph E. Davis is Research Professor of Sociology and Director of the Picturing the Human Colloquy of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia.

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Reports Of Cheating At Colleges Soar During The Pandemic

Mariam Aly, an assistant professor at Columbia University, has tried everything to keep her students from cheating. In her cognitive neuroscience class, she gives her students a week to complete an open-book exam. And, as part of that exam, the nearly 180 students in the class have to sign an honor code.

But they're still cheating. And dealing with student misconduct, she says, is the worst part of her job. "It's just awkward and painful for everybody involved," Aly says. "And it's really hard to blame them for it. You do feel disappointed and frustrated."

Her students are facing unprecedented levels of stress and uncertainty, she says, and she gets that. "I didn't go to school during a pandemic."

As college moved online in the COVID-19 crisis, many universities are reporting increases, sometimes dramatic ones, in academic misconduct. At Virginia Commonwealth University, reports of academic misconduct soared during the 2020-21 school year, to 1,077 — more than three times the previous year's number. At the University of Georgia, cases more than doubled; from 228 in the fall of 2019 to more than 600 last fall. And, at The Ohio State University, reported incidents of cheating were up more than 50% over the year before.

But while students may have had new and different opportunities for cutting corners in the online learning environment, it's unclear how much cheating actually increased. Some educators note that there are other factors at play, such as an increased ability to identify misconduct.

"There was probably increased cheating because there were more temptations and opportunities and stress and pressure. And, faculty were probably detecting it more," says Tricia Bertram Gallant, who researches academic integrity at the University of California, San Diego. "It's easier to catch in the virtual world, in many ways, than it is in the in-person world."

When collaboration morphs into cheating

When colleges shut down or restricted in-person access, students were taking exams in their bedrooms, with unfettered access to cellphones and other technology. This, educators say, spurred cheating to take on new and different forms.

One student at Middle Tennessee State University used his smart speaker to find answers during an exam, according to Michael Baily, the school's director of academic integrity. California State University, Los Angeles, had a large-scale cheating scandal early on in the pandemic, after one student alleged that her peers were sharing exam answers through a GroupMe chat.

Unauthorized collaboration was a big factor in reports of misconduct at Virginia Commonwealth, says Karen Belanger, the university's director of student conduct and academic integrity. "They were so desperate to connect that they were using — or in some courses being encouraged to create — group chats," she says. "Those chats then became a place where they may talk about homework or talk about exam questions."

Students were confused about what was permitted and what wasn't during an exam, Belanger adds. "Sometimes, people just lost track of where the guardrails were in the virtual environment."'

Faculty at the University of Georgia gave more open-book exams during the pandemic. Some students then turned to third-party study sites to complete those exams, which is considered a misconduct violation, explains Phillip Griffeth, the school's director of academic honesty.

"There was a miscommunication. Some students might have saw 'open-book, open-note' as 'open-Internet, open-resources,' " Griffeth explains.

Ohio State also saw a large increase in cases where students shared information during the exam or used unauthorized materials, according to an annual report from the school's committee on academic misconduct.

Schools, including the University of Georgia and Ohio State, are now trying to educate students on what constitutes an academic misconduct violation.

"The university is taking several steps to enhance the resources available related to academic integrity so that students continue to be fully aware of expectations and to support instructors in dealing with this issue," an Ohio State spokesman wrote to NPR.

When cheating feels like the only option

Annie Stearns will be a sophomore this fall at St. Mary's College of California, where misconduct reports doubled last fall over the previous year. During the pandemic, the challenges of learning online were entwined with social isolation and additional family responsibilities, she says.

On top of that, tutoring services and academic resources scaled back or moved online. Some students, facing Zoom burnout, stopped asking for help altogether.

"If you're in class, and then you have to go to office hours, that's another Zoom meeting. And if you have to go to the writing center, that's another Zoom meeting," Stearns explains. "People would get too overwhelmed with being on video calls and just opt out."

Stearns, who logged onto classes from her family's home last year, faced the pressures of online classes herself, but she sits on her school's academic honor council. For other students, she says, cheating can feel like the only option.

"We're going through such an unprecedented time that (cheating is) bound to happen," Stearns says. "They prefer to take the shortcut and risk getting caught, than have an email conversation with their professor because they're too ashamed to be like, 'I need assistance.' "

More cheating? Or just better tracking?

Many factors are at play in the rise in reports of cheating and misconduct, and, in interviews with NPR, experts across the higher education spectrum say they aren't at all certain whether, or how much, cheating actually increased.

"Just because there's an increase in reports of academic misconduct doesn't mean that there's more cheating occurring," says James Orr, a board member of the International Center for Academic Integrity. "In the online environment, I think that faculty across the country are more vigilant in looking for academic misconduct."

Data from before the pandemic showed similar rates of cheating when comparing online and face-to-face learning environments.

And at least one school, the University of Texas at Austin, found that reports of academic misconduct cases actually declined during the pandemic. Katie McGee, the executive director for student conduct and academic integrity there, explains that before the pandemic, UT-Austin had toughened its ability, through software, to detect cheating.

With online learning, educators are using third-party tools, which can make cheating easier to detect. Middle Tennessee State, for example, rolled out an online proctoring tool, Examity, at the start of the pandemic. The tool records testing sessions on students' webcams and uses software to flag possible cheating. The university has seen reports of cheating jump by more than 79% from fall of 2019 to spring of 2021.

"I don't believe that more students started cheating during the pandemic," said Baily. "What I believe is that we then put in place these proctoring systems that enabled us to find these students who were cheating."

And Baily says Examity is here to stay at Middle Tennessee State. Orr calls remote, third-party proctoring tools a "new industry standard."

That could be a problem for some students and faculty who have raised privacy and equity concerns around such services. At the start of the pandemic, students at Florida State University petitioned the school to stop using Honorlock. The petition says using Honorlock "blatantly violates privacy rights."

And at Miami University, in Ohio, petitioners argue that yet another service, Proctorio, discriminates against some students, "as it tracks a student's gaze, and flags students who look away from the screen as 'suspicious' too, which negatively impacts people who have ADHD-like symptoms." The petition also goes on to note, "students with black or brown skin have been asked to shine more light on their faces, as the software had difficulty recognizing them or tracking their movements."

At the University of Minnesota, students are also petitioning against the use of Proctorio, calling the service a "huge invasion of privacy."

Mike Olsen, the head of Proctorio, wrote in a statement to NPR that humans make all final determinations regarding exam integrity. He added that the company has partnered with third-party data security auditors, and an analysis of Proctorio's latest face-detection models found no measurable bias.

Honorlock declined NPR's request for comment.

Ken Leopold, a chemistry professor at the University of Minnesota, says he and other faculty must balance privacy concerns with the need to guard against cheating. He says he has avoided using Proctorio in his classes, saying the software "didn't sit right" with him. But then came the pandemic.

The school is having conversations with students about remote proctoring. But, he says, "I can't see Proctorio or some equivalent entirely vanishing from the university at this point."

"We're sensitive to the students' concerns, but at the same time, we have to uphold academic integrity,'' says Leopold, who advises the university on remote proctoring and academic misconduct. "If you're going to give an exam remotely, you have very little choice."

Correction Aug. 27, 2021

A previous version of this story incorrectly said Tricia Bertram Gallant was affiliated with the University of California, Santa Barbara. In fact, she researches academic integrity at the University of California, San Diego.

When does getting help on an assignment turn into cheating?

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Students – whether at university or school – can get help from many places. They can go to a tutor, parent, teacher, a friend or consult a textbook.

But at which point does getting help cross the line into cheating?

Sometimes it’s clear. If you use a spy camera or smartwatch in an exam, you’re clearly cheating. And you’re cheating if you get a friend to sit an exam for you or write your assignment.

At other times the line is blurry. When it’s crossed, it constitutes academic misconduct. Academic misconduct is any action or attempted action that may result in creating an unfair academic advantage for yourself or others.

What about getting someone else to read a draft of your essay? What if they do more than proofread and they alter sections of an assignment? Does that constitute academic misconduct?

Learning, teaching or cheating?

There are a wide range of activities that constitute academic misconduct. These can include:

fabrication, which is just making things up. I could say “90 % of people admit to fabricating their assignments”, when this is not a fact but a statement I just invented

falsification, which is manipulating data to inaccurately portray results. This can occur by taking research results out of context and drawing conclusions not supported by data

misrepresentation, which is falsely representing yourself. Did you know I have a master’s degree from the University of Oxford on this topic? (Actually, I don’t)

plagiarism, which is when you use other people’s ideas or words without appropriate attribution. For instance, this list came from other people’s research and it is important to reference the source.

Sometimes students and teachers have different ideas of academic misconduct. One study found around 45% of academics thought getting someone else to correct a draft could constitute academic misconduct. But only 32% of students thought the same thing.

Read more: Assessment design won’t stop cheating, but our relationships with students might

In the same survey, most academics and students agreed having someone else like a parent or friend identify errors in a draft assignment, as opposed to correcting them, was fine.

Generally when a lecturer, teacher or another marker is assessing an assignment they need to establish the authenticity of the work. Authenticity means having confidence the work actually relates to the performance of the person being assessed, and not of another person.

The Australian government’s vocational education and training sector’s quality watchdog, for instance, considers authenticity as one of four so-called rules of evidence for an “effective assessment”.

The rules are:

validity, which is when the assessor is confident the student has the skills and knowledge required by the module or unit

sufficiency, which is when the quality, quantity and relevance of the assessment evidence is enough for the assessor to make a judgement

authenticity, where the assessor is confident the evidence presented for assessment is the learner’s own work

currency, where the assessor is confident the evidence relates to what the student can do now instead of some time in the past.

Generally speaking, if the assessor is confident the work is the product of a student’s thoughts and where help has been provided there is proper acknowledgement, it should be fine.

Why is cheating a problem?

It’s difficult to get a handle on how big the cheating problem is. Nearly 30% of students who responded to a 2012 UK survey agreed they had “submitted work taken wholly from an internet source” as their own.

In Australia, 6% of students in a survey of 14,000 reported they had engaged in “outsourcing behaviours” such as submitting someone else’s assignment as their own, and 15% of students had bought, sold or traded notes.

Getting someone to help with your assignment might seem harmless but it can hinder the learning process. The teacher needs to understand where the student is at with their learning, and too much help from others can get in the way.

Read more: Children learn from stress and failure: all the more reason you shouldn't do their homework

Some research describes formal education as a type of “ signal ”. This means educational attainment communicates important information about an individual to a third party such as an employer, a customer, or to an authority like a licensing body or government department. Academic misconduct interferes with that process.

How to deal with cheating

It appears fewer cheaters are getting away with it than before. Some of the world’s leading academic institutions have reported a 40% increase in academic misconduct cases over a three year period.

Technological advances mean online essay mills and “ contract cheating ” have become a bigger problem. This type of cheating involves outsourcing work to third parties and is concerning because it is difficult to detect .

Read more: 15% of students admit to buying essays. What can universities do about it?

But while technology has made cheating easier, it has also offered sophisticated systems for educators to verify the work is a person’s own. Software programs such as Turnitin can check if a student has plagiarised their assignment.

Institutions can also verify the evidence they are assessing relates to a student’s actual performance by using a range of assessment methods such as exams, oral presentations, and group assignments.

Academic misconduct can be a learning and cultural issue . Many students, particularly when they are new to higher education, are simply not aware what constitutes academic misconduct. Students can often be under enormous pressure that leads them to make poor decisions.

It is possible to deal with these issues in a constructive manner that help students learn and get the support they need. This can include providing training to students when they first enrol, offering support to assist students who may struggle, and when academic misconduct does occur, taking appropriate steps to ensure it does not happen again.

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Why Students Cheat—and What to Do About It

A teacher seeks answers from researchers and psychologists. 

“Why did you cheat in high school?” I posed the question to a dozen former students.

“I wanted good grades and I didn’t want to work,” said Sonya, who graduates from college in June. [The students’ names in this article have been changed to protect their privacy.]

My current students were less candid than Sonya. To excuse her plagiarized Cannery Row essay, Erin, a ninth-grader with straight As, complained vaguely and unconvincingly of overwhelming stress. When he was caught copying a review of the documentary Hypernormalism , Jeremy, a senior, stood by his “hard work” and said my accusation hurt his feelings.

Cases like the much-publicized ( and enduring ) 2012 cheating scandal at high-achieving Stuyvesant High School in New York City confirm that academic dishonesty is rampant and touches even the most prestigious of schools. The data confirms this as well. A 2012 Josephson Institute’s Center for Youth Ethics report revealed that more than half of high school students admitted to cheating on a test, while 74 percent reported copying their friends’ homework. And a survey of 70,000 high school students across the United States between 2002 and 2015 found that 58 percent had plagiarized papers, while 95 percent admitted to cheating in some capacity.

So why do students cheat—and how do we stop them?

According to researchers and psychologists, the real reasons vary just as much as my students’ explanations. But educators can still learn to identify motivations for student cheating and think critically about solutions to keep even the most audacious cheaters in their classrooms from doing it again.

Rationalizing It


First, know that students realize cheating is wrong—they simply see themselves as moral in spite of it.

“They cheat just enough to maintain a self-concept as honest people. They make their behavior an exception to a general rule,” said Dr. David Rettinger , professor at the University of Mary Washington and executive director of the Center for Honor, Leadership, and Service, a campus organization dedicated to integrity.

According to Rettinger and other researchers, students who cheat can still see themselves as principled people by rationalizing cheating for reasons they see as legitimate.

Some do it when they don’t see the value of work they’re assigned, such as drill-and-kill homework assignments, or when they perceive an overemphasis on teaching content linked to high-stakes tests.

“There was no critical thinking, and teachers seemed pressured to squish it into their curriculum,” said Javier, a former student and recent liberal arts college graduate. “They questioned you on material that was never covered in class, and if you failed the test, it was progressively harder to pass the next time around.”

But students also rationalize cheating on assignments they see as having value.

High-achieving students who feel pressured to attain perfection (and Ivy League acceptances) may turn to cheating as a way to find an edge on the competition or to keep a single bad test score from sabotaging months of hard work. At Stuyvesant, for example, students and teachers identified the cutthroat environment as a factor in the rampant dishonesty that plagued the school.

And research has found that students who receive praise for being smart—as opposed to praise for effort and progress—are more inclined to exaggerate their performance and to cheat on assignments , likely because they are carrying the burden of lofty expectations.

A Developmental Stage

When it comes to risk management, adolescent students are bullish. Research has found that teenagers are biologically predisposed to be more tolerant of unknown outcomes and less bothered by stated risks than their older peers.

“In high school, they’re risk takers developmentally, and can’t see the consequences of immediate actions,” Rettinger says. “Even delayed consequences are remote to them.”

While cheating may not be a thrill ride, students already inclined to rebel against curfews and dabble in illicit substances have a certain comfort level with being reckless. They’re willing to gamble when they think they can keep up the ruse—and more inclined to believe they can get away with it.

Cheating also appears to be almost contagious among young people—and may even serve as a kind of social adhesive, at least in environments where it is widely accepted.  A study of military academy students from 1959 to 2002 revealed that students in communities where cheating is tolerated easily cave in to peer pressure, finding it harder not to cheat out of fear of losing social status if they don’t.

Michael, a former student, explained that while he didn’t need to help classmates cheat, he felt “unable to say no.” Once he started, he couldn’t stop.

Technology Facilitates and Normalizes It

With smartphones and Alexa at their fingertips, today’s students have easy access to quick answers and content they can reproduce for exams and papers.  Studies show that technology has made cheating in school easier, more convenient, and harder to catch than ever before.

To Liz Ruff, an English teacher at Garfield High School in Los Angeles, students’ use of social media can erode their understanding of authenticity and intellectual property. Because students are used to reposting images, repurposing memes, and watching parody videos, they “see ownership as nebulous,” she said.

As a result, while they may want to avoid penalties for plagiarism, they may not see it as wrong or even know that they’re doing it.

This confirms what Donald McCabe, a Rutgers University Business School professor,  reported in his 2012 book ; he found that more than 60 percent of surveyed students who had cheated considered digital plagiarism to be “trivial”—effectively, students believed it was not actually cheating at all.

Strategies for Reducing Cheating

Even moral students need help acting morally, said  Dr. Jason M. Stephens , who researches academic motivation and moral development in adolescents at the University of Auckland’s School of Learning, Development, and Professional Practice. According to Stephens, teachers are uniquely positioned to infuse students with a sense of responsibility and help them overcome the rationalizations that enable them to think cheating is OK.

1. Turn down the pressure cooker. Students are less likely to cheat on work in which they feel invested. A multiple-choice assessment tempts would-be cheaters, while a unique, multiphase writing project measuring competencies can make cheating much harder and less enticing. Repetitive homework assignments are also a culprit, according to research , so teachers should look at creating take-home assignments that encourage students to think critically and expand on class discussions. Teachers could also give students one free pass on a homework assignment each quarter, for example, or let them drop their lowest score on an assignment.

2. Be thoughtful about your language.   Research indicates that using the language of fixed mindsets , like praising children for being smart as opposed to praising them for effort and progress , is both demotivating and increases cheating. When delivering feedback, researchers suggest using phrases focused on effort like, “You made really great progress on this paper” or “This is excellent work, but there are still a few areas where you can grow.”

3. Create student honor councils. Give students the opportunity to enforce honor codes or write their own classroom/school bylaws through honor councils so they can develop a full understanding of how cheating affects themselves and others. At Fredericksburg Academy, high school students elect two Honor Council members per grade. These students teach the Honor Code to fifth graders, who, in turn, explain it to younger elementary school students to help establish a student-driven culture of integrity. Students also write a pledge of authenticity on every assignment. And if there is an honor code transgression, the council gathers to discuss possible consequences. 

4. Use metacognition. Research shows that metacognition, a process sometimes described as “ thinking about thinking ,” can help students process their motivations, goals, and actions. With my ninth graders, I use a centuries-old resource to discuss moral quandaries: the play Macbeth . Before they meet the infamous Thane of Glamis, they role-play as medical school applicants, soccer players, and politicians, deciding if they’d cheat, injure, or lie to achieve goals. I push students to consider the steps they take to get the outcomes they desire. Why do we tend to act in the ways we do? What will we do to get what we want? And how will doing those things change who we are? Every tragedy is about us, I say, not just, as in Macbeth’s case, about a man who succumbs to “vaulting ambition.”

5. Bring honesty right into the curriculum. Teachers can weave a discussion of ethical behavior into curriculum. Ruff and many other teachers have been inspired to teach media literacy to help students understand digital plagiarism and navigate the widespread availability of secondary sources online, using guidance from organizations like Common Sense Media .

There are complicated psychological dynamics at play when students cheat, according to experts and researchers. While enforcing rules and consequences is important, knowing what’s really motivating students to cheat can help you foster integrity in the classroom instead of just penalizing the cheating.

Cheating Is More Serious in College Than in High School

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• M.Ed., Education Administration, University of Georgia
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No matter what you did in high school when it comes to cheating, you should know that cheating in college is quite different. It's a really big deal, and college administrations take cheating very seriously. It's not out of the question of for whole classes to be suspended or even expelled for "collaborating" or outright cheating. Harvard's cheating scandal in 2012 resulted in about 70 students suspended after cheating in a course on politics, with about 25 more receiving disciplinary probation.

High School Cheating

In high school, there's a tendency to treat cheating less seriously, perhaps because high school students are minors. In high school, we can survive if our teachers lose confidence in us, or even if they don't like us. College is a different story. In college, you're an adult. If caught cheating, you'll pay adult consequences.

Tuition and the Honor Code

Your high school education may have been funded by taxes, but your college education is probably funded by you and your parents. Whenever you cheat, you are wasting time. If you cheat in college you are also wasting money. And not just a little bit of money. When you fail a class (and if you get caught cheating, you'll probably receive a failing grade), you are losing the money you paid for tuition. This is likely many thousands of dollars!

That's why you will be introduced to the honor code at your college as a freshman. It will outline the rules for your particular institution. Colleges have honor courts, where students must go in front of a jury of peers to face charges of cheating or plagiarism , which isn't a pleasant experience for the first year of college.

Compromised Relationships

When you're caught cheating , even once, you lose all credibility with professors. This is a big loss in college. You're going to get to know your major professors pretty well, and you're going to need them for things like recommendations for internships, scholarships, awards, jobs, and special programs. To a great extent, your success will depend on their opinion of you. You can't afford to mess that up. Don't risk this important relationship and lose all respect.

Professors are good at catching cheaters. They are smart, they put a lot of time and energy into creating assignments and tests, and they have more time and more resources for catching cheaters than high school teachers. They also have tenure and a little bit more flexibility than when it comes to checking out their suspicions and following through with allegations.

Competition, Training, and Consequences

College is competitive. Your college or university experience is training for the professional world, where faking it to get by simply won't cut it. Fellow students will take cheating more seriously in college because they realize what's at stake. They're more likely to turn you in.

Cheating is for losers, and in the real world, you can't cut corners. How would you feel if your parents were accused of breaking rules or skirting regulations on the job? What if they were fired for putting a colleague's health at risk by cutting safety corners? They'd feel the same way if you were caught cheating in college. You don't want to disappoint your parents, waste money and time, or embarrass yourself in front of teachers and fellow students.

Resources and Further Reading

• Epstein, David. “ Cheating Scandal at Virginia .” Inside Higher Ed , 30 June 2005.
• Pérez-Peña, Richard. “ Students Accused of Cheating Return Awkwardly to a Changed Harvard .” New York Times , 16 Sept. 2016.
• Cheating with Technology
• What to Do If You Know Someone Is Cheating in College
• Why Students Cheat and How to Stop Them
• Why Students Cheat and How to Stop It
• How are College Academics Different from High School?
• Classroom Rules for High School Students
• How to Register for the ACT
• Different Ways to Visit a College Campus
• What TOEFL Score Do You Need to Get into College?
• 7 Secrets to Success in English 101
• What Is a First-Generation College Student?
• Dual Enrollment in High School and College
• Why Do College Books Cost So Much?
• What to Do If You Miss Your Pet in College
• Prepare for College With High School Math
• Foreign Language Requirement for College Admissions

Why Do Students Cheat?

• Posted July 19, 2016
• By Zachary Goldman

In March, Usable Knowledge published an article on ethical collaboration , which explored researchers’ ideas about how to develop classrooms and schools where collaboration is nurtured but cheating is avoided. The piece offers several explanations for why students cheat and provides powerful ideas about how to create ethical communities. The article left me wondering how students themselves might respond to these ideas, and whether their experiences with cheating reflected the researchers’ understanding. In other words, how are young people “reading the world,” to quote Paulo Freire , when it comes to questions of cheating, and what might we learn from their perspectives?

I worked with Gretchen Brion-Meisels to investigate these questions by talking to two classrooms of students from Massachusetts and Texas about their experiences with cheating. We asked these youth informants to connect their own insights and ideas about cheating with the ideas described in " Ethical Collaboration ." They wrote from a range of perspectives, grappling with what constitutes cheating, why people cheat, how people cheat, and when cheating might be ethically acceptable. In doing so, they provide us with additional insights into why students cheat and how schools might better foster ethical collaboration.

Why Students Cheat

Students critiqued both the individual decision-making of peers and the school-based structures that encourage cheating. For example, Julio (Massachusetts) wrote, “Teachers care about cheating because its not fair [that] students get good grades [but] didn't follow the teacher's rules.” His perspective represents one set of ideas that we heard, which suggests that cheating is an unethical decision caused by personal misjudgment. Umna (Massachusetts) echoed this idea, noting that “cheating is … not using the evidence in your head and only using the evidence that’s from someone else’s head.”

Other students focused on external factors that might make their peers feel pressured to cheat. For example, Michima (Massachusetts) wrote, “Peer pressure makes students cheat. Sometimes they have a reason to cheat like feeling [like] they need to be the smartest kid in class.” Kayla (Massachusetts) agreed, noting, “Some people cheat because they want to seem cooler than their friends or try to impress their friends. Students cheat because they think if they cheat all the time they’re going to get smarter.” In addition to pressure from peers, students spoke about pressure from adults, pressure related to standardized testing, and the demands of competing responsibilities.

When Cheating is Acceptable

Students noted a few types of extenuating circumstances, including high stakes moments. For example, Alejandra (Texas) wrote, “The times I had cheated [were] when I was failing a class, and if I failed the final I would repeat the class. And I hated that class and I didn’t want to retake it again.” Here, she identifies allegiance to a parallel ethical value: Graduating from high school. In this case, while cheating might be wrong, it is an acceptable means to a higher-level goal.

Encouraging an Ethical School Community

Several of the older students with whom we spoke were able to offer us ideas about how schools might create more ethical communities. Sam (Texas) wrote, “A school where cheating isn't necessary would be centered around individualization and learning. Students would learn information and be tested on the information. From there the teachers would assess students' progress with this information, new material would be created to help individual students with what they don't understand. This way of teaching wouldn't be based on time crunching every lesson, but more about helping a student understand a concept.”

Sam provides a vision for the type of school climate in which collaboration, not cheating, would be most encouraged. Kaith (Texas), added to this vision, writing, “In my own opinion students wouldn’t find the need to cheat if they knew that they had the right undivided attention towards them from their teachers and actually showed them that they care about their learning. So a school where cheating wasn’t necessary would be amazing for both teachers and students because teachers would be actually getting new things into our brains and us as students would be not only attentive of our teachers but also in fact learning.”

Both of these visions echo a big idea from “ Ethical Collaboration ”: The importance of reducing the pressure to achieve. Across students’ comments, we heard about how self-imposed pressure, peer pressure, and pressure from adults can encourage cheating.

Where Student Opinions Diverge from Research

The ways in which students spoke about support differed from the descriptions in “ Ethical Collaboration .” The researchers explain that, to reduce cheating, students need “vertical support,” or standards, guidelines, and models of ethical behavior. This implies that students need support understanding what is ethical. However, our youth informants describe a type of vertical support that centers on listening and responding to students’ needs. They want teachers to enable ethical behavior through holistic support of individual learning styles and goals. Similarly, researchers describe “horizontal support” as creating “a school environment where students know, and can persuade their peers, that no one benefits from cheating,” again implying that students need help understanding the ethics of cheating. Our youth informants led us to believe instead that the type of horizontal support needed may be one where collective success is seen as more important than individual competition.

Why Youth Voices Matter, and How to Help Them Be Heard

Our purpose in reaching out to youth respondents was to better understand whether the research perspectives on cheating offered in “ Ethical Collaboration ” mirrored the lived experiences of young people. This blog post is only a small step in that direction; young peoples’ perspectives vary widely across geographic, demographic, developmental, and contextual dimensions, and we do not mean to imply that these youth informants speak for all youth. However, our brief conversations suggest that asking youth about their lived experiences can benefit the way that educators understand school structures.

Too often, though, students are cut out of conversations about school policies and culture. They rarely even have access to information on current educational research, partially because they are not the intended audience of such work. To expand opportunities for student voice, we need to create spaces — either online or in schools — where students can research a current topic that interests them. Then they can collect information, craft arguments they want to make, and deliver their messages. Educators can create the spaces for this youth-driven work in schools, communities, and even policy settings — helping to support young people as both knowledge creators and knowledge consumers. 

Additional Resources

• Read “ Student Voice in Educational Research and Reform ” [PDF] by Alison Cook-Sather.
• Read “ The Significance of Students ” [PDF] by Dana L. Mitra.
• Read “ Beyond School Spirit ” by Emily J. Ozer and Dana Wright.

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EdTech Goes Undercover: An Insider’s View of What Students Post on Contract Cheating Sites

Amelia Pang is a journalist and an editor at EdTech: Focus on Higher Education. Her work has appeared in the New Republic, Mother Jones, and  The New York Times Sunday Review, among other publications.

Editor’s Note: This is part 1 of a 2-part investigation. Part 2 covers how IT departments can detect and prevent contract cheating in higher education.

“Please complete my assignment,” a student posts on a microtutoring website that universities say  facilitates contract cheating . The assignment is on the history of public health. APA format. Three sources. At least 750 words. In less than 15 minutes,  EdTech  sees a university ghostwriter accepting the assignment for $20.

There are hundreds of “homework help” websites that have seen an  exponential increase in customers  since the start of the pandemic. The services offered on sites like these typically run the gamut of legitimate tutoring to selling exam documents and answers. Some flat out offer to take an entire online course or exam for students.

The shadow industry of contract cheating falls into a legal gray area. When students and tutors make an account on a homework help site, they must sign a terms-of-service agreement and honor code that forbids academic cheating. But an undercover  EdTech  investigation found this agreement appears to be rarely enforced.

“I have definitely seen an increase in customers since the pandemic began,” Alex, an academic ghostwriter who currently works for a homework help site, tells  EdTech.  “Specifically, there has been an increase in the number of students posting that they want full online classes done for them. Most of the time, students have no problem finding a contractor.”

What Is Contract Cheating, and How Does It Work?

To avoid legal liability, some homework help sites are using automation tools to edit the language of posts. Whenever students submit a post, the first line always says something like “I need help understanding the assignment,” or “Help me learn.”

But  EdTech  saw this as mostly a cursory statement. Many students will also directly say, “Please complete my assignment.” Some even go so far as to request that the “tutor” be available at a certain date and time to take an online exam for them.

“I would say that 30 percent of the requests are for ‘help’ versus completing assignments,”  a tutor for one of these sites told BRIGHT Magazine in 2016.  “It is largely a place for students to cheat.”

When  EdTech  created a tutor account at a homework help site earlier this year, we found that not much has changed since the BRIGHT Magazine article came out five years ago.

An insider's view of what students post on contract cheating sites.

Although students are blatantly asking for “tutors” to complete assignments and exams for them,  EdTech  saw academic ghostwriters making bids and accepting the work — often within minutes.

Students Hire Academic Ghostwriters to Take Online Courses for Them

Former and current academic ghostwriters also say that taking an entire online course for students is a common practice in the industry — a practice that has existed since the inception of online education. “That was always standard operating procedure,” says Dave Tomar, a former academic ghostwriter who started his decade-long career in contract cheating in 2000. He is currently the managing editor of  Academic Influence , where he  shares his insights  on how educators can counter the surge of contract cheating during the pandemic.

“When I started doing this, I would frequently get these full online modules at the beginning of a rolling semester," Tomar says. “I got the full syllabus, and everything that I was expected to do over the next couple of months. Now, with countless students forced into remote learning, you have a whole new customer pool that is growing.”

As for how much students are willing to pay, the contractors charge “anywhere from $300 to $700 for a full class depending on the student, the subject and the difficulty,” says Alex, who currently works for a homework help site.

INSIDER EXCLUSIVE:   Read Part 2 – What can universities do about contract cheating?

Fake Tutors Entice Unknowing Students to Engage in Contract Cheating

Academic cheating sites also strongly encourage students to sell their coursework— an act that may be illegal in 17 states.

“Distributing any post-secondary assignment for a profit with reasonable knowledge that it will be submitted by another person for academic credit is a crime in many US states,” Citron Research, an investment research firm that investigates overvalued fraudulent companies, stated in  a report.

It’s a big problem for many institutions. According to Douglas Harrison, vice president and dean of the school of cybersecurity and information technology at the  University of Maryland Global Campus , some of these contract cheating websites are “facilitating massive transfers of institutional proprietary material into their file-sharing systems.”

Harrison says many students may not even realize they are cheating when they download a university’s copyrighted classroom assessment materials because these websites reframe downloading answers to tests as a form of studying or tutoring. “They reframe file-sharing as educational, even though these are behaviors that conventional norms of academic integrity would consider misconduct,” he says.

Dave Tomar former academic ghostwriter.

To make matters worse, these websites have mastered sophisticated techniques to lure unsuspecting students. Several of these prominent homework tutoring sites will offer to give students a discount if they let their academic ghostwriter have access to the online course. This often results in the contract cheater stealing other students’ personal information.

“So the contract cheater then reaches out to other students and says, ‘I’m a tutor in your course. And I’ve helped another student in your class with their assignments. Would you like a little help?’” Harrison says, describing how the contract cheater pitches cheating “services” to other students.

This can be especially confusing for students, who may not know how to tell the difference between a contract cheater and a legitimate tutor who is affiliated with the university.

“Most of the students who we find in academic misconduct settings after inappropriately using materials on these sites, they did not set out to be malicious cheaters. Now that doesn’t mean we don’t hold them accountable, but we have to hold them accountable in proportion to the root cause of the situation,” Harrison says.

Who Is Using Academic Ghostwriters?

According to the ghostwriters who are contracted to help students cheat, their customers are usually underserved students who need access to remedial courses, and nontraditional students who struggle to balance coursework with full-time employment.

“I would argue that what is facilitating the surge of contract cheating is the fact that students are increasingly desperate and lacking support,” says Tomar.

During Tomar’s time as an academic ghostwriter, he caught glimpses into their personal circumstances. “Some would tell you they are a parent working full time. And they just can’t deal with this challenge right now. Some say, ‘I’ve invested X number of dollars into this education, and I cannot afford to fail this class. But I don’t know how to do this assignment.’”

Alex mentions that many are also English language learners. “As I noted, some students are asking for whole classes to be done, and a lot of those are English or writing-intensive courses,” he says. “That does not mean that they are ESL, but [my sense is] most of them are.”

To fundamentally address the cheating pandemic, universities and colleges may need to invest in more resources for vulnerable student populations.

“It begins with figuring out who’s struggling, why they’re struggling and what we can do to help them before they end up as contract cheating customers,” Tomar says.

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Why students cheat in online exams

by University of Cologne

Media psychologists at the University of Cologne have studied how students' individual needs, conceptions and reasons relate to cheating behavior in online exams.

Online exams have become a more common type of exam at universities, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic. They are advantageous because they save time and offer flexibility. However, cheating attempts present a big challenge for lecturers. This is why universities have been working on ways to thwart cheating in online exams by putting organizational and technical measures into place.

According to the psychologists Dr. Marco Rüth and Professor Dr. Dr. Kai Kaspar from the Faculty of Human Sciences at the University of Cologne, cheating attempts can also signal that psychological aspects and deeper-seated problems which affect students' learning behavior and well-being are not given enough attention. This is where their current study comes into play.

The study is titled " Cheating behavior in online exams: On the role of needs, conceptions, and reasons of university students " and has been published in the Journal of Computer Assisted Learning.

The results of the study are based on an anonymous online survey in which 339 students from different universities in Germany took part. The extensive study consisted of three parts.

The first part of the study revealed that it is less likely for students to cheat when lecturers demonstrate why the exam content is necessary in their future professional practice instead of solely pointing out the value of good grades for their future careers. Cheating behavior is also less likely to take place when the exam tasks are presented as authentically as possible and are linked to future job requirements.

Questions testing knowledge that check if course content has been learned by heart, however, encourage cheating attempts. In addition, cheating attempts become less likely when the lecturers offer the students detailed feedback on the exam results instead of only announcing grades.

In the second part of the study the research team examined how students' perceptions of online exams are related to their previous cheating attempts and their intentions to cheat in future online exams. The results have shown that three considerations are of particular importance.

The more negative students' perception of online exams was, e.g. that online exams impair learning, the more intense was their reported cheating behavior in past online exams.

Furthermore, students' cheating behavior and cheating intention was higher the stronger the impression of the students was that online exams stimulate collaboration and mutual support among students. Conversely, students' cheating behavior and cheating intention was lower the stronger the opinion of the students was that online exams can contribute to the improvement of teaching.

The third part of the study examined students' main personal reasons for and against cheating in online exams. The three main reasons cited for cheating behavior were the significance of grades, the perception that exams were unfair and the belief that there is a marginal risk of being caught.

Among the most common reasons against cheating were moral norms and values such as honesty as well as the fear of being caught and the subsequent consequences like being expelled.

Overall, the results of the study show that psychological factors —such as individual needs, conceptions and reasons—play an important role in the cheating behavior in online exams.

"A stronger consideration of these factors when designing courses and exam formats can reduce cheating behavior and, in the long term, positively influence students' learning behavior and their well-being," said Dr. Marco Rüth, corresponding author of the study. "This could eventually strengthen the acceptance of online exams as a format at universities."

Provided by University of Cologne

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Your chance of acceptance, your chancing factors, extracurriculars, what happens if i'm caught cheating in college.

Hey everyone, I'm really concerned about the consequences of cheating in college. Can anyone shed some light on what happens if you're caught? Are there different levels of punishment based on the severity of cheating?

Hey there! It's completely normal to be concerned about the consequences of cheating in college. While the exact repercussions can vary from institution to institution, there are some commonalities across the board.

Firstly, many colleges have a strict academic integrity policy in place, and the consequences for violating it can range from fairly mild to extremely severe. The punishment is typically determined by the nature of the cheating incident as well as the history of the student.

For minor instances, such as copying a small portion of someone's homework, the punishment may be as simple as a warning or assignment of a failing grade on the specific assignment, depending on the institution's policy. On top of this, faculty members may choose to schedule a meeting with the student to discuss the importance of academic integrity and the consequences of future infractions.

If the cheating is more severe, such as plagiarizing an entire paper or cheating on an exam, the consequences can become more serious. This may include receiving a failing grade in the course, undergoing disciplinary probation, or even suspension or expulsion from the school. Furthermore, a record of academic dishonesty can go on the student's transcript, potentially impacting their future academic and/or career opportunities.

Beyond the direct punishment, being caught cheating can cause damage to your reputation as a student and your relationships with faculty members. Professors and other students may lose trust in you, which can affect your ability to collaborate, obtain recommendations, and participate in other academic activities.

It's crucial to remember that the risks and potential consequences of cheating far outweigh any short-term benefits you might think you're getting. It's better to invest time and effort into developing effective study skills and engaging with the academic community in an honest and responsible way.

In summary, while the consequences of cheating can vary depending on several factors, getting caught will likely carry significant academic and personal ramifications. It's essential to uphold academic integrity and avoid cheating in any form.

About CollegeVine’s Expert FAQ

CollegeVine’s Q&A seeks to offer informed perspectives on commonly asked admissions questions. Every answer is refined and validated by our team of admissions experts to ensure it resonates with trusted knowledge in the field.

More From Forbes

Educators battle plagiarism as 89% of students admit to using openai’s chatgpt for homework.

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Who's teaching who?

A large majority of students are already using ChatGPT for homework assignments, creating challenges around plagiarism , cheating, and learning. According to Wharton MBA Professor Christian Terwisch, ChatGPT would receive “a B or a B-” on an Ivy League MBA-level exam in operations management. Another professor at a Utah-based university asked ChatGPT to tweet in his voice - leading Professor Alex Lawrence to declare that “this is the greatest cheating tool ever invented”, according to the Wall Street Journal . The plagiarism potential is potent - so, is banning the tool a realistic solution?

New research from Study.com provides eye-opening insight into the educational impact of ChatGPT , an online tool that has a surprising mastery of learning and human language. INSIDER reports that researchers recently put ChatGPT through the United States Medical Licensing exam (the three-part exam used to qualify medical school students for residency - basically, a test to see if you can be a doctor). In a December report, ChatGPT “performed at or near the passing threshold for all three exams without any training or reinforcement.” Lawrence, a professor from Weber State in Utah who tested via tweet, wrote a follow-up message to his students regarding the new platform from OpenAI: “I hope to inspire and educate you enough that you will want to learn how to leverage these tools, not just to learn to cheat better.” No word on how the students have responded so far.

Machines, tools and software have been making certain tasks easier for us for thousands of years. Are we about to outsource learning and education to artificial intelligence ? And what are the implications, beyond the classroom, if we do?

Considering that 90% of students are aware of ChatGPT, and 89% of survey respondents report that they have used the platform to help with a homework assignment, the application of OpenAI’s platform is already here. More from the survey:

• 48% of students admitted to using ChatGPT for an at-home test or quiz, 53% had it write an essay, and 22% had it write an outline for a paper.
• 72% of college students believe that ChatGPT should be banned from their college's network. (New York, Seattle and Los Angeles have all blocked the service from their public school networks).
• 82% of college professors are aware of ChatGPT
• 72% of college professors who are aware of ChatGPT are concerned about its impact on cheating
• Over a third (34%) of all educators believe that ChatGPT should be banned in schools and universities, while 66% support students having access to it.
• Meanwhile, 5% of educators say that they have used ChatGPT to teach a class, and 7% have used the platform to create writing prompts.

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A teacher quoted anonymously in the Study.com survey shares, “'I love that students would have another resource to help answer questions. Do I worry some kids would abuse it? Yes. But they use Google and get answers without an explanation. It's my understanding that ChatGPT explains answers. That [explanation] would be more beneficial.” Or would it become a crutch?

Modern society has many options for transportation: cars, planes, trains, and even electric scooters all help us to get around. But these machines haven’t replaced the simple fact that walking and running (on your own) is really, really good for you. Electric bikes are fun, but pushing pedals on our own is where we find our fitness. Without movement comes malady. A sedentary life that relies solely on external mechanisms for transport is a recipe for atrophy, poor health, and even a shortened lifespan. Will ChatGPT create educational atrophy, the equivalent of an electric bicycle for our brains?

Of course, when calculators came into the classroom, many declared the decline of math skills would soon follow. Research conducted as recently as 2012 has proven this to be false. Calculators had no positive or negative effects on basic math skills.

But ChatGPT has already gone beyond the basics, passing medical exams and MBA-level tests. A brave new world is already here, with implications for cheating and plagiarism, to be sure. But an even deeper implication points to the very nature of learning itself, when ChatGPT has become a super-charged repository for what is perhaps the most human of all inventions: the synthesis of our language. (That same synthesis that sits atop Blooms Taxonomy - a revered pyramid of thinking, that outlines the path to higher learning ). Perhaps educators, students and even business leaders will discover something old is new again, from ChatGPT. That discovery? Seems Socrates was right: the key to strong education begins with asking the right questions. Especially if you are talking to a ‘bot.

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Watch CBS News

8 Top Websites that Students Use to Cheat

By Lynn O'Shaughnessy

Updated on: May 6, 2011 / 6:37 PM EDT / MoneyWatch

In an attempt to answer that question, Turnitin , a company dedicated to uncovering plagiarism , looked at more than 40 million student papers. The firm concluded that the most popular website for plagiarism is the trusted source that millions of us Americans turn to to learn stuff: Wikipedia .

Interestingly enough, Turnitin said that the websites that are designed to assist cheaters by, for instance, selling papers represent only 15% of the potentially plagiarized content that the company detected.

In contrast, one third of the suspicious content that Turnitin uncovered was traced to social networks such as Facebook and question-and-answer sites where users contribute and share content.

Do Students Know They Are Cheating?

8 top sites for plagiarism.

• Wikipedia Encylopedia
• Yahoo! Answers Social & content sharing site
• Answers.com Social & content sharing site
• Slideshare Social and content sharing site
• OPPapers.com Cheat site & paper mill
• Scribd Social & content sharing site
• Course Hero Homework & academic site
• MedLibrary.org Homework & academic site

View all articles by Lynn O'Shaughnessy on CBS MoneyWatch» Lynn O'Shaughnessy is a best-selling author, consultant and speaker on issues that parents with college-bound teenagers face. She explains how families can make college more affordable through her website TheCollegeSolution.com ; her financial workbook, Shrinking the Cost of College ; and the new second edition of her Amazon best-selling book, The College Solution: A Guide for Everyone Looking for the Right School at the Right Price .

More from CBS News

Japan teen faces criminal charge for alleged high-tech cheating on exam

• The 18-year-old university applicant took exams for Tokyo’s Waseda University in February . 
• He allegedly used camera-equipped smart glasses to photograph questions.
• Ahead of the exams , he allegedly paid people online to act as “tutors,” tasked to answer the questions he eventually sends them.
• Waseda filed a criminal complaint, hoping to deter future cheating attempts.
• The alleged cheater was a senior high school student in Tokyo when he took the entrance exam at Waseda’s School of Creative Science and Engineering on Feb. 16.
• During a separate exam for the School of Commerce on Feb. 21, an official reportedly noticed a small camera in the frame of his glasses. The university then contacted local authorities to report the incident. 
• The student allegedly asked X users for assistance during the exams in exchange for several thousand yen each.
• Equipped with his glasses, the student sent images to the smartphone in his pocket and secretly sent them to his “tutors,” according to police.
• The student was referred to prosecutors on Thursday over allegations of obstructing the private university’s operations.
• Waseda says those who provided answers did not know that they were answering actual exam questions.
• The teen, who was not admitted in the university, reportedly expressed regret and acknowledged his actions as “worse than cheating.”
•  Local prosecutors will decide on potential charges. Waseda, for its part, says it will “respond harshly” to maintain fair testing environments.

China is Trying a New College Entrance Exam Model to Give Students a Break

Chinese School Finds Unique Way to Stop Students From Cheating During Exams

Chinese Student Pays Imposter $3,000 to Take US College Entrance Exam, Both Get Deported

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Emory students won a $10,000 prize for their AI tool. Then the university punished them.

• Emory University suspended students who created a celebrated AI-driven study tool.
• The students won $10,000 last year from a school pitch competition for the product.
• One of the students just sued the school, saying there's no evidence anyone used his product to cheat.

Emory University students created an artificial-intelligence-driven study tool last year.

Professors and students praised the program, called Eightball. The student newspaper wrote about it. The founders won a pitch competition sponsored by the school and took home $10,000. The business school highlighted them on social media .

Then at least two of the students were suspended for Eightball, which they'd already scrapped. Emory said the duo violated the school's honor code because students could use Eightball in ways that would breach it.

Benjamin Craver, a junior and history major who led marketing for the platform, sued the university on Friday. His complaint said there's no evidence any students used Eightball improperly, including to cheat.

The case highlights the tensions between universities eager to foster young entrepreneurs and administrative rules that haven't caught up to new tech.

Emory did not respond to a request for comment sent outside normal working hours.

Expulsion, suspension

Craver, who said he had never been in trouble at Emory, partnered with a student developer last year to promote Eightball. The premise was simple: Students could upload materials to a private server not accessible to other users, then use AI to generate study materials.

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He and his cofounders won a business-school pitch competition last year, and the business school's website spotlighted them — until this week, when the page was removed, per a comparison with the archived page .

Eightball's founders marketed the program as a study tool — not something to "do their homework or be a cheat sheet," one founder said on the now defunct business-school page.

But in October, Emory told the developer that he may have violated the honor code, per Craver's lawsuit. In November, Emory told Craver that it was weighing five honor-code violations for him. He said he asked the developer to immediately shut Eightball down, which the developer did.

Craver was put on disciplinary probation for a semester by the Office of Student Conduct, and he submitted a formal written apology. At a January honor-council hearing, a Spanish professor and four undergraduates weighed a bigger punishment for Craver.

Writing that the founders built Eightball with the intent to cheat, they recommended a one-year suspension for Craver and expulsion for the developer, the lawsuit says.

They heard no evidence Eightball was used for cheating, Craver said in the lawsuit.

Craver was ultimately suspended for a semester and summer, while the developer's yearlong suspension was later reduced to a semester, he said in the lawsuit.

While Craver was preparing an appeal, Emory's venture program reached out, asking whether he'd like to participate in an accelerator for Eightball.

He lost his appeal last week. His lawsuit said the disciplinary record could stymie his plans to apply to law school: "Emory willfully and self-servingly deviated from proper Honor Code procedures to make a public example out of Ben."

Craver is seeking a jury trial and damages of at least $75,000, per the complaint.

Watch: The 10 most challenged books in the US

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Gemini AI Will Now Help You With Your Physics Homework

A s if using ChatGPT for college essays wasn’t enough, students are now getting a Gemini tool to help with their Math and Physics homework, too. Google is utilizing its Circle to Search gesture, which was received quite well, to introduce a new feature.

With this update, you’ll be able to simply circle the part you’re stuck on and then use a long-press shortcut to find a step-by-step solution to your homework questions. Google sounds proud about the fact that they’re not just giving you the answer, but also all the working for it. All you have to do to use the feature is opt-in for help with word problems from the Search Labs menu.

According to Google’s blog , it’s using its LearnLM tech to make this happen, which is apparently its “new family of models fine-tuned for learning.” The new feature is Android only for now and is available on 100 million devices today. Google says that number will double by the end of this year. The Alphabet company also adds that it will soon extend its feature to include reading and analyzing graphs, symbolic formulas, and diagrams as well.

If you ask me, I don’t have a good feeling about this feature. I’m well aware of how much I’m sounding like a Boomer now, but I’m worried that students are going to stop using their brains if advancements like these continue to happen. I was in college when ChatGPT came out and witnessed how students frequently turned to it for plagiarism. Thankfully, we now have tools to detect ChatGPT-generated content , and I’m guessing something like that will eventually come out for Gemini content, too.

We will be covering all of Google’s big announcements during I/O this week. However, it seems one thing that won’t be announced at this year’s I/O is any new hardware.

For the latest news, Facebook , Twitter and Instagram .

Candace Parker’s goodbye, without cheating the game, herself or her fans

Candace Parker never wanted to cheat the game.

Of a player molded by Pat Summitt and the Lady Vols’ legacy, one would expect nothing less. Through 10 surgeries. Her pregnancy and birth of her first child, Lailaa, after her rookie season. Through offseasons spent playing in Russia and China and Turkey, and later, offseasons behind the desk on TNT, NBATV and CBS. Through a career that spanned 16 seasons and three cities in the WNBA , four years at Tennessee and two Olympics , it can be said assuredly: Parker never cheated the game. Instead, it almost feels like the game should’ve given her even more than it did.

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Parker, 38, announced Sunday on Instagram that she had retired from the WNBA. From her home or a hotel or a gym somewhere, Parker silently pushed send and let the world know that one of the greatest who has ever stepped foot on a basketball court would not play again.

There were no heads-ups or warnings to the WNBA community or the players against whom she has competed for years. And there will be no send-off season or monthslong march toward her retirement. It was swift and succinct. And it was exactly how she wanted it — entirely on her terms. After a career that was too often derailed by injury, she was owed that.

  View this post on Instagram   A post shared by Candace Parker (@candaceparker)

“I always wanted to walk off the court with no parade or tour,” her Instagram caption read. “Just privately with the ones I love.”

That Parker’s last WNBA game was a 2-point loss on the road to Dallas in 2023 is a footnote in her story. That might’ve been her last game on the floor, but her last WNBA game was a league championship. Her third one. She might’ve been on the end of the bench, not suited up, but she was crucial for the Las Vegas Aces every step of the way. Parker went out as she always was — a winner, an incredible teammate and an advocate for the game.

In reading Parker’s message, the first memory that comes to mind is not of her final season in Las Vegas, but of her final game in the 2021 season. She had come home to Chicagoland after 13 seasons in Los Angeles to bring a title to the city. It was the first offseason under a new CBA when free agency could thrive and she was — fittingly as one of the players who helped build the league — one of the first to deliver shocking free-agency news. Months later, in October, in a decisive WNBA Finals Game 4, with five seconds remaining, Parker pulled down the final rebound of the 2021 season and began to dribble up the court. As time expired, she picked up the ball and sprinted to the corner of the court, where her family awaited. She jumped into their arms.

She returned to center court to celebrate with teammates until she spotted Lailaa and motioned for her to come running. That was when the tears really started to fall. Parker played part of her rookie season pregnant with Lailaa and thus, Lailaa has been on Parker’s basketball journey since birth.

This moment with Lailaa💙 @Candace_Parker | #skytown pic.twitter.com/6cQsv7QLrb — Chicago Sky (@chicagosky) October 17, 2021

“Look at the city, man, they all showed up,” Parker said, looking up at the sold-out arena with her arm draped around her daughter. “They all showed up.”

But Parker had always been a player for whom people show up — fans, cities, her family, free agents. That season had its own harbingers of a swiftly changing league as viewership and attendance ticked up. In that final game, Chance the Rapper and Scottie Pippen sat courtside, but it was Lailaa to whom she held most tightly after the game.

Her basketball career spans the epic growth of this sport that has only hastened in the past few seasons. In 2003, she became the first women’s basketball player to ever announce her college commitment on ESPN. She would later become the first women’s player to dunk in an NCAA game. In the WNBA, she became the first (and still, only) player to win MVP and Rookie of the Year honors in the same season. Then, she became the first player to win three league titles with three franchises.

She was one of the first women’s players who tested the limits of positionless basketball. Even in college, her unicorn-like skills were undeniable. In the national title game during her senior year, play-by-play announcer Mike Patrick said: “This is almost unfair — someone of her size with this kind of speed and this kind of ballhandling.”

But it wasn’t unfair. Parker was just different. Maybe ahead of her time. Maybe right on time. She pushed the boundaries of what people saw for women’s basketball players. And she would continue to do so as a player in the WNBA both on and off the court.

She became a broadcaster, investor, professional women’s soccer team owner, face of Adidas basketball, producer and mother (in addition to Lailaa, she and her wife, Anna Petrakov, are expecting their second child together). She did all of this while continuing to fight injuries that risked her career, but rehabbing so that she could continue to be one of the best players in the WNBA. Her commitment to the game never wavered. She refused to give less than her all. A memory of Summitt not hesitating to kick her out of college practice for not giving 100 percent sat fresh in the front of her mind even two decades later.

In the wake of her retirement announcement, social media was flooded with photos from people — WNBA players, NBA players, athletes and fans — who admire Parker, both the player and person.

“The biggest thing is she did it her way, always,” former teammate Courtney Vandersloot told The Athletic . “She was the type of player that changed the game. What we see now, Candace was doing that early.”

Candace Parker has retired from the WNBA. I broke the news to her. Here’s her instant reaction ⬇️ https://t.co/t9CpY5wrnr pic.twitter.com/WD8unfrBdt — Ben Pickman (@benpickman) April 28, 2024

Parker never cheated basketball. She changed it. And, if anything, it owed her a few more attempts at a title and more wins while being fully healthy or having a full complement around her. Regardless of her last game, her last win or her last title, Parker changed the expectations of a women’s basketball player and WNBA player by being 100 percent herself. She stood on the shoulders of giants while allowing others to stand on her shoulders simultaneously, too.

For 16 WNBA seasons, Parker played for her family, her city and her league. She proved she could be almost as effective at that on the bench as a motivator and coach, when life necessitated it far too often, as she was on the floor. Even in retirement, her impact will be felt through the sport she helped grow.

Now, the girl who fell in love with “a little orange ball at 13 years old” can relax in retirement knowing it bounces better for the next generation because of her.

(Photo: Ethan Miller / Getty Images)

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Chantel Jennings is The Athletic's senior writer for the WNBA and women's college basketball. She covered college sports for the past decade at ESPN.com and The Athletic and spent the 2019-20 academic year in residence at the University of Michigan's Knight-Wallace Fellowship for Journalists. Follow Chantel on Twitter @ chanteljennings

2024 Women's College World Series bracket: Predictions and schedule for regionals to WCWS

Friday marks the first day of the 2024 Women's College World Series . The NCAA Division I Softball Committee announced their field of 64 for Oklahoma City on Sunday, and the Texas Longhorns were given the No. 1 overall seed with a 47-7 record. That may be a controversial ranking since the Oklahoma Sooners , who was given the No. 2 overall seed, defeated Texas to secure their ninth Big 12 championship on Saturday. Still, there was never any doubt that these two programs were two of the best, if not the best, in the nation.

Of course, just because those schools have proven to be two of the best doesn't mean they'll have an easy path to the Women's College World Series finals. Schools like UCLA, Tennessee, Florida, and Stanford could all make a great run to win a title. That said, everyone is undoubtedly looking to prevent Oklahoma from winning their fourth straight title.

Here's everything to know about the Women's College World Series, beginning on Friday.

NCAA softball tournament: Texas gets top seed; Oklahoma seeks 4th straight title

Predictions for Women's College World Series:

Michella Chester, NCAA.com : Baylor to escape from Louisiana's regional

Chester states, "I went with a slight upset pick with Baylor coming out of [No. 13] Louisiana's regional. This one was up in the air for me and I liked Baylor's strength of schedule this season, a lot more losses, but they faced some tough teams. Plus, [Baylor] already took two of three from Louisiana this season, so it's a fun rematch."

Michele Smith, ESPN : Oklahoma can win it all again

Smith writes, " Coach Patty Gasso has [Oklahoma] trained in what they call the 'Championship Mindset,' and from day one when that squad gets together, they are thinking of nothing other than a national championship. The key this year will be if they can handle the pressure -- I believe that they can as they have in the past."

2024 Women's College World Series schedule:

Regionals start on Friday, May 17, with the first games -- Utah vs. South Carolina, Florida vs. Florida Gulf Coast -- beginning at 12 p.m. ET/9 a.m. PT. The top seed in each regional will play host. Nearly every game can be streamed with an ESPN+ subscription.

Stream the game: Watch the 2024 Women's College World Series with an ESPN+ subscription

Super-regionals begin May 23 and will run until May 26. Afterwards, eight teams will remain to compete in the Women's College World Series, which begins on May 30. The final two teams will compete in a best-of-three series beginning on June 5 and going until June 6 or 7 depending on if three games are needed to determine a winner. Each of the Women's College World Series Finals games will air on ESPN.

Regionals bracket:

*all times Eastern

Austin, Texas

Friday, May 17

Game 1:  No. 1 Texas (47-7) vs. Siena (33-20), 4 p.m., Longhorn Network

Game 2:  Saint Francis (Pa.) (40-12) vs. Northwestern (33-11), 6:30 p.m., ESPN+

Saturday, May 18

Game 3:  Game 1 winner vs. Game 2 winner, 1 p.m.

Game 4:  Game 1 loser vs. Game 2 loser, 3:30 p.m.

Game 5:  Game 3 loser vs. Game 4 winner, 6 p.m.

Sunday, May 19

Game 6:  Game 3 winner vs. Game 5 winner, TBD

Game 7:  Game 3 winner vs. Game 5 winner, TBD, if necessary

Norman, Oklahoma

Game 1:  Boston University (52-4-1) vs. Oregon (28-19). 5:30 p.m., ESPN+

Game 2:  No. 2 Oklahoma (49-6) vs. Cleveland State (22-24), 8 p.m., ESPNU

Game 3:  Game 1 winner vs. Game 2 winner, 3 p.m.

Game 4:  Game 1 loser vs. Game 2 loser, 5:30 p.m.

Game 5:  Game 3 loser vs. Game 4 winner, 8 p.m.

Knoxville, Tennessee

Game 1:  Miami (Ohio) (48-7) vs. Virginia (32-18), noon, ESPN+

Game 2:  No. 3 Tennessee (40-10) vs. Dayton (33-19), 2:30 p.m., ESPN+

Gainesville, Florida

Game 1:  No. 4 Florida (46-12) vs. Florida Gulf Coast (37-19), noon, SEC Network

Game 2:  Florida Atlantic (41-14) vs. South Alabama (32-18-1), 2:30 p.m., ESPN+

Stillwater, Oklahoma

Game 1:  Michigan (41-16) vs. Kentucky (30-22), 3 p.m., ESPN2

Game 2:  No. 5 Oklahoma State (44-10) vs. Northern Colorado (27-24), 5:30 p.m., ESPN+

Los Angeles, California

Game 1:  San Diego State (31-18) vs. Virginia Tech (39-12-1), 6 p.m., ESPNU

Game 2:  No. 6 UCLA (37-10) vs. Grand Canyon (48-11), 8:30 p.m., ESPN+

Game 3:  Game 1 winner vs. Game 2 winner, 5 p.m.

Game 4:  Game 1 loser vs. Game 2 loser, 7:30 p.m.

Game 5:  Game 3 loser vs. Game 4 winner, 10 p.m.

Columbia, Missouri

Game 1:  Indiana (40-18) vs. Washington (31-13), 3 p.m., ESPN+

Game 2:  No. 7 Missouri (43-15) vs. Nebraska-Omaha (41-13), 5:30 p.m., ESPN+

Stanford, California

Game 1:  Cal State Fullerton (36-17) vs. Mississippi State (33-18), 7:30 p.m., ESPN+

Game 2:  No. 8 Stanford (43-13) vs. Saint Mary's (30-22), 10 p.m., ESPN2

Baton Rouge, Louisiana

Game 1:  Southern Illinois (42-9) vs. California (36-17), 3:30 p.m., ESPN+

Game 2:  No. 9 LSU (40-15) vs. Jackson State (33-17), 6 p.m., SEC Network

Durham, North Carolina

Game 1:  Utah (34-20) vs. South Carolina (34-23), noon, ESPN+

Game 2:  No. 10 Duke (47-6) vs. Morgan State (35-18) 2:30 p.m., ESPN+

Game 3:  Game 1 winner vs. Game 2 winner, 11 a.m.

Game 4:  Game 1 loser vs. Game 2 loser, 1:30 p.m.

Game 5:  Game 3 loser vs. Game 4 winner, 4 p.m.

Athens, Georgia

Game 1:  Liberty (36-23) vs. Charlotte (38-16), 3 p.m., ESPN+

Game 2:  No. 11 Georgia (39-16) vs. UNC Wilmington (33-21), 5:30 p.m., ESPN+

Fayetteville, Arkansas

Game 1:  Villanova (31-22) vs. Arizona (34-16-1), 6 p.m., ESPN+

Game 2:  No. 12 Arkansas (36-16) vs. Southeast Missouri State (28-24), 8:30 p.m., ESPN+

Lafayette, Louisiana

Game 1:  No. 13 Louisiana-Lafayette (42-17) vs. Princeton (29-16), 5:30 p.m., ESPN+

Game 2:  Mississippi (31-25) vs. Baylor (32-20), 8 p.m., ESPN2

Tuscaloosa, Alabama

Game 1:  Southeastern Louisiana (45-13) vs. Clemson (34-17), 2 p.m., ACC Network

Game 2:  No. 14 Alabama (33-17) vs. USC Upstate (30-21), 4:30 p.m., ESPN+

Tallahassee, Florida

Game 1:  Auburn (27-19-1) vs. Central Florida (30-23), 2 p.m., ESPNU

Game 2:  No. 15 Florida State (43-14) vs. Chattanooga (42-14), 4:30 p.m., ACC Network

College Station, Texas

Game 1:  Penn State (33-18) vs. Texas State (45-13), 4 p.m., ESPNU

Game 2:  No. 16 Texas A&M (40-13) vs. Albany (33-12), 6:30 p.m., ESPN+

Super regionals: May 23-26

Women's college world series: may 30-june 6/7, 2024 women's college world series bracket:.

*Hosted in Devon Park, Oklahoma City. All times Eastern.

Thursday, May 30

Game 1 : TBD vs. TBD, noon, ESPN

Game 2 : TBD vs. TBD, 2:30 p.m., ESPN

Game 3 : TBD vs. TBD, 7 p.m., ESPN2

Game 4 : TBD vs. TBD, 9:30 p.m., ESPN2

Friday, May 31

Game 5 : Game 1 loser vs. Game 2 loser, 7 p.m., ESPN2

Game 6 : Game 3 loser vs. Game 4 loser, 9:30 p.m., ESPN2

Saturday, June 1

Game 7 : Game 1 winner vs. Game 2 winner, 3 p.m., ABC

Game 8 : Game 3 winner vs. Game 4 winner, 7 p.m., ESPN

Sunday, June 2

Game 9 : Game 5 winner vs. Game 8 loser, 3 p.m., ABC

Game 10 : Game 6 winner vs. Game 7 loser, 7 p.m., ESPNU

Monday, June 3

Game 11 : Game 7 winner vs. Game 9 winner, noon, ESPN

Game 12 : Game 7 winner vs. Game 9 winner, 2:30 p.m., ESPN, if necessary

Game 13 : Game 8 winner vs. Game 10 winner, 7 p.m., ESPN2

Game 14 : Game 8 winner vs. Game 10 winner, 9:30 p.m., ESPN2, if necessary

Wednesday, June 5

Championship series Game 1 : TBD vs. TBD, 8 p.m., ESPN

Thursday, June 6

Championship series Game 2 : TBD vs. TBD, 8 p.m., ESPN

Friday, June 7

Championship series Game 3 : TBD vs TBD, 8 p.m., ESPN, if necessary

2024 Women's College World Series: Time, date, schedule for softball tournament

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