To err is human; to cheat is, well, cheating

Back in the day, there was a philosophy predicated on the ethical belief that cheaters never prosper from their actions. The way the wheel turns, in today’s academic environment the cheaters are earning the A’s, while the ethical minority struggles to earn an honest grade that still qualifies them to continue with their education. Sooner or later, contrary to what we all would like to believe, the honest student succumbs to the will of the majority and joins the cheaters who consistently outscore them on standardized testing. What the teachers don't seem to understand is that too many perfect scores on any test doesn't mean a class mastered the content; it means that there is cheating running rampant among the students.

Test banks, along with the answer keys, are prolific online and easy to obtain for anyone who has the financial means to make the purchase, especially if a dozen or so students all contribute to the buy. Textbook companies make these materials available for instructors; however, if they are available to one consumer, they are available to all consumers. There are no checks and balances that require a purchaser to have administrative approval for the purchase: any credit card will be accepted and any purchase put through. The test banks are often downloaded to the buyer's computer at the time of purchase, which means that buyer can sell to anyone who wants a personal copy of the materials.

True/False and multiple choice answers are easiest scored by using a Scantron answer sheet and a scoring machine; thus, the test banks/answer keys focus more on that form of testing rather than, perhaps, a short written response that demonstrates each student’s mastery of the concepts being tested. It’s a matter of time/money for the TAs (teacher’s assistant) who are often solely responsible for grading the exam instruments: in a class with 300 students, the time it could take to hand-score short written responses, at 5 minutes per student per question, becomes several hours, and those hours have to be multiplied times the total student enrollment the instructor is assigned in any given semester. Compared to using the Scantron system, which scores both true/false and multiple choice responses literally as fast as the user can put the answer card through the scoring machine, the answer for the teacher and assistants is time, rather than educational outcome.

And, believe me, we all want to believe that "our" students won't cheat: they won't pass the answers from one section of the same course to students in other sections of that course; they won't purchase materials from the students who took the course last semester to ensure a good grade this semester; they won't download required semester papers from the internet and put their own names onto them and submit them as original student work; they won't go online and buy the test bank.

For the student, the ethical position eventually becomes untenable when dozens are getting perfect scores on the heavily-weighted objective quizzes and tests, while the honest student may be missing answers and receiving a lower grade. No one tells the educational institution or the teacher that the high-scoring students have the test bank and answers to all the Scantron-based testing instruments: no one likes a snitch. The ethical teacher could renumber and/or remix the questions from the test bank to help guard against unethical student use of test banks. It would take a bit of time, but cutting and pasting on a computer and then making a new master Scantron test answer sheet could help to minimize the prolific cheating activity that students take as their data-driven right.

Ideally, an ethical individual would not cheat regardless of the price paid to remain honest; however, success in educational institutions is based strictly on exam scores … and to err is human, but to cheat becomes divine when cheating along with everyone else simply creates a level playing field.