During the last years, many studies have been conducted to find out if students are cheating or not. The answers researchers found were staggering, almost 90% of the students that participated in these studies, recognized that they cheat on their homework. More than that, up to two thirds of them admitted that they cheat on tests.

Adults always seem surprised to find out that students cheat, especially in high-socio-economic and high-achieving environments. These studies come as a reality fact for these adults that can’t realize once and for all that students cheat and it is highly probable that their children practice this “ sport “. The above mentioned figures are applicable also for college students. It is a certainty that these numbers have gone up over the last three decades.

The big question is: why? Do high school and college students understand that what they are doing is totally wrong and immoral? The answer is rather confusing: yes and no. To be more exact, many students recognized that cheating is wrong but they keep practicing it with no remorse, other students affirmed that they don’t consider cheating a bad habit and they will keep practicing it without thinking that doing this is totally wrong and harmful.

One of the students that cheat said: “Like people have morals, they don't always go by them. ... So I mean, even if you get that test and you're like, "Oh yeah, I cheated on this test," it doesn't lessen that grade. It says an A on the paper and you don't go, "Oh, but I cheated." You're just kind of like, "Hey, I got that A." So it doesn't really matter necessarily, if it has to do with your morals or anything, you just kind of do it”.

There are many other similar statements made by other high school students and especially college students because the pressure for grades is real in college life. Even A students cheat if they have a test/homework at which they didn’t prepare that well. Despite the pressure of getting a good grade, students don’t cheat in all of their classes. Students have the tendency to cheat when they have a teacher that doesn’t care that much about students. Another situation is when the course is more focused on grade and less on learning the course and understanding it. They recognize that it isn’t moral at all but they have no conscience problems cheating in these situations.

Students that cheat don’t realize that they harm not only themselves but also people that surround them. On the last part of our article we will offer some suggestions in order to minimize this problem:

•          Teachers should help students understand the value of what they need to learn and they should know that the course has a real-world relevance;

•          Teachers should give to their students, images of successful people that don’t cut corners: scientists, doctors, lawyers and other successful people.

•          Reduce the pressure of getting a good grade because this is mainly the biggest cause of this problem.