Argument Topic According to a recent report cheating among college and university students is on the rise However Groveton College has successfully reduced student cheating by adopting an honor code which calls for students to agree not to cheat in their

The author recommends a measure to reduce the number of cheating cases among students which has been on the rise in recent times. He urges all the colleges and universities to adopt honor code smililar to that of Groveton College in order to decrease the forgery among students. He may be correct and the implementation might prove fruitful, however there are certain questions that need to be answered to figure out the success of the implementation.

The very first question that will is arise is regarding the genuine and trust worthy nature of the students. Where is the assurance of the students not tending to cheat even though they have agreed not to do so. Even doctors and police officers take the pledge of not getting diverted from their main task, however some of them do get corrupted. A similar situation may be applied on the students too. By adopting a honor code, a student will have the power to notify the faculty member about any copying case. Now this reporting might be true most of the times, nevertheless a student can take an advantage of the same and report a false complaint just to put his class mate in trouble. This might be due to any sort of past issue which he might be having with that candidate.

Also, the report quotes certain statistics to show how effective the implementation of the honor code has been. The author says that in the absence of the honor code, thirty cases were reported, in the first year of implementing it, the figure went down to twenty one and at the end of five years it was fourteen. Such a kind of data would had been reliable if the total number of students would have been mentioned. Moreover, isn’t it possible that the students must have formed groups and each group would copy among themselves without reporting the matter to the higher authority? Also, in a span of five years, the reputation of the institute might have gone down and the number of candidates taking admission must have reduced. As a result, the question regarding the total number of students prior to the implementation, in the first year of implementation and also in the fifth year of honor code must be mentioned.

Finally from the conclusion one can easily question regarding the similarity between Groveton’s College and other universities and colleges. It is possible that the suggested measure could help in curbing the number of cheating cases only if various aspects like number of copying cases, sincerity of the students, total number of students enrolling, the command of the institute over the students, etc of the various institutions match with Groveton’s. In a school where students are not at all emotional and don’t realize the importance of an honor code, such a measure could turn out to be a disaster. Moreover, the heads of the other institutes must also welcome this idea of adopting an honor code. It is only then we can try to figure out if the recommended measure will be successful or not.

Thus, the answers of the above question need to be answered in order to evaluate the recommendations. However, the report fails to answer these questions and as a result, the out come of the suggestion is dubious and as of now the authenticity of the argument falls flat.