Several years ago, Groveton College adopted an honor code, which calls for students to agree not to cheat in their academic endeavors and to notify a faculty member if they suspect that others have cheated. Groveton's honor code replaced a system in which

Provided argument discusses on one of the problems faced by educational institutions, which is to cultivate the habit of not cheating in academic endeavors. The argument speaks about Groveton college, which initially used honor code for several years and later moved on to teachers monitoring students closely. According to the argument the later solution is not as effective as the former solution and its suggesting, moving on to the former solution of honor code. In supporting its claims the argument provides some evidences.

One of the evidences provided by the argument is about the decline in number of reported incidents on cheating. While this should be a good news, but, this could be because of the system not being effective. In order to be able to evaluate the provided evidence the argument should answer the following questions. First, the argument speaks on the decline from 21 to 14 incidents after 5 years. Was it just during the year the college moved to teachers monitoring? Because, the argument also reports an average of 30 incidents per year, if this is the average then it should have resulted in more incidents which happened during the later years. The argument should also answer the question on what was the average number of incidents reported per year when the honor code was in place? This way we can compare both the averages and see if the conclusion makes sense.

While the decline might have been alarming, the argument doesn’t consider answering the questions on change in student attitude. Every year students arrive with different set of attitudes, while reporting on the number of cheating incidents, the argument should answer the question on was the incidents among the same year students who were previously reported? If the decline is because of a new set of students arriving, it might be because of students attitude towards cheating is changing, and it weakens the argument.

Finally, the argument speaks about a recent survey where majority of students stated their preference towards honor code than the existing system. While the mojority tag on the survey might sound reasonable, the argument should answer questions like what was the total count of students participated in the survey? Did it cover both male and female? Did it cover students from different years and different programs? Without answering these questions, the evidence can’t be evaluated for its trustability. For example, if the survey covered only a small portion of the college then It would be biased.

Also, the study stated in the argument is just about the Goverton college. Hence, thaking this study in to suggesting something for all the colleges isn’t appropriate. The argument should answer if similar study was conducted in other colleges and check what kind of system they are using? and how good the system is? before arriving at a conclusion. Hence, with several questions to be answered and lack of evidences the conclusion made in the argument isn’t agreeable.