Academic integrity provides the foundation upon which a flourishing academic life rests. Building on discussions with faculty, students, and administrators throughout the land, the Fundamental Principles of Academic Integrity Project seeks to develop a definition of “academic integrity.” Like the word “integrity” itself, academic integrity is a complex concept, difficult to define. Yet it is so axiomatic to the work of higher education that for many institutions, the meaning and definition of academic integrity literally go without saying: they simply state that “academic integrity is essential to the educational mission of the university” and go on to other policy and procedural matters. Those that do attempt a definition generally declare that academic integrity means “academic honesty,” or define it by example, listing prohibited cheating behaviors and/or required honest and fair behaviors.
We define academic integrity in terms of a commitment to five fundamental values and to the principles that flow from those values. Just as personal integrity involves standing up for one’s fundamental commitments, even in difficult circumstances, so too academic integrity involves standing up for what is fundamental as well. In the case of academic integrity, it is standing up for the values that are fundamental to the academic process, even when it is difficult to do so. In the Committee’s discussions with faculty, students, and administrators, five values emerged as fundamental to the academic process: honesty, trust, fairness, respect, and responsibility. Academic integrity, in our view, is the commitment to stand up for these five values, even in the face of adversity.
An academic community cannot flourish without these values. Without honesty, the free exchange of ideas is distorted. Without trust, the willingness to engage collaboratively in the learning process is stunted. Without fairness, the foundation of the critical dimension of educational inquiry is eroded. Without respect, the civility necessary to public discourse is drowned out. Without responsibility, we will not acknowledge ourselves as accountable for supporting and enforcing these fundamental values. Supporting and affirming these five values, as expressed in the following principles, is essential to promoting and maintaining a high level of academic integrity. The five values provide reasons and motives for actions; the corresponding principles provide specific ways in which those five values can be translated into action. While these values and principles necessarily overlap one another to some extent, each expresses a key and separate aspect of academic integrity.
Academic integrity, thus defined, is both intrinsically valuable and also instrumentally valuable. The educational mission of colleges and universities entails a belief that academic integrity is a value in and of itself. A commitment to academic integrity also yields certain tangible benefits in, for example, maintaining the reputation and credibility of an institution's students and faculty, as well as the meaning, value and validity of the degrees it awards.
We seek, through this document, to affirm the importance of these five values and the principles that flow from them for all those who participate in the academic life. In so doing, we seek to encourage a culture of integrity within which the academic life can more fully flourish. The cultivation of integrity within institutions of higher learning is especially pressing now for two reasons. First, there is strong evidence to suggest that academic dishonesty is on the rise. Initial studies of cheating and plagiarism in high schools suggest alarming trends. Our colleges and universities will be increasingly challenged by problems relating to academic integrity. Second, as Professor Stephen Carter and others have pointed out, we face a “crisis of integrity” in society as a whole. Educational institutions have a special responsibility in such a crisis, for they are often society’s last good chance at defusing that crisis. If habits of integrity are not strongly instilled before students leave school for the workforce, there is little hope that they will be developed after that point.
An academic
community should advance the quest for truth and knowledge by requiring
intellectual and personal honesty in learning, teaching, and research.
Honesty is crucial to the academic mission, especially to the tasks of learning, teaching, and research. Although sometimes difficult to achieve and fraught with obstacles, honesty is a necessary condition for the flourishing of the academic life. Uniformly, campus honor codes and/or standards of conduct deplore cheating, lying, misrepresentation, deception, fraud, forgery, theft, and dishonesty in all its forms, whether in class, in the laboratory, in writing and research, or in our dealings with one another as students, teachers, colleagues.
Honesty with oneself as well as others is essential to learning. In order to grow in both knowledge and insight, students must be honest to themselves as well as to others about what they know and what they do not know. Only when they build on such a foundation of honesty can students develop an accurate sense of their own academic progress as receive accurate assessment from their professors. Professors have a particular responsibility to articulate for students the specific standards of academic honesty, especially in less traditional areas such as collaborative learning.
Honesty is equally important in teaching and research, where the professor often provides a role model for the students’ developing sense of academic honesty. To be effective teachers, professors should model and practice honesty in their own quest for knowledge, as well as in interactions with students and colleagues. Professors, in both their teaching and their research, provide the model of academic honesty that is most visible to students.
Dishonesty undermines the process of education. Those who cheat do not learn, do not develop the skills, knowledge, and expertise necessary for the exercise of their profession, and make a mockery and a fraud of any degrees they may be awarded. They may be dangerous as well, because they profess to know what they do not, jeopardizing the rights and welfare of other individuals and their community for the false goal of grades at any cost.
Although each of these five values is essential to academic integrity, honesty holds a special place. Honesty is necessary for the other values. Trust, fairness, respect, and responsibility presuppose a foundation of honesty. Without honesty, we can only realize diminished versions of these other values. Yet in recognizing the special place of honesty in the academic life, we do not intend to reduce academic integrity simply to honesty. Honesty is the foundation of academic integrity, not its fullness.
The cultivation of such honesty plays a crucial role in moral development. Virtue, Aristotle tells us, is a habit. In stressing the importance of academic integrity to our students, we seek to encourage the development of a lifelong habit of honesty. Nor can honesty be cultivated without other virtues. To act with academic integrity requires courage, insight, and self-awareness: the courage to face hard choices honestly, and to choose to do what is right, as well as to accept responsibility for one's actions and their consequences, even at personal cost.
An academic community should foster a climate of mutual trust to
encourage the free exchange of ideas and enable all to reach their highest
potential.
Honesty breeds trust, just as surely as dishonesty breeds mistrust and suspicion. Trust is the natural response to consistent honesty. We seek not only to encourage trust in the academic community, but even more importantly to encourage those actions and policies that encourage and justify an attitude of trust from others.
For example, when faculty set clear guidelines for assignments and for the evaluation of student work, they act in a way that encourages students to trust them. Similarly, when students reply to assignments by faculty with honesty and thoughtfulness, they encourage faculty to listen more closely to students and to participate more openly in the academic dialogue, even when it leads in unexpected directions. So, too, when administrators interact with faculty and students in respectful and responsible ways, they encourage a response of trust.
Without trust, the academic life is impoverished. Without trust, the reliance on the communal dimension of knowledge is lost. Without trust, each member of the academic community must begin the quest for knowledge over again from the beginning, alone. Only when we trust can we take for granted the work of others and begin where they have left off. On both the individual level and on the level of disciplines as a whole, trust is necessary to the advancement of knowledge. Without trust, collaborative research is discouraged or even corrupted, and many of our greatest intellectual achievements would not have been possible. The absence of trust means individuals decline to share ideas and information for fear that work or credit will be stolen, careers stunted, reputations diminished. Such a climate is antithetical to creativity and the search for knowledge.
Many institutions have sought to promote a climate of trust through honor systems, which are virtually unique to educational communities. Honor systems are a respected and long-standing tradition among colleges and universities, and there is empirical evidence of their positive effect on the behavior and attitudes of their students and faculty. Honor systems may not be an option at all institutions, however, and they are not requisite either to academic integrity or to trust. There are many paths to academic integrity.
All institutions, whether they have honor codes or not, should act in ways which encourage and justify trust. Here the importance and interconnectedness of the other four values comprising academic integrity emerge most clearly: acting with honesty, fairness, respect, and responsibility fosters an attitude of trust.
Just as we seek to encourage trust within the academic community, we also see to encourage trust between the academic community and communities outside of it. Society must have confidence in our scholarship and degrees in order for our work and awards to have social value and meaning. Whether it be through clear and consistent academic standards or honest and impartial research, we strive to act in ways that encourage and justify the trust of those outside the academic community.
An academic community should seek to ensure fairness in institutional
standards, practices, and procedures for academic integrity as well as fairness
in interactions with each other.
Evaluation plays an important role in the educational process: faculty and students alike are constantly evaluating ideas, data, and even one another. Justice requires that fairness be fundamental to the evaluative process; without it, evaluation is false, misleading and unjust to the persons and positions being evaluated.
Students and faculty alike want their work to be evaluated fairly and accurately, using relevant forms of assessment. For students, predictability, clear expectations, and explicit standards are important components of fairness, as is a consistent and just response to cheating behaviors.
Students also want faculty and administration to confront and address dishonest and unfair conduct which jeopardizes their grades, the quality of learning in the classroom, and the reputation and value of their degrees. Fairness demands that honest students not be put at a disadvantage for their honesty. To maintain fairness, one should fully acknowledge any collaboration or use of sources. Otherwise, the work of students who struggle to produce papers in their own words may be downgraded when compared with the work of students who have copied without acknowledgment or detection whole paragraphs verbatim from the Internet.
Similarly, faculty are right to expect fairness not only from their students, but also from their colleagues and from their administration. This aspect of academic integrity enjoins faculty to evaluate one another fairly and administration to treat faculty and students with fairness.
Finally, while all have roles to play in ensuring fairness, this mutuality should not imply that a lapse by one would excuse misconduct by another. Rationalizations such as “everyone does it” or “the curve was too low” (and therefore allegedly unfair) are unacceptable and cannot justify dishonesty.
An academic community should promote respect among students, staff, and
faculty: respect for self, for others, for scholarship and research, for the
educational process, and for our intellectual heritage.
To be most potent and rewarding for all concerned, teaching and learning demand active engagement and mutual respect. Respecting people means acknowledging their worth and treating them as ends in themselves, not just as a means to our own purposes. It is a fundamental virtue of community; without respect, people are often treated as mere objects. Effective teaching, because it recognizes the communal and participatory nature of the learning process, requires mutual respect. So, too, do collegiality and collaborative work, which have always been a valued part of the academic enterprise.
Respect for oneself implies participating actively in the learning, research, and teaching processes, trying one's wings, testing one's skills, building on successes and learning from mistakes. For students, showing respect for others includes attending classes, being on time, paying attention, listening rather than simply arguing one's own point of view, being prepared and contributing to discussion, completing homework and papers in a timely fashion, and doing one's best. It also means not engaging in ad hominem attacks, profanity, intimidation, inappropriate demands for re-grading of work, and other disruptive, demeaning, or degrading behavior during class, office hours, or in other faculty-student interactions.
These requirements of respect and civility are of course mutual, and bind faculty, staff, and administration as well as students. For faculty, showing respect for students involves taking their ideas seriously, valuing their aspirations and goals, and recognizing them as individuals.
Respect for the work of others means appropriate acknowledgment of that work--words, ideas, discoveries, facts, charts or other graphics, or research, whether incorporated through collaboration, copying, or paraphrase. Both students and faculty are held to this standard. It means acknowledging any intellectual indebtedness to others, and giving credit where credit is due. Proper acknowledgment of academic debts requires citation of exact sources, and if verbatim language is used, it must be set off by quotation marks or indentation. Credit should be given whether the source is written or oral, published or unpublished, from the Internet, a database, a video or audio recording, a faculty lecture, course text, or class handout, an encyclopedia or other reference work, or the work of another student.
Once again, we see the interdependence of the values that constitute academic integrity. Part of respecting other people involves treating them fairly and dealing with them honestly, and all of this supports an environment of trust.
An academic community should uphold high standards of conduct in
learning, teaching, and research by requiring shared responsibility for
promoting academic integrity among all members of the community.
Responsibility for academic integrity lies with every member of the community; each should hold him/herself and others accountable. There is a responsibility not only to act with integrity in our own learning, teaching, and research, but also to take action in the face of wrongdoing. To tolerate dishonesty and unfairness is to perpetuate its existence.
Accordingly, each individual student, faculty member, and administrator is responsible for upholding the integrity and quality of scholarship and learning, and for ensuring fairness of the academic endeavor. Shared responsibility distributes the power to effect change, helps overcome apathy, and helps each individual to understand and feel that he/she is an integral part of the academic community.
One of the most difficult issues in regard to our shared responsibility for maintaining standard of academic integrity is how we deal with the dishonesty of others. Not only must we refrain from dishonesty, but we also must not permit it in others. The requirement of taking action often comes into direct conflict with peer pressure, with fear, with loyalty, and with misguided compassion. There is peer pressure not to “snitch” on one’s peers. There is fear of ruining another’s education, reputation, or life. There is concern that one might be mistaken and might unjustly accuse an innocent party. There is the specter of retaliation or blame, of harm to one’s own standing if known to be a “snitch.”
Some institutions do not explicitly require action, others permit anonymous reports. Anonymous reporting, however, is not without controversy; for some, it is an abdication of responsibility, and sends a mixed message by implying that the accuser does not have the strength of his/her convictions. It may also undermine due process by denying the accused an opportunity to confront and question the witness.
At a minimum, an academic integrity system should require that individuals take responsibility for their own honesty, and seek to discourage and prevent misconduct by others. This may be as simple as covering one's own answers during a test. The ultimate responsibility is to report any misconduct of others which one witnesses or discovers, and to self-report any transgressions in which one is an intentional or unintentional participant. Only in so doing are we willing to take full responsibility for our participation in the academic community.
This call for academic integrity places a heavy responsibility upon everyone in the academic community. Throughout this process of academic integrity, it is imperative that we balance a strong sense of our standards with compassion and a deep concern for healing. Academic institutions are dedicated to learning, and we must seek to insure that, when violations of academic integrity occur, everyone learns from them. Moreover, even in those instances in which breaches of academic integrity must be met with expulsion, we should strive to bring as much healing to all concerned through a process that is sensitive, fair, respectful, and responsible.
As members of academic communities, we can play a unique role in responding to the “crisis of integrity” in which our society finds itself embroiled. Institutions and individuals can initiate and sustain an ongoing dialogue about these issues and act in ways which support the values and principles outlined above.
A document on academic integrity would hardly be complete or consistent without acknowledging its sources. We do so, not only out of honesty, but also out of a deep sense of gratitude to the many who have given of their time, effort, and insight to advance this project. It is a far better document because of their participation.
The following individuals participated in the planning and preparation of early drafts of this document: Sally Cole, The Center for Academic Integrity; Mary Olson, Oakton Community College; Patrick Drinan, University of San Diego; Julian Harris, Duke University; James Lancaster, University of North Carolina, Greensboro; Donald L. McCabe, Rutgers University; James Larimore, Stanford University; John Margolis, Northwestern University; and Elizabeth Kiss, Duke University.
Written comments on the October 1997 draft were submitted by: Bill Taylor, Oakton Community College; Mark A. Hyatt, U.S. Air Force Academy; Sally Kuhlenschmidt, Western Kentucky University; Beverly Foster, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; Bruce Johnston, Lyon College; R. Michael Haines, Keene State College; and Patricia Bass, Rice University.
Jeanne M. Wilson, University of California, Davis, prepared the February 1998 draft.
Comments on the February 1998 came in written form from Lawrence M. Hinman, University of San Diego, and in discussion from San Diego participants in a two-day workshop on academic integrity.
Lawrence M. Hinman, University of San Diego, prepared the May 1998 draft.
In addition to insights of the individuals mentioned above, the present document rests on the shoulders of the work done by countless college and university boards on academic integrity and on the statements of academic integrity that emerged from those groups.