GRE® argument essay: Topic 3

[Konstantin]

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Question:
The following appeared as an editorial in the student newspaper of Groveton College.

"To combat the recently reported dramatic rise in cheating among college and university students, these institutions should adopt honor codes similar to Groveton's, 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 an old-fashioned system in which students were closely monitored by teachers and an average of thirty cases of cheating per year were reported. The honor code has proven far more successful: in the first year it was in place, students reported twenty-one cases of cheating; five years later, this figure had dropped to fourteen. Moreover, in a recent survey conducted by the Groveton honor council, a majority of students said that they would be less likely to cheat with an honor code in place than without."
Answer:
Citing an example from Groveton College the reporter concludes here that new honor codes should be a paradigm for other universities and colleges. Moreover, the arguments, justifying this new tactics of struggling against cheaters, are vague. Therefore, the reporter’s argument relies on a series of unproven assumptions and is unconvincing as it stands.

At first, we should consider the threshold problem: whether the experience of one particular college is appropriate for other educational institutions. All colleges and universities are various; they have different students from manifold social grades, they have different faculty and they have different traditions. It is entirely possible that Groveton College is mostly Catholic, so religious beliefs help students to cope with a temptation to cheat. I would need to know more about Groveton College specific features and about characteristics of other institutions, where new principles would be adopted.

Even if Groveton College is quite similar to other universities, there are a lot of internal problems, related with the new tactics against cheating. The author cites statistics, showing that number of cheating per year has been gradually declined. When student were monitored by teachers, the statistics could have been reliable. However, after introduction of new honor code, such statistics is unconvinced, because no one controls students and they could do what they want. It is hard to imagine that many students would notify a faculty member, betraying his classmate; moreover, even if a student has agreed not to cheat, it does not mean that he actually would not swindle.

Finally, even if a majority of students said that they would be less likely to cheat with an honor code, it is unfair to assume that the number of actual cheatings would decline as a result. Perhaps, all cases of cheating were committed by minority, who disagree with the new rule. Or perhaps, students said this because they were forced by university stuff or students want to suspend honor codes in order to cheat easily. Accordingly, in order to determine correctness of the survey, I have to know more about its conditions.

In sum, even if Graveton College’s principles could be appropriate for other institutions, the very concept of this new anti-cheating method is dubious. As a result, without additional information indicated above, I find the argument unconvincing at best.

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