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 ole-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 that without. (insufficient or unrepresentative evidence / hasty generalization)

In this editorial, the author concludes that in order to combat the recently reported dramatic rise in cheating among college and university students, institutions should adopt honor codes similar to Groveton’s. To support this conclusion, the author claims that the honor code has been very successful at Groveton because such a code, under which students agree not to cheat and notify a faculty member if they suspect that others have cheated. However, I do not find the conclusion well reasons as some of the assumptions on which the recommendations rest are highly questionable. Here are the reasons why.

First of all, the main problem with the argument is that the honor system relies entirely on students’ honesty. Undoubtedly, the author naively and optimistically evaluates the honor system. If the students are not honest, the system will not work and the teachers will not know how often students abuse the system. Furthermore, if students are not honest, they will cheat in collaboration with each other and are hardly going to turn others as well as themselves in. Opposite to what the author believes that honor code will decrease the cheating rate in schools, the cheating may be more rampant after implementing the plan.

The additional problem with the argument is that not all institutions are alike. It is incorrect to assume that what work for one institution will necessarily work for another. For example, the recent revelations of widespread cheating and plagiarism at the University of Virginia, a prestigious school has long depended on the honor code system, has exposed the vulnerability of such a system to abuse by dishonest students.

In conclusion, the author notes some relevant trends, but he also oversimplified the full range of the trends as well as possibilities in decreasing the cheating in schools. To fully evaluate his argument, he should cite more strong evidence to support his conclusion. If he could provide more information to back his ideas rather than just cite the Groveton College as evidence, his conclusion will be more persuasive. Evidently, faulty analogy and oversimplification make his argument unsound.