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 academic en

The argument that college and university students are less likely to cheat if they are bound by an honour code of not cheating in their academic endavour and reporting suspected cases of cheating, may seem to be logical at the first glance. The author makes a valid argument, one that could be correct if its premises were true. However, his recommendation relies on assumptions for which there is no clear evidence and uses terms that lack definition.

First, the author assumes that the new statistics of cheating reported by Groveton College after putting the new system of honour code of agreeing not to cheat and reporting the suspected cheaters, can be accepted at its face value. Suppose, that majority of students mutually agree to cheat and not to report others and stick to it, the number of reported cases would have automatically gone down. If the rate of cheating has actually gone down, lesser number of cases will be reported under any method of scrunity. If the author had provided any evidence to suggest that the Groveton College had an alternate scrunity system in place to apprehend the cheaters and the number of cases reported have gone down in the presence of such an additional scrunity system in place after adopting the honour code, it would certainly strengthen his argument.

Additionally, the author has assumed that the number of cases reported by students were all genuine cases of cheating. Earlier in Groveton College teachers, who could be considered more impartial as well as more experianced, were responsible for monitoring the students to prevent cheating. The students' opinion cannot carry the same weight in this matter. First of all, a student giving an examination will have majority of his attention fixed on his paper. Due to lack of attention to surroundings, some cases may go unreported. The students may be partial towards each other and may report real of otherwise, cheating instances of their unsuspecting rivals while shielding their friends. Majority of students can be trusted not to report their collegues so as not to jeopardize their careers. The author needs to provide evidence to prove that Groveton College had adopted measures to counter such discrepancies in reporting and had verified the genuineness of reported cases thoroughly, to strengthen his argument.

In conclusion, adopting a code of honour to prevent cheating and making the students report other cheaters will certainly not lead to an increase in the rate of cheating. But to support the current recommedation that the code of honour by itself, will gradually solve the cheating issue, the author needs to define the scope of problem more clearly and give conclusive evidence that such a measure will in-fact alleviate the cheating problem.