There has been a spark seen in academic cheating in recent years. Most who participate have gotten caught, but some slip under the radar and remain undetected. Academic cheating continues to be a problem because students do not put in the effort to do their own work, they have a tremendous amount of pressure from their parents, and they want to do well.

Students seem to be effortless when it comes to doing work. They are lazy and do not have the ambition to study. Studying can seem miniscule compared to using their peers’ work to receive a good grade. The lack of energy to study for quizzes and tests after working after a long day at work, or long day at practice, can result in a student not wanting to study. These additional activities that students partake in leave them exhausted and unmotivated. Going out and having fun seems a lot more appealing than being home on a Friday night writing a paper. Their social life is often chosen over their studies. There is also those who get the homework done, but get it from fellow classmates. They essentially do not learn anything, but as long as they get the assignment done, it counts. Then there are the students who remember last minute that they had an assignment due and just rush through it. They do not thoroughly complete the assignment. If an essay is due with an assigned number of words, the word count will be the main issue to tackle, not the prompt at hand. It appears to be much easier to cheat to get the work done because students do not feel the need to put the effort in themselves.

Students also participate in cheating because of the pressure brought on to them by their parents. Parents expect their children to always have the highest grades and will not accept anything less than perfection. Cheating to get a perfect score seems to be the way to go. The pressure put on students from their parents can be unbearable at times. If they do not make their parents proud, they must deal with the consequences at home. They will never hear the end of it. They will get compared to their older siblings who got into Ivy League schools and how they will never be like them. Children from low income families have parents that want their child to achieve more than they were able to. The parents often look back and regret the choices they made when it came to education and wish that they could redo their schooling. The parents push their students to achieve more so that they can see their child be successful and not struggle like they did. When it comes to wealthy parents, they often want their child to succeed the same way in life, as they did. This intensifies the need to succeed. Pressure put on students to do well by their students can be intolerable.

Another reason students cheat is because they want to do well. When seeing things in mainstream media about the success of others and celebrities, it is often thought that the teen must thrive in life. They have to have nice things in order to truly be successful. Material things seem to be most necessary. In order to get to this place in life, one must do well academic first. Movies and television flaunt lavish lifestyles that adolescents thrive to aspire to be. They want to have those nice cars and expensive clothing. There is an urge to do well with the end game involving luxurious living. When speaking to friends about life and future goals, one might feel as if their goals are not high enough compared to those of their peers. They feel the need to aim higher, which is not a bad thing. The use of academic cheating can make one student more successful than the next. Acceptance in colleges are very competitive. If one’s grades do not hit the mark, their future is put into question. The college you attempt and hopefully successfully get into, will determine the rest of your life. It is important to thrive in your studies to do well later in life. Cheating seems to be the easiest way to get there by some. Someone who does better on their assignments is more likely to get accepted into the college of their choosing. The urge to succeed drives one to academic cheating.

Many driving forces bring students to participate in cheating. They cheat because they do not put the effort into their own work, they have an extreme amount of pressure from their parents, and they want to do well in life. Students would much rather go out during the weekends than be trapped home, doing homework. Parents display so much pressure on their children to do well. The kids are often compared to other successful figures in their lives. Being compared to someone who did well can be an intense pressure that drives the student to cheat just to impress their parents. In all, students want to do well in life. They want more than themselves than they were given. They feel they cannot achieve this on their own, so they enlist the help of others through academic cheating.