Recent studies have shown that a steadily growing number of students cheat or plagiarize in college — and the data from high schools suggest that this number will continue to rise. A study by Don McCabe of Rutgers University showed that 74 percent of high school students admitted to one or more instances of serious cheating on tests. Even more disturbing is the way that many students define cheating and plagiarism. For example, they believe that cutting and pasting a few sentences from various Web sources without attribution is not plagiarism.
Before the Web, students certainly plagiarized — but they had to plan ahead to do so. Fraternities and sororities often had files of term papers, and some high-tech term-paper firms could fax papers to students. Overall, however, plagiarism required forethought.
I wish the article had gone further and mentioned that taken to its extreme, cheating manifests in leaders who will lie and lie and lie, and media who will let them get away with it, while our country suffers the consequences…