Future Teachers Most Likely to Cheat in College?

Andrew J. Coulson

This is of course the weakest of anecdotal evidence and no one should take it as gospel (particularly the seminary students who apparently also contract out papers to the same ghost writer). But let’s say, for the sake of argument, that it’s true–that ed school students are the most common consumers of fraudulent papers. How could we explain that?
There’s no reason to believe that future teachers are any more ethically deficient than their peers in other fields, so that’s an unlikely explanation. Could it be that ed school students are less well prepared for college? Certainly it’s an uncomfortable truth that the SAT scores of those applying to ed school (both undergraduate and graduate) consistently rank below those of applicants to most other college programs. But it is also widely acknowledged that the academic standards of ed schools are commensurately below those of other college disciplines, so future teachers shouldn’t have any more difficulty completing their assignments than students in other fields.