In 1940, only 20 percent of college students admitted to cheating at least once in their academic careers. That number has jumped to 75 to 98 percent of college students today, according the free online course website education-portal.com.

Cheating most often occurs in math and science classes, and college students who are most likely to cheat are Engineering and Business majors.

“The Stats 100 team really prides itself in making this course a cheat-free environment,” said Jacqueline Capron, head TA of Statistics 100 at the University. “What sets us apart from other classes, particularity math and science classes, is that all 1,100 exams are handwritten and then hand graded.”

To prevent and catch cheating, the Statistics 100 team makes different forms of the test for the first three exams of the semester.

“We have multiple forms of exams that appear identical to the students but have slight differences, especially in the numbers,” Capron said. “The answers for the two different forms are completely different, making a cheated exam basically a signed confession that they are turning into us.”

Although the first three exams in the course require students to show their work, the final exam is multiple choice.

“I haven’t had anybody cheating on the final because there’s so many different versions,” said Ellen Fireman, senior lecturer in the department of statistics. “It’s possible they do cheat, but I don’t catch them — it’s very hard to catch people when you use Scantron exams.”

Nine versions of the final exam are created to deter cheating, an idea Fireman got from the SAT, to make it highly unlikely that students will sit near anyone with the same exam as them. The form numbers are hidden from the students to further prevent cheating.

“It really cuts down on cheating a lot because you don’t know who to cheat from,” Fireman said.

The Statistics 100 team also promises to give all of the students two extra credit points on the final exam if no cheating occurs throughout the entire semester.

“We’ve never been able to give those points,” Capron said.

Capron said the class averages about two or three cheaters each semester. This average is similar to other departments at the University, such as psychology.

Susan Garnsey, associate head for graduate affairs in the psychology department, said that in a given semester there are no more than two or three cheating instances. She also that they most often discover cheaters during an actual examination.

“In a previous semester, we had an instance where we discovered that students were, on the questions for the exam, writing a big capital ‘A’ in the margin when they were answering ‘A’ so somebody else could see that from some distance,” Garnsey said.

As far as the repercussions for cheating on an exam, Garnsey said it varies depending on the “nature of the infraction.” However, they typically follow the code the University lays out for academic dishonesty.

“There are a couple of standard letter templates that the instructor will fill in, send to the student and give them a date by which they need to respond,” Garnsey said. “The student can then respond to (the letter), and then there will be an investigation. Then there is another final letter that can be sent out with what the consequences are.”

The protocol for the statistics department is slightly different; they deal with cheaters in person.

“We find that dealing with an individual on a personal level turns out better for everyone,” Capron said. “We present them with our evidence, we show them (their) numbers could not have occurred organically, we ask them if they would like to defend themselves (or) if they would like to show us how they could reproduce there answer with work.”

Capron said that most of the time students will then confess that they cheated and apologize. The student then gets a letter put in their file showing academic misconduct. The letter goes unnoticed until they have a second letter in their file, when it is then brought up to higher University authorities.

Capron said it would work well if every professor adhered to these rules on campus.

“Ideally, if all professors did this, we would catch cheaters so fast because most of the people who are cheating in our class, it’s not their first rodeo,” Capron said.

Morgan can be reached at [email protected].