Fraud and education: the worm in the apple

Dishonesty and chicanery are nothing new to education. What is new, perhaps, are the ways in which these imperfections permeate education credentialing and how they have flourished with the invention of new technologies and changes in consumer culture. This book gives an informative overview of cheating in examinations in the United States and foreign countries and of the current state of fraud. The authors point to such factors as growth in the number of persons engaged in education and research, pressures on individuals to succeed, improvements in communications (especially the Internet and e-mail), and in techniques of document reproduction. In this spirit, a concluding chapter identifies some of the correlates of fraud, emphasizes the ambiguous nature of some of its manifestations, discusses alternative approaches to countering fraud, and outlines the implications for society.