Every year, 16 October marks both the World Ethics Day and the International Day of Action against Contract Cheating. Plagiarism is a violation of the principles of academic integrity and ethics. Contract cheating (one of the forms of plagiarism) is becoming more widespread and needs to be suppressed. The University of Economics in Bratislava is actively committed to this activity and supports this international day.
Cheating occurs when one person carries out an academic work (e.g. assignment, exam or test) for another person, who then presents it as their work. This behaviour undermines quality and integrity and undermines the whole education system.
A couple of figures by experts:
- up to one fifth of all submitted papers are plagiary (Newton & Lang, 2016)
- at least 7% of students identified it as their own work (Turnitin, 2013)
- plagiarism is a prosperous and lucrative business – between 2005 and 2013, students attempted at it nearly 19,000 times (Matthews, 2013).
