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A C A D E M I C I N T E G R I T Y : S Y L L A B U S A N D
P O L I C Y I N A N E X T R A - M O R A L S E N S E
Charles Bingham, Simon Fraser University
INTRODUCTORY ESSAY
In this essay, an “extra-moral” perspective on academic integrity statements in syllabi is explored. In particular, I investigate the institutional practice of mandatory inclusion of integrity statements on syllabi. The term “extra-moral” derives from Friedrich Nietzsche’s text, Truth and Lies in an Extra-Moral Sense (2014). Therein, Nietzsche explores how systems of morality operate. Instead of taking morality as a given, he rather explores the putative need for, and the context of, morality itself. Academic integrity statements can be construed as one such system of morality in need of an extra-moral analysis. This need derives from the fact that the current moral frenzy over cheating precludes a more sober analysis of the way academic integrity operates in pedagogical and institutional relations. I begin with an anecdote about my own syllabus as a case in point. This anecdote will be contextualized within a larger societal discourse on cheating in schools, where moral connotations are generally attributed to academic integrity. Next, I will show how these moral meanings are generally substantiated on epistemological grounds. Subsequently, extra-moral aspects of the instructor’s role vis-à-vis academic integrity codes will be investigated. It will be shown that in an extra-moral sense instructors have unfortunately come to ‘need’ such regulations for a number of reasons. Further, it will be shown that instructors have also come to ‘need’ the figure of the immoral student who cheats. This will perhaps seem counterintuitive, but it will be shown that instructors actually depend upon the threat of cheaters in order to maintain a certain amount of control over the complicated and contested act of teaching. Ultimately, two policy positions will be advocated, both deriving from an extra-moral analysis. First: that inclusion of integrity statements on syllabi not be mandatory. Second: that copious policies on academic integrity be pared down and simplified whenever possible.
ANCEDOTE: MY SYLLABUS AMENDED
I teach graduate courses in a Faculty of Education. Before each semester begins, all professors in my department submit syllabi which are then posted on the department website. This is done in order for students to peruse the contents of courses before they choose which courses to enroll in. Recently, I looked online and found a version of my syllabus that was different from the one I had created. Added to the end of my syllabus, without my approval, was a link to the university policies on academic integrity. The addition included these words:
2 Surprised by this addition, I looked into other syllabi in my Faculty. I found that this note had been affixed to every syllabus in our graduate Faculty. I wondered how many semesters this little addition had been in place before I noticed it, and why this obligatory addition to syllabi hadn’t garnered much attention in our department.
DISCOURSES ON ACADEMIC INTEGRITY FROM A MORAL PERSPECTIVE
It is helpful to situate the above anecdote in a broader context. This will first be done from a moral perspective, and then from an epistemological perspective. Subsequently, an extra-moral perspective will be introduced. In North America in recent years, there has been an increasingly prolific discourse on cheating in schools and universities. There is more talk about cheating, and there are more documents produced that focus on cheating. There are large-scale scandals about cheating, and each of these scandals gets well documented in the media. One can find numerous media accounts where cheating is touted as out-of-control. Take for example the following excerpt from a 2010 New York Times article, entitled, “To Stop Cheats, Colleges Learn Their Trickery”:
The extent of student cheating, difficult to measure precisely, appears widespread at colleges. In surveys of 14,000 undergraduates over the last four years, an average of 61 percent admitted to cheating on assignments and exams (Times, 2010).
The article goes on to note, that
the eternal temptation of students to cheat has gone high-tech—not just on exams, but also by cutting and pasting from the Internet and sharing of homework online like music files…(Times, 2010).
Indeed, current newspapers and magazines periodically, and predictably, announce alarming statistics about the rise of cheating and plagiarism among students. And in response to this rise, universities, especially, have gone to great lengths to enact measures aiming to reduce the incidences of cheating and plagiarism. Scholarly discourse on academic integrity is exploding too. According to Google Scholar, 109,000 articles devoted to the topic have been published since 2010.
It is reasonable to construe additions such as the one to my own syllabus as symptomatic of this larger context. Before this encounter, I had not known that so many syllabi include statements on academic integrity. However, after this encounter, I was able to find many examples at various universities where department documents, or other university-wide publications, recommend that professors include such statements. As just one example among many, the Center for Teaching and Learning at University of California, Berkeley, makes the following recommendation:
The following suggested language for your syllabus comes from the Report of the Academic Dishonesty and Plagiarism Subcommittee, June 18, 2004. This is not required language, and your department may have its own version. But we strongly suggest that you add a statement such as this one.
“Any test, paper or report submitted by you and that bears your name is presumed to be your own original work that has not previously been submitted for credit in another course unless you obtain prior written approval to do so from your instructor…”(Center, 2014).
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in detail, making the suggested syllabus entry 310 words in total. While I have not discovered another university or department that automatically affixes a template note without consulting instructors, it would not be surprising if other such templates are used.
It seems that my own syllabus—and others like it—are part of a discernible rush to discourse on the topic of academic integrity. This rush to discourse has overt moral references and is not unlike the “repressive hypothesis” described so astutely by Michel Foucault in his History of Sexuality Volume I (1978). As Foucault shows, the presumed moral censure of sexuality during the Victorian Era actually turned out to produce an explosion of documents, experiments, research, and investigation into the very thing that was supposedly being repressed. One can similarly construe the matter of academic integrity in schools and in universities vis-à-vis a marked proliferation of discourse in popular media, in policy documents, and, in syllabi such as mine that were heretofore limited to course content. At this juncture in time, cheating, as sex was in the Victorian Era, is in the process being censured by extended morally-referenced documentation. Our society supposedly has too many cheaters, so discursive measures are being taken to describe and suppress cheating. There is an ironic proliferation of discourse on cheating— discourse that aims to eradicate cheating—at the same time that cheating seams to be proliferating as never before. It is in this way that one must understand syllabus additions concerning academic integrity. We may not want cheaters, but we talk and write about them all the more. And cheaters don’t seem to go away.
ACADEMIC INTEGRITY FROM AN EPISTEMOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE
While discourses and regulations on academic integrity are most often couched in moral terms, the moral judgment against plagiarists and cheaters employs an epistemological justification. Institutional regulations on academic integrity are ostensibly established so that the instructor will be able to discern whether or not students are making valid knowledge claims. The implicit reason for such policies derives from the fact that the instructor will only be able to assess the student’s knowledge acquisition properly if the student does not trick the instructor by misrepresentation. Thus, academic integrity is epistemologically necessary for the teacher. By establishing what is cheating and what is not, the teacher establishes protocols for what counts as knowledge and what doesn’t. Knowledge is valid when calculators and computers are not used during an exam, for example. Or when an argument is not borrowed from the Internet. Or when one does not obtain the answer to a test question from another student.
From an epistemological perspective, one could say that regulations for academic integrity are necessary if protocols for valid knowledge claims are to be established by instructors. Such categories are necessary if an instructor is to adjudicate what is to be counted as valid knowledge. Corroboration of such epistemological considerations can be found by clicking on the link at the bottom of my own syllabus:
All members of the University community share the responsibility for the academic standards and reputation of the University. Academic integrity is a cornerstone of the development and acquisition of knowledge. It is founded on principles of respect for knowledge, truth, scholarship and acting with honesty. Upholding academic integrity is a condition of continued membership in the university community (Code, 2009).
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MORAL/EPISTEMOLOGICAL INCONSISTENCIES
Thus, it would seem that there is a straightforward relationship between the moral discourse of academic integrity and its epistemological grounding. Words like “integrity,” “cheating,” “dishonesty,” and so on, carry moral connotations, but the reason for making such judgments is to make sure that acquisition of knowledge is carried out in the right way. However, a more rigorous examination of the moral/epistemological nexus suggests some contradictions in the epistemological justification. To identify one such contradiction, let us examine the above policy preamble. Therein it is stated that “all members of the University community share the responsibility for” academic integrity, that “academic integrity is a cornerstone of the development and acquisition of knowledge,” and that “upholding academic integrity is a condition of continued membership in the university community” (Code, 2009). These statements imply that instructors are to be held to the same standards of academic integrity as their students. Valid knowledge claims must, as the preamble intimates, be universal. What is a valid knowledge claim in one circumstance must be a valid knowledge claim in all circumstances. However, even a cursory understanding of the instructor’s relation to integrity codes reminds us that such regulations are for students only. They don’t apply to teachers. The teacher, almost by definition, is the one who applies these standards. He or she is never the one who is judged by these standards. No matter what the practice—whether it be using someone else’s work during instruction, whether it be using teaching aids the likes of which students are not given access to, whether it be reading directly from a text because one doesn’t have the time to memorize a certain point (a point that perhaps students themselves will be required to memorize), or whether it be some other practice that is disallowed to a student—validity rules for students do not apply to teachers. In all cases, the teacher can, if he or she so chooses, opt out of student integrity regulations.
The point here is not to say that this situation of differing standards between students and teachers is somehow unfair or unjust, that it is right or wrong. It is rather to say that the epistemological justification for moral claims about academic integrity has flaws. Integrity regulations are often justified in terms of universal epistemological considerations. However, the fact that these circumstances of validity do not apply to teachers demonstrates inconsistencies in the epistemic basis for moral judgment. The following question must be raised: How is it that this inconsistent relation between the teacher and integrity regulations generally goes unremarked? On one hand, it is claimed that integrity protocols are described as universally important to establish validity claims. On the other, these protocols do not apply to teachers. How does this happen with very little conversation about the inconsistency?
Another inconsistency in the moral/epistemological nexus derives from the following circumstances: Infractions of academic integrity are often delineated in great detail within policies and procedures. For instance, in the policies that one gets to by clicking on my own syllabus, one finds such specific infractions as:
i. submitting or presenting the work of another person, including artistic imagery, as that of the student without full and appropriate accreditation; ii. copying all or part of an essay or other assignment from an author or other person, including a tutor or student mentor, and presenting the material as the student’s original work; iii. failing to acknowledge the phrases, sentences or ideas of the author of published and unpublished material that is incorporated into an essay or other assignment (Code, 2009).
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from what constitutes cheating in another course. Indeed, if one looks from teacher to teacher, these so-called validity protocols appear rather arbitrary and capricious. Once again, how does this happen with so little conversation about the glaring inconsistencies between one set of rules and another? In the following section, an extra-moral perspective will be used to shed light on these inconsistencies.
AN EXTRA-MORAL PERSPECTIVE: THE TEACHER’S ‘NEED’ FOR THE IMMORAL
FIGURE OF THE CHEATER
As argued above, statements on academic integrity employ a discourse of morality. This moral discourse is, in turn, grounded by epistemological claims. However, close scrutiny of the moral/epistemological nexus reveals significant contradictions. While these contradictions demand attention, such attention is rare. Specifically, such attention is rare in the literature on the construction of syllabi. Researchers sometimes argue for the inclusion of academic integrity policies on syllabi (Fink, 2012; Doolittle and Siudzinski, 2010; Parkes and Harris, 2002; Appleby, 1999; Slattery and Carson, 2005). Doolittle and Siudzinski (2010) for example, find “the need to include greater policy information [about] honor code” in syllabi (p. 29). Parkes and Harris note that a statement on academic dishonesty is one of the valid “purposes of the syllabus” (2002, p. 55). Singham, in contrast, considers the modern syllabus—with its restrictive contractual regulations about marking and academic integrity—as an affront to progressive education. “If there is one single artifact that pinpoints the degradation of liberal education,” writes Singham, “it is the rule-infested, punitive, controlling syllabus” (2007, p. 52). Thus there is a spectrum of opinion with regard to the inclusion of integrity policies on syllabi. However, nowhere on this spectrum are the above-mentioned inconsistencies analyzed. In general, the logic of integrity policies, whether such policies are recommended or discouraged, is taken at face value.
A fruitful way to approach the contradictions in the moral/epistemological nexus is to use an moral perspective. Since the moral discourse on academic integrity is extremely prevalent, an extra-moral perspective may sound somewhat counterintuitive. As noted earlier, there is quite a lot of discursive rhetoric depicting the immorality of young people who cheat in school. As the New York Times (2010) article cited above states, “the eternal temptation of students to cheat has gone high-tech.” Accounts such as this tend to assume that cheating echoes some flaw in the moral fabric of today’s students. In contrast, an extra-moral perspective investigates not whether or not a given practice is moral or immoral, but rather how a moral system itself functions in a particular context. If one approaches the moral nature of academic dishonesty from an extra-moral perspective, then one can conduct an analysis of the way morality—in this case as it is related to academic integrity—functions in the context of the educational institution. Furthermore, one can look into the function of the immoral cheater in relation to the instructor.
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practice. As instructors, we are guilty of setting up knowledge claim boundaries that do not apply to us. And we are arbitrary and capricious about how we judge what is valid knowledge and what is not. Conveniently, the moralized figure of the cheater takes much of the attention away from these two incriminating features.
Thus the figure of the immoral cheater can, and often does, act as a screen for some of the more difficult questions surrounding pedagogy itself. The relation between the instructor and the immoral figure is this: The instructor is in a sense in need of the immoral figure of academic dishonesty. He or she needs this figure because it takes attention off the more dubious aspects of pedagogy, aspects that have plagued philosophers and educators for thousands of years. At least since Plato, the question of how knowledge is transferred from one person to another, and more, the question of whether knowledge can actually be transferred from one person to another—these questions have yet to be settled. Implicated in these questions are matters of memory, cognition, communication, intersubjectivity, autonomy, authorship, and of course the aims of education itself. What one remembers, how one thinks, how one communicates what one knows, whether we think with others or on our own, what counts as genuine authorship—these implicated questions have not been solved, and may never be solved. Under the umbrella of academic integrity, all of these questions are set aside in the name of moral protocol. The instructor and the institution determine precisely how knowledge is to be communicated and produced, assigning moral valuation to any breach in their determination. Age-old questions are thus veiled as cheaters are identified.
When I claim that instructors in a sense ‘need’ the immoral figure of the cheater, this is not to say that instructors need this figure in some subjective or affective sense. It is not to say that instructors say to themselves, “I really need this moral figure of the cheater.” It is rather that the complicated, and often conflicted, role of the instructor benefits from this figure and so, in a sense, needs this figure. It may be no coincidence that instructors who make great complaint of the moral failing of cheaters in their classrooms are very concerned with hiding a certain uncomfortable-ness within the practice of pedagogy. It is not a bad instructor who makes such complaints. On the contrary, teaching should seem uncomfortable. Pedagogy is a messy business. The covering role of morality is not a conscious process, nor is it an unconscious process. It is rather a discursive process. Discourses surrounding the immoral figure of the cheater conveniently keep discussions about the complicated, unresolved nature of pedagogy at bay. In this regard, it may even be the case that the massive public interest in the growing number of (immoral) cheaters in schools is a form of large-scale co-dependency—a tacit support of instructors in times when the value of instructors is otherwise under question given the growing opportunities for alternative forms of education, including online learning.
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people. In contrast, when one employs an extra-moral analysis, then it is possible to examine epistemological inconsistencies per se instead of letting the matter be settled by determining who is good and who is bad. Using an extra-moral analysis, it is possible to be more rigorous about the function of morality and its putative ties to epistemology.
AN EXTRA-MORAL PERSPECTIVE: THE SYLLABUS AND ACADEMIC INTEGRITY
In the preceding section, an extra-moral analysis was used to examine the relation between the instructor and the immoral figure of the cheater. It was pointed out how a moral perspective cloaks some rather obvious inconsistencies. Now I will return to the matter of academic integrity statements on syllabi. By my calculation to date, 62 percent of the sample syllabi found in the journal, Syllabus, contain sections on academic integrity (Syllabus search, 2014).1 If such is the case in a journal that solicits syllabi for
publication, it is plausible that there are a great number of syllabi across North America and elsewhere with similar sections. Interestingly, this practice of including integrity statements on syllabi presents a striking pedagogical inconsistency. When was it ever the case that various syllabi across various disciplines taught the same thing over and over? One would think that if a student familiarized him or herself with an academic integrity policy during an introductory course, such a student would already know the policy upon enrolling in a more advanced course. At most educational institutions, it is assumed students attain knowledge sequentially as they advance through their course work. Why would knowledge about academic integrity be different? This practice seems to overlook a basic pedagogical insight. If one were to think pedagogically about academic integrity, it would best be taught early on rather than over and over. One can only conclude that the moral frenzy over academic integrity cloaks the pedagogical inconsistency of ‘teaching’ academic integrity again and again. Following the current obsession about cheaters, syllabi ‘need’ to be redundant because there are so many cheaters out there. But from an extra-moral perspective, this redundancy makes little sense situated in an institution where course content rarely overlaps.
With regard to the repetition of integrity statements on syllabi, it is helpful to return to one of Friedrich Nietzsche’s extra-moral insights. In Truth and Lies in an Extra-Moral Sense, Nietzsche points out that concepts of morality most often depend upon an invented comparison between an individual characteristic and a class of characteristics. He notes,
We call a person "honest." Why did he act so honestly today? we ask. Our answer usually sounds like this: because of his honesty. Honesty! That is to say again: the leaf is the cause of the leaves. After all, we know nothing of an essence-like quality named "honesty"; we know only numerous individualized, and thus unequal actions, which we equate by omitting the unequal and by then calling them honest actions. In the end, we distill from them a qualitas occulta [hidden quality] with the name of "honesty." We obtain the concept, as we do the form, by overlooking what is individual and actual; whereas nature is acquainted with no forms and no concepts, and likewise with no species, but only with an X which remains inaccessible and undefinable for us (Nietszche, 2014).
1 The fact that 62 percent of sample syllabi contained sections on academic integrity may be an
8 It is difficult not to see a fixation on the individual/class distinction when it comes to repetitive syllabus statements about academic integrity. On one hand, it would seem obvious that a cheater belongs to a larger class of individuals who have the characteristics of those who cheat. On the other hand, it now seems necessary to restate the qualities of such a class at every opportunity, on every syllabus. From an extra-moral perspective, the increasing necessity to restate the attributes of those who cheat does not signify an increase in the number of cheaters. Rather, it signifies a dire need to continuously re-invent a rather dubious moral category.
CONCLUSION: ACADEMIC FREEDOM AND INTELLECTUAL MILIEU
In this essay, it has not been my aim to approve, or disapprove, of academic integrity itself. I have aimed instead to point out some of the inconsistencies within the rush-to-discourse on academic integrity. Some will say that by treating academic integrity in an extra-moral way, by pointing out these inconsistencies, I am advocating cheating, or at least that I do not care about stopping academic dishonesty. This could not be further from the truth. I have stayed away from any judgment on academic dishonesty itself. I have done this not because cheating is right, but because such a judgment inevitably takes on a moral tone. Such a moral tone, coupled with epistemic justification, serves to preclude a more rigorous, extra-moral analysis of the discourse on academic integrity. In terms of recommendations, I suggest that the institutional inclusion of academic integrity statements on syllabi be eliminated. I also recommend that institutional policy statements be paired down and simplified. I make these recommendations not because plagiarism and cheating are not problems, but because the discourse that has evolved around plagiarism and cheating is rife with inconsistencies not befitting the rigorous intellectual standards of educational institutions.
In the case of course syllabi, academic freedom is at stake when an instructor is required to embrace the integrity policies of his or her institution. While these syllabus statements might seem straightforwardly beneficial from a moral/epistemological perspective, from an extra-moral point of view one can discern presumptions and inconsistencies that may not be in sync with the aims of every instructor. The syllabus is the creation of an instructor. The instructor should decide whether or not he or she chooses to embrace the moral/epistemological discourse that is now so prevalent on the subject of academic integrity. If the instructor is required to embrace this discourse without consent, a breach of instructor autonomy has occurred. Especially with reference to extra-moral considerations such as those offered in this essay, it should be noted that including academic integrity statements in syllabi does something more than simply indicating that one does not condone academic dishonesty. Such inclusion also re-enacts a larger discourse—indeed a larger frenzy—concerning plagiarists and cheaters. Re-enacting this discourse needs to be optional rather than required. And, it is not necessary to turn a blind-eye toward students who cheat just because one does not join the oft-repeated mantras concerning academic integrity. Re-enacting the discourse on academic integrity is neither a necessary, nor a sufficient, condition for holding students accountable for their actions.
9 at convicting students of academic dishonesty. The question must be raised as to whether this discursive construction of the cheater is of any benefit to the intellectual milieu of an educational institution. I conclude that it is of no benefit. Copious academic integrity policies are a blight on, rather than a confirmation of, the intellectual milieu of an educational institution. For this reason, it is recommended that academic integrity policies be paired down or simplified whenever possible. A judicious question to be asked about institutional policies on academic integrity, as well as about such policies as they appear in syllabi, is: If this policy were absent, or if it were not so copious, would anything really change for the worse? As is the case with individual instructors who decide not to include statements regarding academic integrity on their own syllabi, institutions should recognize that less discourse on academic integrity does not necessarily signify that academic integrity is somehow less of an institutional concern.
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