According to a recent report cheating among college and university students is on the rise However Groveton College has successfully reduced student cheating by adopting an honor code which calls for students to agree not to cheat in their academic endeav

According to the prompt, a report asserts that in order to reduce the rising cheating incidents among the university students, colleges and universities should implement honor code method – which requires student to agree that they won’t cheat and notify faculties whenevr they find others involved in cheating. Report bases this upon the facts that after Grovten college introduced honor code, their was significant drop in the cheating cases and student survey tells that such code make student less likely to cheat. However, before this argument can be evaluated answer to three unstated question are required.

Firstly, will the plan that worked for Groveton College work for every other college and universities? argument assumes that all universities and colleges, and students studying in them are comparable in every respect. Perhaps, it might be the case that students enrolled in Groveton college are more honest on an average than students of other colleges and thus they followed the Groveton’s honor code with probity, but this might not be the case for other colleges where the student aren’t that much honest to change their cheating habits just by an introduction of a code.
If such is the case, then the argument made in the prompt is weakened.

Secondly, can we assume that reduction in cheating number means that students have actually stopped cheating? As argument assumes that honor code will rely more open student’s honesty to not cheat and less on teachers monitoring therefore the reduction in number of cheating cases looks apocryphal. Maybe the students in Groventon College have continued cheating even after signing the code of honor and just because their is less stringent surveillance upon them, the cases number have come down. Or it might be the case that teachers themselves became complacent and started to remiss in their trifling surveillance after introduction of such code and that is the cause of decrease in number of cases. If any of the above scenarios comes true, then the fact that cheating would be reduced by introducing honor code doesn’t hold water.

Additionally, can we believe the survey reports? Argument assumes that students are speaking honestly and basis its assumption upon this fact, But in reality it might not be the case and students might be lying the survey as to let this honor code remain in their college as it makes cheating easier for them. Perhaps, it might be the case that student lied in the survey because less surveillance by teacher acted as a boon to cheaters and speaking anything negative in the survey about the honor code might have frustrated the ease with which they started cheating after honor code’s introduction.

In conclusion, the argument as it stands now is significantly flawed due to its reliance upon several unstated assumptions. If the answer to the questions asked above is provided and perhaps a systematic study is conducted to analyse them, then the position asserted in the argument can be properly evaluated.