The rise in cheating is very concerning and needs to be dealt with. The strategy implemented by the Groveton College is really commendable and seems to work in the first glance. However before implementing such a strategy on a bigger scale, few crucial questions need to be answered, which can validate the decrease in the cheating cases at Groveton College.
The first question that needs to be asked is the credibility of students reporting of cases. Since there had been a relaxation on the monitoring by teacher and only the students were responsible for reporting any such incidents there could be a conflict of interest as students would not likely report their friends or colleagues and therefore likely that only a few cases were reported. There is also a question of validation of cases reported, it is possible that maybe some of the cases reported were out of hatred in between students and therefore some of them falsely alleged a cheating claim. As for the drop seen from 21 cases to 14 cases, it is possible that there was a hype around the rule and honour code, motivating students to report such cases of cheating and when the hype went down, the motivation to report also went down and therefore the drop in the cases.
Groveton College needs to therefore answer how it investigates the reported cases and whether the students were completely on their own for self monitoring or there was a passive monitoring system in place by the teacher and if it in case so, how many cases were reported by them in comparison to students? This question will give a better idea on the effectiveness of such a system and its practicality.
The Groveton College needs to answer questions on the later survey done asking students about whether they would likely cheat under honour code. The survey needs to be reviewed on parameters such as, if the survey was anonymous or not as for a non-anonymous survey the student won't likely admit to cheating whether an honour code is present or not. The Groveton College needs to look into the questions asked in the survey as well. If there was only one question asking about cheating under honour code then most likely the students would have answered no, and it wouldn't have mattered if the question had mentioned honour code or not, as the students would most probably answer no on asking whether they cheat or not.
These are some of the questions and parameters that Groveton College and rest of the colleges needs to look at whether implementing an idea like honour code and stripping away the tight monitoring system.