My life as columnist collided with my life as a professor. As Milligan College finished its academic year, I failed a student because he submitted a paper that copied, almost word for word, an essay on the Internet and tried to pass it off as his own work. In the academic arena, we call that plagiarism. In other places, they call it cheating or even theft.

Academic dishonesty is a big problem, one that’s growing. In just the latest headlines, 34 students in the MBA program at Duke University were caught cheating and suspended two weeks ago.

At least one of every five college students confesses to cheating on an exam or other test, and half admit cheating on a writing assignment. That’s according to Donald McCabe, professor of management and global business at Rutgers Business School in New Jersey, who has researched academic honesty for more than 15 years, surveying hundreds of thousands of students.

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