More Than 50% of IIT Bombay Students Confess Cheating in IIT!

MUMBAI: A survey was conducted by IIT- B’s students’ magazine, called InSight. A total of 300 students had participated in this survey, the results of which were shocking indeed. It came out that one in two of final- year undergraduate students at IIT- Bombay, admitted that they resorted to malpractices in examinations and assignments at some point in time during their course.

This survey was conducted across all the final year undergraduate students, who are going to leave the institute at the end of the academic year 2014-15. Questions were personally e- mailed to 5^th year dual degree and 4^th year B. Tech students. In order to prevent multiple responses from the same IP address, these guys also posted the survey on a paid platform. Of a batch of total 867 students, more than 300 responded.

An editor of InSight said, “The survey’s results indicate that over 50% of the UG populace get indulged in academic malpractices during their stay in the institute. This is a number that would be considered shocking in any institute of comparable stature.”

As 92% of those who cheat, only do it for minor assignments, indicates academic malpractices are more of just an ‘easy way out’, rather than a necessity to obtain grades. This was pointed out by Anshul Avasthi, another of the editors. The team also found that 20.3% students are dishonest only if the situation permitted, plus 15.2% thought twice before cheating. Apart from that, a small percentage of 7.4% of the students agreed to have been dishonest initially, however resolved never to cheat later, though over 9% were honest initially and then resorted to dishonest means as they saw the trend.

U. A. Yajnik, the dean of students’ affairs, said the institute is grappling with the issue now. “Cases of dishonesty in projects and assignments have come to light only in the last two to three years. We’ve a stringent mechanism in place to deal with students who are found guilty. Although expulsion is the maximum punishment given in such cases (not known cases), but we do ask students to take a drop for a semester or a year,” stressed Yajnik.

Yajnik said instructors have complained of mutual plagiarism as well, where assignments of two students look strangely comparable. He added,wWeb plagiarism is easy to detect. He said, “This year we had a special orientation programme at the beginning of the academic session just to address this issue.”

The previous year, chemical engineering department started the practice of making students sign an honour code right at the beginning of the academic year.