An Epidemic of College Cheating : Education: Studies suggest that 40% of students may use dishonest practices to make the grade.

Other students sat hunched in the library studying for a Spanish history exam, while Bob James relaxed in his dorm room, drinking beer and boasting to friends of the “A” he would earn.

He knew how to beat the system, he told them. He was going to shave his arm, scrawl notes over it and sneak glances while the professor absent-mindedly read the newspaper.

Hours later, James, a 20-year-old student at Loyola College in Baltimore who asked that his real name not be used, had his high score and the respect of a small group of friends.

“It’s kind of funny to see people banging their heads as they try to remember the material they’ve crammed in a few hours before,” he says. “If they resorted to my method, they would wind up with great grades.”

Grades like the 3.2 cumulative average he has achieved by cheating on 75% of his tests and papers. “I really don’t feel any remorse,” says the student athlete. “I feel very satisfied and happy that I’ve done well. I look at it this way: Grades depend on your ability to use the resources available to you and I utilize more resources than the average person so I’m able to do better.”

Recent studies suggest that students nationwide follow similar dishonest practices to ensure academic success. The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching recently released a survey on campus life, which reported that an estimated 40% to 90% of students cheat on exams or papers, and that 43% of faculty believe students today are more willing to cheat to get better grades.

Not long ago, two faculty members’ offices at the U. S. Naval Academy were broken into and professors believe an electrical engineering final was compromised. The case is now being investigated.

“Honesty is becoming a more negotiable notion,” says Jan Sherrill, assistant vice president for student affairs at Towson State University in Maryland. “It’s not an absolute today at all.”

While the number of reported cases of cheating this year at colleges varies, nearly all administrators agree many more go undetected.

Today, students have devised particularly devious ways to short-cut the educational process. One Loyola student tells how an accounting test traveled from a fraternity house at Texas Tech to Penn State before reaching his dorm room.

Another relates her favorite method: writing on her white tennis shoes and covering them with tape until exam time.

Then there are seating arrangements like the flying wedge, where the brightest student sits at the center of a V-shape and others fan out behind for easy access to each others’ papers.

Pragmatism, rather than idealism, about academic careers often allows students to rationalize such behavior, says Ernest L. Boyer, president of the Princeton University-based Carnegie Foundation. “College for many students has become a credentialing exercise,” he says. “It’s not seen as a serious intellectual quest. . . . The aim is to figure out what you need to do to get through this system.”

To James, this philosophy is plain common sense. “I look at college as an investment, not a learning experience,” he says simply. “I’m paying $15,000 a year to go to school. Why should I come out with a mediocre GPA (grade point average) and get a low-paying job?”

If some young adults have adopted a bottom-line mentality about learning, others are overwhelmed by their own--and society’s--uncertain future.

“This is a tough world for kids to grow up in,” says Arthur Levine, chairman of Harvard University’s Institute for Educational Management, who has studied cheating. “We’re watching government officials being indicted, people in business going to jail, religious figures in trouble. It’s a world that seems to be turbulent. . . . Ethical situations are less clear.”

Those who have studied academic dishonesty believe that other than sharing an everybody-does-it mentality, cheaters have little in common. They include athletes sometimes too immersed in the rigors of competition to study; those trapped by internal and external pressures to excel; others caught in the whirlwind of social life and outside activities.

Marie Stuart--a Greenpeace member, Little League volunteer and practicing Catholic--alternates between feeling apathetic and overwhelmed by her course load.

“Some of the professors ask too much of you,” she says. “At times, you’re carrying five to six classes and you can’t always keep up. It gets to be too much.”

When that occurs, Stuart, who also requested her real name not be used, begins taping notes to the lining of her skirts. She once even bought a 15-page term paper for $50, a financial decision that strapped her already tight budget.

Occasionally, she experiences pangs of anxiety. “But you can control your fear,” she says. “You can’t control the amount of work teachers give you.”

She has told her parents she cheats on exams. “My mother doesn’t care for it,” she says. “She sees it as immoral. My father seems to understand. He just tells me to be careful.”

Howard Baker Jr., author of “And the Cheat Goes On: An Expose on How Students Are Cheating in School,” says, “Cheating is a cry for help. It’s an attempt to say, ‘I’m losing it here. I’m needing a little help to make the grade.’ ”

The problem is often compounded by institutions that do not uniformly penalize students. At some colleges, faculty members are free to handle incidents without informing the administration, a situation that makes catching repeat offenders virtually impossible. In general, students caught cheating fail the test or paper and occasionally may fail the class.

Many students, however, believe that faculty members ignore suspected violations or even tempt them to cheat by administering the same test.

“I blame it on the professors,” says Jim Barns (not his real name), a Towson State student who recently bought an economics test from another student. “They’re so lazy they don’t even change their exams. Then they look the other way. They don’t want to know.”

Although Barns received an “A” in the class, he still feels guilty about the incident. “I was brought up on the good side. My grandfather was a judge,” he says. “It was like I was living on the edge. But you can go too far. And I learned what too far is--it’s buying an exam.”