One of the worst ways to handle academic dishonesty at CMU is to keep it quiet.

Studies suggest cheating is a rampant problem at schools and universities across the country, and some CMU officials believe the problem is just as bad here as anywhere else.

But only a handful of academic dishonesty cases get reported each semester – because CMU’s policy for handling such issues is to leave them to the professors who discover the dishonesty to report, or not.

Leaving the onus on professors to determine how to handle an issue of cheating is the right move for CMU. Professors should be given the ability and the responsibility to handle such issues as they come up. They should have the opportunity to enforce strict punishment on students if they see fit, or to find another way to resolve a situation.

Professors are in the best position to make the decision as to what actions should be taken when dealing with academic dishonesty.

But that doesn’t mean professors shouldn’t report all instances of dishonesty they deal with.

And CMU should have a policy in place for reporting academic dishonesty, if for no other reason than to help the university track cheating by the numbers.

It’s impossible to deal with a problem without knowing how big that problem is. A system that requires reporting academic dishonesty, and not necessarily involving university officials in how that dishonesty actually is dealt with, will help CMU get a sense of how big a problem cheating is on this campus.

Knowing how many students are cheating, and in which classes they’re cheating, will help the university to stop them. It also will help CMU identify repeat offenders who forgiving professors are letting slide.

Most of all, it will take this university on the first step toward the larger questions – why are people cheating, and how can their cheating be stopped?

If it’s a question of not understanding just what constitutes cheating, as some professors suspect, then CMU will be able to better educate students on the university’s academic dishonesty policy.

If not, the university will be able to identify how students are cheating and under what circumstances.

And all that information can be used to make this university better and more respectable.

Administrators should look into setting up a means of allowing professors to report academic dishonesty without taking away professors’ power to determine how students in their classes should be punished.

But professors need to take it upon themselves to report academic dishonesty – every time. It’s the only way CMU will be able to combat cheating on a large scale.

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