In this paper, I examine the cheating epidemic at a single institution known both for its academically talented students and its focus on elite college admission: Stuyvesant High School in Brooklyn, New York. Using Constructivist Grounded Theory (CGT) (Charmaz, 2006; Charmaz, 2010; Glaser & Strauss, 1967) to analyze student editorials about cheating in the school newspaper, The Stuyvesant Spectator, I evaluated the messages in these texts and found that this achievement-oriented group of students both cheat at high rates and do not express guilt about doing so.
My findings also suggest that the influence of achievement culture on cheating behavior is more complex that previously hypothesized. Contrary to existing expectations, these students do not collaborate simply to boost their own performance. In a system that they define as unfair, rigged, or impossible, they collaborate even when doing so is not guaranteed to yield any personal benefit. Further, students assist their peers when it may actually put them at risk of being caught or at a disadvantage by allowing other students to outperform them.
If students were cheating only to boost their own chances at selective college admission, they would act in a way that is purely self-serving. By contrast, the students at Stuyvesant work together, sometimes only for the benefit of others. Despite the fact that their classmates will ultimately compete against them for the limited number of seats at the country’s most selective colleges and universities, they offer them assistance in homework assignments and on tests. This pattern of behavior, rooted in a sense of rebellion against the overwhelming expectations in an achievement-oriented context, offers a unique vantage point to examine motivation for cheating that has not yet, to my knowledge, been explored in the scholarly literature.
Stuyvesant students may actually view their systemic cheating as a form of active rebellion against their educational system and the people in it: parents, teachers, administrators, and college admissions officers. Instead of expressing remorse over decisions that they personally identify as morally compromised, they describe feeling justified in their decisions to cheat because of the unrealistic expectations set by their families and school environment as they aim for elite college admission.
Keywords: cheating, achievement culture, Stuyvesant High School