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Copyright 2004 American Broadcasting Companies, Inc.  
ABC News Transcripts
SHOW: PRIMETIME LIVE (10:00 PM ET) - ABC
April 29, 2004 Thursday

LENGTH: 7703 words
HEADLINE: PRIMETIME LIVE CAUGHT CHEATING

CHARLES GIBSON, ABC NEWS

It is spring semester on the campus of a large university in the South. Exam time. These students are getting ready.

COLLEGE STUDENT, FEMALE

Hey, I'm really studying.

COLLEGE STUDENT

I'll just take pictures of the stuff that I know for sure is gonna be on the test.

CHARLES GIBSON

They're not getting ready by just studying, exactly. They're also preparing to cheat their way through their tests. This senior uses her cell phone camera, photographing and storing names and dates. Her midterm is on the history of cinema.

COLLEGE STUDENT

1939, John Ford, director, "Stage Coach." I need that for my test, so I'm gonna take a picture of it just in case.

CHARLES GIBSON

A picture she can call up during the exam with just a flick of a finger. It's a technological revolution that has taken cheating on campus to a whole new level. These students say it's the only way to keep up with all the other cheaters.

COLLEGE STUDENT

It's unfair on your part if you're studying, you know, so many hours for one exam and everyone else in the class gets an "A" cheating. So, you wanna get in the game and cheat, too.

CHARLES GIBSON

You feel cheated if you don't cheat?

COLLEGE STUDENT

Kind of, in a way, yeah. It's funny. It's funny.

CHARLES GIBSON

In a six-month "Primetime" investigation, we traveled to colleges and high schools across the country. We wanted to know, how and why do students cheat? And has it become an epidemic? What percentage do you think cheat occasionally?

COLLEGE STUDENT

100. Everybody. 95. 98.

HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT, MALE

It comes down to the grades.

CHARLES GIBSON

Tonight, you're also gonna meet high school students. Even kids who don't cheat talk about the brutal pressure to get good grades.

HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT

Because grades can determine your future. And if you fail this, then you're not going on to college. You're gonna work at McDonald's and live out of a car.

CHARLES GIBSON

An exaggeration, perhaps. But we heard from so many students about the fear that drives some to do almost anything for a high grade point average or GPA.

HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT

If you don't have a high GPA, colleges won't even look at you. So, they don't look at whether or not you're an honorable person.

CHARLES GIBSON

Whatever it takes to get into college, do it?

HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT

That's what people think.

CHARLES GIBSON

I'm asking what you think.

HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT

Yeah, that's what I think.

CHARLES GIBSON

We participated in an experiment with these students. They say they know plagiarism is wrong.

WHITNEY SEIKO, HIGH SCHOOL TEACHER

I took your papers and submitted them to TurnItIn.com.

CHARLES GIBSON

What they did not know was that their papers were being checked for plagiarism with state-of-the-art technology. They were about to find out who had been caught copying from websites and how much.

WHITNEY SEIKO

I think that the bottom line is, they know what they're doing is wrong.

CHARLES GIBSON

Is bottom line, so many students seem to have a whole new mind-set about cheating.

COLLEGE STUDENT

Like, calculus. Like, derivatives. When am I ever going to use that in my life? Ever? So, why not cheat?

CHARLES GIBSON

They're not doing anything, they claim, that adults aren't doing in business, politics, the law.

COLLEGE STUDENT, MALE

I think cheating in college prepares you to be more cut-throat and a better business person.

ANNOUNCER

From ABC News, this is "Primetime Thursday," with Diane Sawyer and Charles Gibson. Tonight, a "Primetime" investigation, "Caught Cheating." Here, now, Charles Gibson.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Off Camera) Welcome to a special "Primetime" about cheating in schools. Now, the obvious question is, how widespread is it, really? Authoritative numbers are hard to come by. But according to one survey, often cited by educators themselves of 12,000 high school students, 74 percent, almost three-quarters admitted cheating on an examination at least once in the past year. Which might make you wonder, what's going on at my child's school? Or at schools I once attended? And you wonder, what does all that cheating say about all of us?

CHARLES GIBSON

(Voice Over) These three young women we called Pam, Mary and Sharon, are marketing and radio TV majors at their college. Students are open about the fact that they cheat and are not embarrassed.

COLLEGE STUDENT

Sometimes they're proud. Like, "you got away with that?"

COLLEGE STUDENT

They'll be boasting about it.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Voice Over) Just how do these students cheat? Well, they still use a few of the old tricks.

COLLEGE STUDENT

You could write every answer to the test in order on this thing and nobody would see it. And during the lest, you could stretch that thing and get every, single answer and the teacher would never see it.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Voice Over) But more often, their techniques are so technologically sophisticated they say most professors just can't keep up. A favorite device is the graphing calculator, which most professors allow students to bring into an exam.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Off Camera) And you can download all information into these devices?

COLLEGE STUDENT

Anything you want. Yep.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Voice Over) Pam told us she used her graphing calculator to store formulas for a calculus exam.

COLLEGE STUDENT

You can find programs on-line that you can download onto your calculator. And it'll actually punch out the formula for you. So, you don't actually have to do it by hand.

CHARLES GIBSON

And in another final exam, this time accounting, she brought along all the information she needed and it was just a click away.

COLLEGE STUDENT

For example, I go to accounting. Then, go-to. There's all my definitions for my accounting class. All of these were on the test. It's not hard at all. I'm not a math whiz and I can do it.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Voice Over) Another favorite device is an iPAC. It's a hand-held computer, similar to a Palm Pilot. You can download pictures into it or almost anything else you'd need for a test.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Voice Over) Once I'm in the classroom, it looks like I have an ordinary calculator on my desk. But one tap and there's the periodic table, or chemical formulas, or answers to questions, whatever I might want to download. And if the professor comes back by, two taps and I'm back to the calculator. Works every time.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Voice Over) But it can be even more ingenious. Some professors won't allow these high-tech devices in the exam room. But almost all students carry a cell phone.

COLLEGE STUDENT

You can text message your friend across the room and say, "hey, what do you put down for number 5?" Open it. Go to messages. In box. That's where all the messages come in. And then, here's a message, it says "a, a, c, d, g. Good luck."

CHARLES GIBSON

(Off Camera) Commonly done?

COLLEGE STUDENT

In bigger classes, definitely. Especially auditorium seating, there is no way they can catch you doing this.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Voice Over) We asked them to demonstrate. They hold the phone under the desk and then dial without looking, using just one hand. Why don't you ask her for the answers to questions 11, 15 and 20?

COLLEGE STUDENT

Okay. So, I'm going to go to menu. What do you have for Q number 5 and 11.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Voice Over) We put a stopwatch to it.

COLLEGE STUDENT

It says sending message. I'm going to in box. So, I hit show. And she put "a, a, d."

CHARLES GIBSON

(Voice Over) The message was sent. The answers received, in just 30 seconds.

COLLEGE STUDENT

So, now I have all the answers. And I'm going to ace my exam.

ANNOUNCER

A cheating device that could be fool-proof. And you can buy it anywhere.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Off Camera) That's a one-stop shopping cheating machine.

ANNOUNCER

And you're not going to believe who cheats the most. When this "Primetime" investigation "Caught Cheating" continues.

commercial break

ANNOUNCER

This "Primetime" investigation, "Caught Cheating" continues.

CHARLES GIBSON

"Joe" is an alias for another student we met, who attends a top college in the Northeast. His methods of cheating on exams are even more sophisticated.

COLLEGE STUDENT

You can also use, like, AOL Instant Messenger. And that's on here. You can talk to your friends and it's all direct.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Off Camera) So, you can communicate with someone outside the classroom on that machine?

HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT

All real-time, too.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Voice Over) Joe's two-way pager functions as a minicomputer. And since his campus has wireless Internet access, Joe has the entire Internet available for finding answers during his tests.

COLLEGE STUDENT

I would be text messaging someone in the class. I'd also be on-line with somebody else getting the answers that me and my other friend needed.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Off Camera) That's a one-stop shopping cheating machine.

COLLEGE STUDENT

Yes, it is.

PROFESSOR DON MCCABE, RUTGERS UNIVERSITY

As soon as you get to a high enough level where you have a high enough level of students like him on a campus, everybody feels they have to cheat. And you've lost the battle, the whole campus goes.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Voice Over) Professor Don McCabe heads the Center for Academic Integrity at Rutgers University in New Jersey.

PROFESSOR DON MCCABE

There's clearly students like that on every campus. You know, I mean, Ivy League, non-Ivy League, large schools, small schools.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Voice Over) We asked McCabe and two other professors, Jean Paul Rodrigue, who teaches Geography at Hofstra on Long Island, and Angelo Angeles, American Colonial History professor at Hunter College in New York City, to watch a tape of what we'd been told.

COLLEGE STUDENT

I'd also be on-line with somebody else giving me answers.

PROFESSOR DON MCCABE

He's a cheater. Even I'd agree he's a cheater. I won't defend him. I mean, you've escalated to a level that clearly -I mean, this involves preplanning.

JEAN PAUL RODRIGUE, HOFSTRA COLLEGE

He's Enron material.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Off Camera) He's what?

JEAN PAUL RODRIGUE

Enron material.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Off Camera) He could work at Enron.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Voice Over) Amusing, but with an element of truth. Professor McCabe conducts confidential surveys of college students, asking who cheats. And which students cheat most?

PROFESSOR DON MCCABE

Business students are either first or second, in terms of the highest levels of self-reported cheating.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Off Camera) Business students cheat more?

PROFESSOR DON MCCABE

Business students, yes.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Voice Over) Listen to this business student, at a top state university.

COLLEGE STUDENT

Eventually, everything is about not how you feel or how people feel about you. Everything is about the grade that you got in the class. Nobody looks at how you got it.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Voice Over) By the way, that young man graduates in just a couple of weeks. And he has a job with a top investment firm. The critical question, of course, is why? Why do so many students feel they have to cheat? The students we met pose some tough questions. What if you're graded on a curve so that your score is directly affected by how other students do?

COLLEGE STUDENT

There's other people getting better grades than me and they're cheating. Why am I not going to cheat? It's kind of almost stupid if you don't.

COLLEGE STUDENT

I don't feel smart enough compared to people who cheat next to me, you know.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Voice Over) There's also a sort of moral relativity. Some students feel it is perfectly okay to cheat in some situations and in some courses.

PROFESSOR DON MCCABE

You'll have an engineer say, you know, what do I need to know about English literature? I shouldn't have to take this course. And any short cut I can take to get through this I will.

COLLEGE STUDENT

You have to do what you got to do to get past that class.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Voice Over) We heard it repeatedly from the students we met.

COLLEGE STUDENT

Especially if you're not interested in what you're learning. It's like, why should you even learn it? It's like wasted brain cells.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Off Camera) They say that. But of course, that's totally countervailing the whole purpose of education.

PROFESSOR DON MCCABE

Unfortunately, many students today, it's just getting to, you know, the appropriate number of credits you need. And knowing something about the core area that you're going to function in. And anything else is a bother.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Voice Over) We also found students saying cheating in school is a dress rehearsal for life.

COLLEGE STUDENT

It's like, you're not really there to learn anything. You're just learning to learn the system.

COLLEGE STUDENT

The real world's terrible. People will take other people's material and pass it off as theirs. I'm numb to it already. I'll cheat to get by. I'm not proud of it. But a lot of what I have today is from being cut-throat and cheating.

MICHAEL JOSEPHSON,

JOSEPHSON INSTITUTE FOR ETHICS

Cut-throat also means being a pirate. A pirate doesn't just cut throats. He steals, he lies, he cheats.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Voice Over) Michael Josephson heads the Josephson Institute for Ethics, in Los Angeles. It was his 2002 survey that found of more than 12,000 high school students, three-quarters admitted to cheating on an exam in the past year.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Off Camera) It's not just alarming, it's almost terrifying because it simply says it's an ethic which is now endemic.

MICHAEL JOSEPHSON

My fear is, is it's as if we're giving up on it in the schools.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Voice Over) Josephson says students take their lead from adults.

MICHAEL JOSEPHSON

They're basically decent kids whose values are being totally corrupted by a world which is sanctioning stuff that even they know is wrong. But they can't understand why everybody allows it.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Voice Over) Indeed, Joe told us that on his campus, professors overlook even the most obvious cheating.

COLLEGE STUDENT

They'd have their papers on the ground. They'd pick it up, in front of the professor. They'd read their books in front of the professor and they wouldn't get caught. I was like, man, if I'm going to study and I'm going to get, like, B's and C's and these people are getting A's, I'm going to do it, too.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Voice Over) In fact, Professor McCabe says, in a survey of more than 4,000 US and Canadian schools, half of all faculty members admitted to ignoring cheating at least once. But of course, the pressure to cheat doesn't begin in college. These are some students from one of the top public high schools in the nation. They were willing to talk with us openly about the brutal pressure to get good grades and to get into college. And they, too, said cheaters are just doing what a lot of adults do.

HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT

Business people, they cheat.

HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT

Yeah. All the big company scandals.

HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT, FEMALE

Like Enron.

HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT

Yeah, Enron and all the others. The court system. Whether or not you did it or not. If you can get the jury to say that you're not guilty, you're free.

HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT

Yeah, if you get a good lawyer. I mean, they can persuade anybody to say that -or to think that you're not guilty.

HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT

Our own President, a couple of years ago. The first statement he made to the court about the Monica Lewinsky issue. "I did not sleep with this woman." It was a complete lie.

HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT

What kind of an example is that to students if our presidents ...

HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT

If the President of the United States lies about something in court, what kind of an example does that set for the students in the school? Why shouldn't we do it if he can do it?

ANNOUNCER

A stunning experiment. How many of these top-notch students will be caught passing off someone else's work as their own. When this "Primetime" investigation, "Caught Cheating" continues.

commercial break

ANNOUNCER

Once again, Charles Gibson.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Off Camera) One of the most widespread methods of cheating these days is plagiarism because the Internet makes it so easy. Go on-line and it's simple to search among 4.25 billion web pages. One of them is bound to have material you can cut and paste, print and turn in. Plenty of students do.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Voice Over) College professor Angelo Angeles was recently grading some student papers on the myth versus the reality of Paul Revere's ride. When he noticed something odd, the same phrase kept appearing.

ANGELO ANGELES, COLLEGE PROFESSOR

Paul Revere would never have said, "the British are coming, the British are coming." He was in fact himself British. He would've said something like, "the Redcoats are coming."

CHARLES GIBSON

(Off Camera) It was in too many papers.

ANGELO ANGELES

Too many papers.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Voice Over) Professor Angeles typed the phrase into Google and found it on one particular web-site.

ANGELO ANGELES

I found out that the web-site was in fact a very well-done, they should be applauded, web-site by a fifth grade class.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Voice Over) Independently, a half-dozen college students had copied the phrase from a web-site put together by elementary school kids.

CHARLES GIBSON

So, it was college students, F, fifth graders, A?

ANGELO ANGELES

Absolutely, those fifth graders would have clearly gotten an "A" from me.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Voice Over) Lifting papers off the Internet, many times word for word, is the newest trend in plagiarism. When we talked with high school students, they knew just where they could go, if they wanted to, to find term papers on almost any subject.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Off Camera) General knowledge among kids that these sites exist?

HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT

Yeah. Thousands of papers are typed. They just load it right into it and about thousands of different subjects.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Voice Over) Some term papers are free. Then, there are websites where you need a credit card, up to $20 a page. Papers4less. Cheathouse.com. Schoolsucks.com. Even Ivyessays.com, where you can get an essay for application to an Ivy League school.

JOHN BARRY, TEACHER

It's not confined to a community college. It's across the spectrum, from the most prestigious client of ours, all the way down to the lowliest high school.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Voice Over) Eight years ago, John Barry was a teaching assistant at the University of California, Berkeley. And he posted some of his grad student papers on the school's internal web-site. And then, noted that other students were downloading those same papers and turning them in as their own.

JOHN BARRY

It was one of the most counterintuitive observations I've had. How could such smart students resort to that type of behavior.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Voice Over) So, Barry had an idea. Create a database with millions of pages of information from the Internet and tens of millions of pages of published works. Then create a computer program to compare students' papers to everything in the database. That idea became TurnItIn.com. A school subscribes to Barry's service and then submits student papers to the web-site. The papers are then compared, almost instantly, to all that information and every student paper ever before submitted to TurnItIn.com. Any match of eight words or more from previously published sources gets red flagged, literally.

JOHN BARRY

All of the red text is unoriginal. And all of the text that hasn't been underlined, in this case, this particular word, is the original work of the author.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Voice Over) TurnItIn.com also tells the teacher the source from which the words were copped.

JOHN BARRY

Here's the student paper. Here's the web-site. Our computers also go to the web-site, pull down the page and underline exactly which words were cut and pasted.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Voice Over) The red tux text could be material properly quoted with a footnote. But in most cases it's not. TurnItIn scans 15,000 papers everyday. And how much plagiarism is there?

JOHN BARRY

It's typically 30 percent of all the papers submitted have significant levels of plagiarism.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Voice Over) It is 7:00 AM at Robinson High School in Fairfax, Virginia. Robinson, one of the largest and finest high schools in the country. 3,000 students. 90 percent of graduates go on to college. Dan Meyer is principal.

DAN MEYER, PRINCIPAL

Because we're named for a Congressional Medal of Honor winner, I'd like to see the word honor really thought of and upheld here at our school.

MIKE GREENFELDER, SENIOR CLASS PRINCIPAL

The school works hard, you know, promoting Robinson honor, trying to promote lessons on it.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Voice Over) Mike Greenfelder is senior class principal, and says Internet plagiarism is a huge problem.

MIKE GREENFELDER

It's very difficult to prove. And parents are very defensive of that issue.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Voice Over) World history teacher Whitney Seiko was about to give her class, World 2, a lesson they wouldn't forget. Miss Seiko decided to have her students papers checked by TurnItIn.com. But unlike most other teachers who use it, she added a twist. She would not tell her students in advance.

WHITNEY SEIKO

Without telling them, I figured I'd get a more honest result from them.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Voice Over) The assignment was to write a paper nominating their favorite explorer as the greatest of the millennium.

WHITNEY SEIKO

I had you fill out some information about plagiarism and cheating.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Voice Over) Miss Seiko asked her students ...

WHITNEY SEIKO

Why do you think students are cheating or plagiarizing? I have my own theories. But I want to hear what you guys think.

HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT

It's whether or not the person thinks they have enough time to do a good job on it.

HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT

They just lay it off to the end. And then go, oh, well. I don't have anything to do. I'll cheat. Who cares? It's what they do.

HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT

A lot of people are doing sports and everyone's so busy. Like, either they don't have enough time or they just don't want to put forth the effort or they're just tired. So they just, you know, get on the Internet and take someone else's work.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Voice Over) And would any of them plagiarize a paper?

HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT

It's not fair to the person you're picking it from. Because it's their work originally and it's their ideas. So, it's wrong.

WHITNEY SEIKO

If you cheat a little bit, you're cheating and that's wrong, right?

HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT

A sin is a sin. There's no greater, there's no worse. Same thing for plagiarism and cheating.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Voice Over) Later, we also sat down with some of Miss Seiko's students. Is it okay to plagiarize?

HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT

Not on everything.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Off Camera) Not on everything. Some things?

HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT

I think the general student body believes that, yeah, on some things, if you have to. Or if you have a whole lot of assignments due on the same date or very close to each other.

HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT

I think plagiarism is wrong, according to Robinson honor code.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Off Camera) What does a grade mean if you get it without honor?

HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT

Nothing.

HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT

It's not your own work, so ...

HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT

The whole point of the assignment, and the grade in general, is not just to do it. It's to learn the subject. And if you're cheating or doing something wrong ...

CHARLES GIBSON

(Voice Over) They said all the right things. But would they do the right thing? Miss Seiko asked the class one more question.

WHITNEY SEIKO

Do you think the majority of students would cheat or plagiarize if they knew that they would not get caught? Raise your hand.

HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT

It's just like an easy "A."

CHARLES GIBSON

(Voice Over) What none of them knew was that their papers would be checked by TurnItIn.com.

commercial break

CHARLES GIBSON

(Voice Over) It's a day of reckoning for the 28 students in Whitney Seiko's world history class. She has a surprise announcement.

WHITNEY SEIKO

I took your explorer papers and I submitted them to TurnItIn.com.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Voice Over) Their essays have been scanned. And Miss Seiko knows just who has copied text and how much.

WHITNEY SEIKO

Okay. So, now that I have your attention ...

CHARLES GIBSON

(Voice Over) Just how many students had copied at least some text from websites?

WHITNEY SEIKO

Third period, this is you guys ...

CHARLES GIBSON

(Voice Over) 67 percent. 2-3rds of the class.

WHITNEY SEIKO

So, let me hand those out. Raquel. Glen. Kevin.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Voice Over) As it turns out, few students had copied extensively. In many cases, it was a phrase here or there. But a few had copied more than 80 percent of their papers.

WHITNEY SEIKO

You are going to take this home. You are going to get it signed by your parents. The bottom line is, they know what they're doing is wrong.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Off Camera) You really think so?

WHITNEY SEIKO

I do. I do. Some of them, their reactions were, "I did not plagiarize." And so, they really, truly believe that. That's a small percentage.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Voice Over) Our conversation with the Robinson students took place two weeks after they got those papers back. Forthright and even a bit bravely, they talked with us about academic integrity. Most of these students had not plagiarized. But two had in substantial amounts. I asked them about that Robinson honor code, posted in nearly every school hallway.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Off Camera) None of you can tell me the words of the honor code?

HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT

No.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Off Camera) How would it apply to a paper?

HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT

If you would plagiarize, paraphrasing, stuff like that.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Off Camera) So, it says you would not do that?

HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT

Yeah. If you copy from a web-site or something, and use it as your own words, that would be going against the Robinson honor.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Off Camera) So, you would have violated the honor code if you did that?

HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT

Right.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Off Camera) It comes down to a conflict between honor and grades ...

CHARLES GIBSON

(Voice Over) I asked them, as far as their school is concerned, which is more important, grades or honor?

HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT

If you ask the school, I think it's the grades.

HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT

It's be grades.

HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT

Grades, definitely.

HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT

I think the school's opinion is grades.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Off Camera) To you, personally, internally, inside you, what's more important?

HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT

Personally, I'd rather have the honor.

HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT

for me, honor.

HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT

I guess, honor.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Voice Over) So, personally, everyone said to them, it's honor that matters. But to the school, all of them said, it's the grade.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Off Camera) It is the school that has the honor code. But you think it is the school that values grades more than honor?

HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT

Not just this school but colleges, as well.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Voice Over) Will, a senior, is the son of an Army lieutenant colonel.

HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT

If you don't have a high GPA, colleges won't even look at you. So, they don't look whether of not you're an honorable person.

HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT

Well, they'll find out sooner or later. Because if you plagiarize in college, first of all, you'll be kicked out. And then you'll -have the reputation for plagiarism and cheating.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Voice Over) So, it was time to ask about those papers on explorers. The papers that had been run through TurnItIn.com.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Off Camera) Third period? It says that there's an 88 percent match.

HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT

Yeah.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Off Camera) What did you do with that paper?

HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT

Well, I started writing it. And I went down for dinner. And it took about three hours for dinner because my mom wanted me to help cook. And it was 11:00 before I got back to my paper. And I didn't feel like staying up 'til 2:00. So, I went on the Internet and just started copying.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Off Camera) How did you do it?

HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT

Just Googled it.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Off Camera) You're the one who told me a moment ago, that in college if that had happened, you're out?

HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT

Yep.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Off Camera) Is it okay in high school and not okay in college?

HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT

It shouldn't be okay in high school. And I knew I shouldn't have done it. But I did because I didn't want to miss sleep, so.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Off Camera) Will -85 percent matching text.

HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT

I don't feel so bad now.

HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT

That's the same day I had a Latin test, an AP calculus test, an English paper longer than that one, due. And that was at the last of the list, at 3:00 in the morning. I don't care much about this course. I've already had world history.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Off Camera) Well, but world history isn't something you just check off. I mean, there's a lot to learn about world history.

HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT

There is.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Off Camera) I mean, do you feel okay about that?

HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT

No, sir.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Off Camera) What does it say?

WHITNEY SEIKO

I -you cannot have one answer for that. It's because they flat-out don't want to do it. And therefore they think they're not going to get caught, they can outsmart the teacher.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Off Camera) What's going on inside them, do you think?

MIKE GREENFELDER

The community that we live in, the expectations are so high. And kids are under a tremendous amount of stress to get to the next level and get to college. And with that comes the pressure to get a good grade.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Voice Over) And indeed, the more we talked, the more candid these students became about the pressures they say they feel and the cheating that goes on around them.

HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT

I think it spirals down. It starts with a simple copying of homework. And then, gradually, it'll get bigger and bigger, and we'll be doing more and more.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Off Camera) Where does the pressure come from?

HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT

Society.

HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT

Parents. Teachers. Parents and teachers and schools.

HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT

Activities. Sports.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Voice Over) Katherine insisted cheating just isn't worth it.

HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT

I don't think it's worth it if you're going to, like, cheat or plagiarize or paraphrase or whatever. I don't think it's worth it to go to a college with something you didn't earn. Someone else earned it.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Off Camera) So, if it's a difference between a good college and a not so good college, you'd just as soon, as long as it's your own work, you'd just as soon go to the not so good college?

HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT

I would.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Voice Over) But Will told us the prevailing attitude about getting into college is, do what you have to do.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Off Camera) Are you essentially saying, whatever it takes to get in is okay?

HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT

I think that's the going opinion, among a lot of the seniors, personally. I think the only high school opinion is, it's only an embarrassment, it's a bad thing if you get caught. If you're not good enough to get away with it, then that's ...

HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT

Your fault.

HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT

Yeah. That's your fault.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Off Camera) But you all told me a moment ago, that personal honor is more important than grades. You signed the honor code.

HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT

We sign a dotted line.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Off Camera) You don't see the disconnect in that?

HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT

I see it as a student. But there's not much a student can do about it.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Off Camera) Yeah. There's a lot a student can do about it. A student cannot cheat.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Voice Over) You may be curious how their parents reacted. Two weeks after the papers were handed back, Will's father agreed to with us.

PARENT, MALE

But obviously he's felt pressure enough that he's taken a short cut that's compromised his integrity. and so, he needs to recover from that, he needs to understand it. This is not acceptable.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Voice Over) Will told us he'd been so busy, he decided to take a zero on the paper. But Miss Seiko insisted that he tried to write something. And that's when he lifted the paper from the Web.

HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT

In the real world, if something like this were to happen, it would haunt me for the rest of my life. Just as this is gonna stay in my memory.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Voice Over) And Glen, who copied so much of his paper from the Internet. How did your folks react?

HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT

My mom, I told her I was going to be able to rewrite the paper. And she says, all right, you better do it. And she grounded me for two weeks.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Voice Over) His mother, Mary.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Off Camera) What did you say to him?

PARENT, FEMALE

I said, well, how do you feel about it? And he says, well, I'm embarrassed now. And I said, well, and you would feel more comfortable if you weren't caught? And he goes, well, yes. And that surprised me.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Off Camera) They talk about the grade, the need for the grade.

PARENT

They'll go for the grade because I think they feel, with the school and with college coming up and all that, that that is what's going to be looked at.

PROFESSOR DON MCCABE

What alarms me is how cavalier students are about it. Everybody does it. It doesn't matter. It's everybody else's fault. It's parents who are putting pressure on them to get good grades. It's teachers who aren't doing a good job in the classroom. It's the corporate world who, you know, when they're recruiting only want the people with the best GPAs, et cetera.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Off Camera) God love you for your lessons on honor and whatever, but they're not working nationwide.

MIKE GREENFELDER

I don't think it's a lost cause at all. I think we all need to do a better job for the benefit of society and our children, of Combating the problem and showing kids what integrity really is.

ANNOUNCER

Coming up next, he's working his way through college by cheating for others.

COLLEGE STUDENT

It's easy for a stranger to go and just take a test and leave.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Off Camera) Do you have a conscience about this?

ANNOUNCER

An academic gun for hire, when this "Primetime" investigation "Caught Cheating" returns.

commercial break

ANNOUNCER

"Primetime's" investigation, "Caught Cheating" continues.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Voice Over) You are looking at the campus of one of the nation's finest colleges. A member of the elite Ivy League. And here, in a sorority, probably 40 years of term papers, all neatly filed and organized. Need a paper? Pluck it off the shelf, put your name on the top, paper's done. It can be that simple. Surprise you that it's at an Ivy League college?

MICHAEL JOSEPHSON

Not at all. The more competitive they are, the higher the stakes, the greater the cheating. Does it surprise you that there's cheating in the highest investment banker firms?

CHARLES GIBSON

(Voice Over) But those shelved papers are the old-fashioned way of cheating. Meet Andy. We've altered his voice. He's a bright college student at an Eastern university, 3.76 grade point average. During the week, we visited his dorm room. He had four term papers due. Not one of them for himself. They were all for other students who pay him up to $25 a page. He calls them "clients."

COLLEGE STUDENT

I don't see them as cheaters.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Off Camera) Why not?

COLLEGE STUDENT

Because to me, it's a business opportunity.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Voice Over) And a pretty good business opportunity.

COLLEGE STUDENT

It's a 4-page paper. I'm getting paid $20 for a page.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Voice Over) On a busy week, Andy will earn upwards of $1,000.

COLLEGE STUDENT

In the first few week especially, you make a lot of money writing papers because kids want to go out and party and not do -their school work.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Voice Over) Many of Andy's customers are schoolmates who hear about him through a sort of campus underground. But word has gotten out and clients from a number of colleges have sought him out.

COLLEGE STUDENT

Penn State, Yale, Michigan State University, Northeastern, Cornell University, also.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Off Camera) Can you write a paper on anything?

COLLEGE STUDENT

I believe so. Genetic engineering, for my friend in Syracuse.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Voice Over) Andy is so good at this, he'll ask a student client for his or her grade point average. If the client generally gets A's, Andy will write an "A" paper. Get B's, he'll write you a B paper, and so on. Can you pretty much guarantee somebody an "A"?

COLLEGE STUDENT

Yeah. I can tell offhand how good I can do the paper, depending on the topic itself.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Voice Over) But he doesn't much like writing for girls.

COLLEGE STUDENT

Every time a female wants a paper done, it has to be an "A." Males only care about what grade they get. And females are the ones who want their money back if I get an A-minus, compared to an A.

JEAN PAUL RODRIGUE

He's our worst nightmare, in a sense. He's a professional writer. Delivery on demand papers. There's very little we can do about this, very little.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Voice Over) One student writing a paper for another is not new. But the Internet makes it so easy. And someone like Andy can now work in volume. He says he's written 500 papers for other students.

COLLEGE STUDENT

These are papers I've done for people all over.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Voice Over) What he does is not all that hard. We asked him if he'd read "The Da Vinci Code." He hadn't. Still, we asked Andy to write a paper one of author Dan Brown's theories in the book. In just 25 minutes, he had found all the information he needed.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Off Camera) You've got about five pages of information?

COLLEGE STUDENT

Single-spaced. So, it'll be a ten-page paper.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Voice Over) Later, he'll spend two hours rewriting each sentence downloaded from the Internet, in order to beat TurnItIn.com. But Andy is a full- service cheater. For a fee, he'll also take a test for another student.

COLLEGE STUDENT

It's easy for a stranger to go in and just take a test and leave.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Voice Over) Easy, he says, if it's a large lecture course. And if the professor doesn't ask for a photo ID. Though, Andy says taking someone else's exam does make him a little jumpy.

COLLEGE STUDENT

Every time I cheat, I have, like, wracked nerves. I'm nervous. I'm like on the verge of breakdown. But the moment I see that "A" on my test, I feel like I'm in Heaven, you know.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Off Camera) Could you write me an admissions essay that would get me into college?

COLLEGE STUDENT

Yeah. I do those, also.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Off Camera) You do? Could you get me into an Ivy League college?

COLLEGE STUDENT

If it was based on the essay, purely, then yes.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Voice Over) That is probably frightening enough, but Andy also writes essays for those applying to Medical school.

COLLEGE STUDENT

My friend paid me to write his own autobiography to get into med school.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Voice Over) To Syracuse and Cornell medical schools.

COLLEGE STUDENT

He gave me the brief outline of his own life. And I just spiced it for up. I exaggerated everything.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Voice Over) The fee, $180. He's writing medical school applications for kids to get into Cornell Medical School and Syracuse.

MICHAEL JOSEPHSON

You know, these are the money launderers of academia, okay. They're laundering grades. And this is the scary part. This won't be found about the software. See, what's clever about this is, now this is a much more personal kind of cheating. Because all this software will find the stuff that's already posted on the web. And they can detect plagiarism. You can't detect this kind of plagiarism. You have hired someone to write the grade for you.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Off Camera) And he'll take a paper and he says, "I can beat TurnItIn.com, I know how to do it."

MICHAEL JOSEPHSON

And I hope somebody makes it a crime.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Voice Over) But Andy doesn't think it is a crime. Indeed to his way of thinking, and to many of his clients, it is a situation where everybody wins. Everybody.

COLLEGE STUDENT

You win out because now you have more money. And he wins out because now he has a higher grade on this paper or test. And then his parents are happy because their own child is doing good in school. And then the school is happy because the kid will not drop out of school or transfer. And if you, like, every party involved is happy in some way or content.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Off Camera) Do you have a conscience about this?

COLLEGE STUDENT

No, not really. Not anymore. Before I had a conscience and I was afraid I might get caught. But now, I've been doing it for so long that I know I cannot get caught.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Off Camera) Do you think his morals are an aberration?

MICHAEL JOSEPHSON

No. That's the scary part. No, his morals are becoming the norm. But they're wrong.

ANNOUNCER

When we come back, call it the dork defense.

COLLEGE STUDENT

You don't want to be a dork and study for eight hours a day. You want to go out and have fun.

ANNOUNCER

When this "Primetime" investigation, "Caught Cheating" continues.

commercial break

ANNOUNCER

Once again, Charles Gibson.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Off Camera) There always seems to be a reason. "I didn't have time. The subject doesn't matter to me." Or the catch-all, "hey, everybody else is doing it." So, how do schools turn it around, before we become a nation of adults who got where we are by cheating?

COLLEGE STUDENT

I could have done the work. But there's too much going on. You're in college. You don't want to be a dork and study for eight hours a day. You want to go out and have fun.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Off Camera) Does it say that the battle is lost?

MICHAEL JOSEPHSON

It says that we are in a crisis. I don't think it has to stay that way. I think Enron has been the kind of tipping point to business ethics. I think we may eventually reach that with the kids ethics. I don't think we're there yet.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Voice Over) If we haven't reached that tipping point yet, where do we stand, as a society, on cheating? We commissioned an ABC News poll and found in our random sample, among high school students, 36 percent admitted to having cheated themselves. Fewer than in Josephson's survey. But it's not too encouraging. Seven in ten kids say they have friends who do cheat. And one-third of students polled said they've ever had a serious talk with their parents about cheating.

PROFESSOR DON MCCABE

My advice is very much that we need to promote integrity. We need to get students to understand why integrity is important. As opposed to policing dishonesty, then punishing that dishonesty. Because they can beat the system. Almost any system you put in place, enough of them are gonna beat.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Voice Over) Enough of them like Pam, Mary, Sharon, Joe and Andy. What does the future hold for them? Joe says he'll go to Wall Street. Sharon, into advertising. Mary wants the music business. And Pam is interested in radio and television. As for Andy, who writes the papers for other students, what's your ambition?

COLLEGE STUDENT

My ambition is to be a doctor.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Off Camera) You want to be a doctor?

COLLEGE STUDENT

Yes.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Off Camera) Would you trust a doctor who has done what you did?

COLLEGE STUDENT

I would admire him for that.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Voice Over) I did have one last question for our students. Why do you go to college?

COLLEGE STUDENT

'Cause it's what my parents wanted.

COLLEGE STUDENT

I'm getting paid a lot of money for my scholarship.

COLLEGE STUDENT

I went to college because I do have goals. I have ambitions in life.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Off Camera) It is curious to me that not one of you said, to get an education. I'm talking about learning how to think, learning how to write, learning how to research, learning how to form an argument and defend it.

COLLEGE STUDENT

One of my teachers told me that after college, only three percent of what you learn in the four years or the five years, however many years you've been at college, will be used in the practical world, in your real life. 3 percent.

MICHAEL JOSEPHSON

What you learn in college is how to learn. How to behave. How to succeed. How to have a difficult problem, solve it. And even if you don't remember how you solved it, you wrote the paper and you did well. And if they approach it honestly, they'll learn far more in college than they think they can. But more than that, they'll come out of it better, stronger people.

CHARLES GIBSON

(Off Camera) As we were taping interviews for this broadcast, during a break, one young woman asked me a question I hadn't anticipated. Do you think we are bad people, she asked. I said that I didn't think it mattered what I thought. It mattered what they thought of themselves. Whether they thought they were bad people. She paused for a moment, considered that and then, went right on, showing me the techniques for cheating on an examination. That's our program for tonight. Diane and I will see you tomorrow on "Good Morning America." For all of us at "Primetime," good night.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

LOAD-DATE: April 30, 2004