The Role of Faculty in Reducing Academic Dishonesty Among Students

University faculty are frequently tasked with promoting academic honesty among students. Academic dishonesty is, however, rampant among university students worldwide, and there is little actual evidence about whether faculty actions can prevent it. Studies that address the role of institutional factors in mitigating student dishonesty such as faculty behavior draw on non-representative data and therefore lack generalizability (Pulvers & Diekhoff, 1999; McCabe at al., 2012). Furthermore, few studies explore the role of faculty behavior in preventing student academic dishonesty. This is a serious omission as faculty members may be important agents that can contribute to students’ moral development (Mayhew et al., 2016). The purpose of this study is to examine whether faculty actions can reduce academic dishonesty among students. Analyzing nationally representative, matched data on 1000 STEM undergraduates and 500 of their faculty from 33 universities in Russia, we first document extremely high (88.3%) rates of dishonest academic attitudes among first year students. The rates significantly increase among third year students with the increases being driven by a worsening of dishonest academic attitudes among the highest-achieving tercile of students. Second, we observe that the variation in dishonest academic attitudes among students is, by in large, explained by factors at the class rather than the university level. We then show that stricter faculty actions against academic dishonesty have large effects on student attitudes towards academic dishonesty. Taken together, the findings emphasize the importance of strengthening the role of faculty to promote academic honesty among students.