Across the country there are many college students. From students who attend community and technical colleges, students who attend four year undergraduate universities and those in graduate schools, med school and law schools. There are a lot of students out there getting degrees and taking a lot of classes. Recent studies by the American Psychological Association  have shown that 82 percent of students have stated that they have cheated in classes. This brings up the question, is it the students fault for not preparing themselves for the classes exam or is it the professors fault for not preparing the students for the exam fully or is it a combination of both?

Every student has had a teacher or professor that just shouldn’t be teaching. They don’t know how to portray the information or they are too smart to teach the class. These kinds of professors are very frustrating for students. I have had a few professors like that and I give up halfway through the semester because when I go to class, I often times feel like the professor looks down upon me because I can’t read their mind to get all the material. But then that leads to students not necessarily preparing to the best of their ability for exams because they are frustrated because they don’t feel smart enough for the class.

This leads to students relying on their others to help with their classes and studying. Sometimes that means studying with groups of classmates or looking over the shoulder of a student on a quiz. Now before I go anywhere else, I am not supporting cheating nor saying that I have cheated so don’t get that into your mind.

Unfortunately, schooling these days has become about passing the class and getting a good grade and not necessarily learning and retaining the material. I don’t know about you, but if I am paying each of these professors a great deal of money, I want to be able to know the information within the class that I am paying for and retain it, not just learn the information to try and pass the exam/class. I may not need to use the information for my future, but sometimes having a plethora of knowledge within multiple different subjects is fun and kind of interesting when you can throw random facts out in conversations.

I come to school to be taught and instructed on how my future career or area of interest works and functions. I want to be able to go to class and not become frustrated because I don’t feel smart enough for the class. I want to learn the material while being engaged and celebrated for my successes of truly learning the material to retain and not just for the next exam. I think that as students we deserve to be treated like we have an idea of what the class is, but not expected to know every fine detail of each chapter on the second day of syllabus week. I don’t think we should be taught to prepare for an exam, but rather taught to be ready for the real world in our given field. This mind set switch might be the key to getting the high number of students who say they have cheated lowered.