Academic Integrity in Higher Education: the Case of a Medium-Size College in the Galilee, Israel

An important measure of the success of an academic institution is evaluation of its moral health. In order to investigate academic integrity in our institution, we administered the Academic Integrity Survey (McCabe et al. 2001) to a representative sample of 384 students from different departments. In addition we performed content analysis on 24 disciplinary hearing files from the previous academic year in order to ascertain which students were brought before the committee and why. Results show that the majority of students perceived academic misconduct as a serious matter. Those who reported high on academic misconduct were concentrated among those who had not done national service, studied in the science faculty, and were Arabic-speaking students. Evaluation of the disciplinary hearings revealed that half the student brought before the committee were Arabic-speaking students despite their relatively small numbers in the college (approximately 16% of total student population). The findings suggest that prevention of academic misconduct should focus on supporting specific at-risk populations.