Instant gratification is what our educational system operates on.

"Don't cheat. Don't look up the answers. Cellphones aside. No lurking during the exam."

Let's not play the naiveté game. Look around - it happens. Rather than taking the issue, grabbing it by the throat, and throwing it right under the carpet, let's address it. Why do college students, and students in general cheat? Is it immorality, is it peer pressure, is it lack of a proper grounding about the significance of hard work? What motivates a cheater?

Before we delve into addressing why students cheat, we must address what we mean when we say a 'cheating student.' Research shows that there is no specific demographic when it comes to cheating: anyone, and I mean anyone, is vulnerable. Athletes, confused students, unemotional yet confident students, and students with both high and low GPAs. So it's not about confidence and it's not about morality? Exactly.

Well, there's that. So if anyone is vulnerable to cheating, what is allowing these students to cheat? How do they do it? The answer lies in your pocket. Out of the eight major ways that students cheat, a whopping seven are related to technology - including texting someone answers during an exam, saving notes on a phone for viewing during a test, using phones to browse the Internet during a test, and [one that I personally wasn't aware of] hiring someone to take an online course for you.

Now that we've established the context of who can cheat and what allows them to cheat, let's address the elephant in the room which should really be at the forefront of every high school and college institution in the world: why do students cheat? As research shows, it's not a concept that can be ignored simply by stating students who cheat are ignorant, or immoral, or do not care about their schoolwork. Cheating even takes place at institutions that we consider 'high-end' [i.e. Harvard]. Some common reasons why student cheat range from peer pressure and academic pressure to simply low chances of being caught. How many of these reasons actually address immorality or morality? One reason simply suggests cheating as a productivity tool: 'students just want to get it done and over with.' What about those who are hard workers but 'cheat' to get an even greater advantage and end up acing their standardized exams and going on to professional schools anyway? Is this really 'cheating' or is it a flaw in the system that is evident because we presently focus on cheating in the context of morality, overlooking these possibilities? The reasons are not suggesting a problem of morality, or even hard work - if 75% of college students can admit to cheating, then why can't it be someone who is a studious student?

Perhaps the most valuable statistic of them all is, almost 85% of college students said cheating was necessary to get ahead. It was necessary.

Who is at fault here? The students or the institutions? Clearly, there is a structural problem that must be addressed. Colleges have been taking great measures to address cheating by using web services to check for the possibility of plagiarism and creating fresh new tests to avoid the possibility of looking up answers. However, the problem is not being addressed in the manner that it should be addressed. Cheating is not cheating anymore. Cheating is an inherent, and [considered by 85% of college students] a vital, a necessary, aspect to their college education. To say that all of these students are immoral for cheating is something that educational systems have relied on for so long that it has allowed students to make the immoral moral.

With the introduction and advancements of technology, this is a question that high schools and college institutions must make a priority. Are institutions completely at fault? No. Do they have the power to address the situation correctly? Absolutely. I know colleges are not naive enough to say cheating is immoral when 85% of the student body considers it necessary. At the same time, this is a question that the student body itself must address. Students who cheat must ask themselves why they do it so we can develop a structure where cheating will not be considered necessary.

What does this mean for a student who does not want to cheat but sees people achieving their dreams simply by looking up a few answers on their exams? What does this mean for a student who could've changed his or her grade so simply, so easily? Will simply telling this student that they must study harder and they can do it be enough to propel him or her past a cheating student? What does this mean for education itself - has education rendered cheating a necessity?

Honestly, I don't know. But what I do know is this was a necessary phase and it necessarily needs to be addressed. If we continuously condemn those who cheat and cheating itself, we will fail to address the problem. The problem is greater than that - it is not a question of morality or confidence anymore. Saying 'don't cheat' to a student who cheats and 'keep trying' to a student who doesn't cheat is simply not enough anymore, and it waters down the situation to such an extent that it can't be addressed in the right context. The condemnation is not stopping cheating from taking place - rather, cheating has become a necessary aspect of education itself, making it more of an issue than it has ever been. That 85% will soon become a 95%. Both students and institutions must re-evaluate the definition of cheating itself, so with the advent of technology we can understand what it means to use the right resources at the right times. This does not mean that cheating is moral but because of how cheating has evolved and infiltrated our educational system, it must be isolated from the context of morality in order to be addressed for what it really is - simply another product of structural issues. This will allow us to focus on the goal of changing the structure of education itself, rather than continuously applying band-aids to a continuously bleeding wound.