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I am an international student in an European country. During midterms and finals, I realized that more than half of the students are overtly cheating. I do not mean just looking other student's paper, but rather very extreme cases like sending the questions to other people to solve, googling, going to the bathroom to check the formulas, etc. Most of the lecturers do not take any measures, all they do is warn them and let it continue. (Some of them even let student go to toilet twice.)

I have talked with students from other sections and courses and their observations were the same. Also, I take two classes in which I am the only international student in class and the local students do not even dare to cheat. They just do their tasks, be in class on time, etc. I am not an excellent student but really try my best. So at some time in my career, cheaters will get better exchanges or intern programmes than me because they are more cunning than me. There are people WHO spend their days and nights in the library and that would be even more depressing for them.

I came from a third-world country where, even if you go to a low-quality university and are busted while cheating, you have no chance to continue your education: not only that, you lose the chance to work in the public sector. (Of course there can be exceptions.) It is counted as a serious crime that never leaves your future life.

So what are my options? What can I do about it? Should I write a letter or something to the dean or someone else? I just want to know about the college's academic conduct code (I couldn't find it on their website). I feel like I've been taken for a fool and nearly lost my motivation to study.

As a student there is little you can do other than inform the instructor and maybe the administration that this is rampant. You don't need to mention names, just the fact that you observe a lot of cheating.

The one thing you want to be assured of, however, is that your own position isn't being affected. If grading is competitive in any way this is a serious problem. But otherwise, if you earn the grades you actually get the rest of it is less your concern.

If you were an instructor I'd have different advice as I've seen this myself. I once had a group of students who really wanted to help their friends and it got out of hand. People didn't understand that it wasn't right to help weaker students get good grades if it meant the weaker students weren't really learning anything and would suffer later. We never really had a solution other than to try to convince people that is was counterproductive. Of course, it helps if the course is run in such a way that cheating has little effect, say by minimizing exams. But that is a question for faculty and administration to deal with.

Just make sure that the system treats you fairly and complain if it doesn't.

I've learned that in some cultures cheating is apparently not regarded as such. And it can be very difficult to wean these students off of, let us say, a collectivist mentality when it comes to working on homework or even taking tests. It's a very tough situation to deal with as an instructor.

Your question is "what are your options". I presume that you came to that university to study and obtain some knowledge rather than fixing the world. Yes, there are lot of universities that turn a blind eye on cheating and a great number of teachers who don't care. Is it the only unfair thing in the world you can think of?

Thus, I think you should ask yourself whether the educational program at your institution is decent, and if yes, just do you best to study, i.e., to pursue your original goal. One thing that is hard but necessary to realize is that everyone is running on his/her own lane here. You aren't competing for the gold medal. You are working towards building a solid basis for your future, and university exams and assignments are just benchmarks that help you to measure your own performance.

So, why should you care if someone breaks the measurement device and gets an incorrect benchmark for themselves? It's worse for them. If one gets "A" in a Java class by cheating, he/she won't know their real level of Java knowledge, that's it. High grades won't make you a good specialist (and if a certain company hires people just by looking at their university grades, you won't really want to work there).

BTW, this is one of the reasons why some of my colleagues ignore cheating completely. They just shrug shoulders and say that it's not of their concern. Got an "A" by cheating and feel clever? So what? It's your life, my job is to give you knowledge and a measurement device, do whatever you want now.

(1) Inform the teachers and department or administration abut the general problem and then (2) forget about it.

Rationale: if you never do anything it will bug you (1). If you expect satisfaction or pursue it or the like, it will distract you from your own studies (2).

So report it once. And then move on and just be Zen about it. There is some chance your actions help, even later in time. But don't expect it.

P.s. I am proud of you for not cheating.