Education in Indonesia has not successfully built good characteristics since a lot of phenomena show students’ moral degradation. For instance, students cheat or do the so-called academic cheating as mentioned on research of Muhamad Uyun, a promofendus of the 34th dissertation defense at Universitas Muhammadiyah Yogyakarta (UMY).
Base on his research, Muhamad, who is also a lecturer of Universitas Islam Negeri Raden Fatah Palembang presented that academic cheating often occurs during a national exam or final exam. His research findings revealed that in 2010 the academic cheating was done by not only students but also teachers and prospective professors.
“In 2010, there were four big academic cheating issues. The first issue was that a professor was found copying another work so that his title was abolished. The second and third issue was that two different lecturers plagiarized a student’s undergraduate research to gain professor title. The fourth issue was that a professor in Bandung copied an Austrian work,” Muhamad mentioned on Saturday (7/1) at meeting hall, floor 1, Graduate School of UMY.
His dissertation entitled ‘Academic Cheating of Students at Higher Education Institutions in Palembang’ revealed that academic teaching is not considered as a serious issue. Indeed, the cheating was committed by teachers and lecturers who are supposed be role models for the students.
Muhamad contended the academic cheating may trigger another cheating in other contexts. “It is proved that the academic cheating was correlated to cheating at a work place. If the cheating is accepted, it may happen in other contexts,” Muhamad asserted. Additionally, in the dissertation defense, he passed with an excellent predicate.
