Ethics Newsline®

In the mid-1980s, I was Feature editor at The Christian Science Monitor when one of our young writers did a story on Maine blueberries. It was ready to goscheduled, edited, and laid outwhen the food editor showed up at my desk. She had the blueberry article’s text in one hand and an old cookbook in the otheropened to a page where, word for word, was the young writer’s story. No quotation marks. No attribution. Just the words, identically.

I recalled that incident when The Weekly Standard magazine published articles last month about two prominent historians, Stephen Ambrose and Doris Kearns Goodwin, caught plagiarizing. Careful readers had spotted passages in their well-respected books that, word for word, kidnapped (the root meaning of “plagiarize”) the words of previous historians and passed them off as original.

Mr. Ambrose apologized graciously and immediately, calling it inadvertent. But he never explained how the plagiarism happened. Ms. Goodwin also apologized, admitting that fifteen years ago her publisher had settled with the author from whom she borrowed, Lynne Taggart, for an undisclosed sum. But she kept that fact silent until forced last month to admit it. As part of the settlement, Ms. Goodwin added numerous notes to the paperback version of her bestseller, The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys. Mr. Ambrose says he’ll correct future editions of his works.

Cases closed? Perhaps. Both historians are striding onward, still making important contributions to our sense of the past. But what should the public make of the ethics of all of this?

Start by dismissing three lesser issues. The first is the idea that ownership of property is old-fashioned — that in the electronic age plagiarism is obsolete, since every created thing should belong to everyone. This notion conjures up bizarre analogies: Is every car, for instance, to be driven away by anyone who needs it, regardless of whether somebody else’s grandmother is in the back seat? More important, this argument would eviscerate creativity. If all art can be freely appropriated, it’s commercially worthless. And if nobody can make a living from art, only the comfortably rich or the deliberately impoverished will be creative.

Second is the argument that plagiarism doesn’t count as long as the intent is not to steal. As with shoplifting, that argument carries some weight in sentencing offenders but little in determining their guilt. Whatever the motive, the deed has been done. Punishment having been promised, it ought to be extracted. Otherwise, arguments about intent only grease the slippery slope into the land of careless, lazy, and unpunished literary theft.

Third, there’s the argument that publishers wants popular books unencumbered by footnotes. Yes, the scholarly world is drowning in a swamp of citations. But there’s a better way out of this box: Write lively prose of your own. Writers who can’t do that should settle for modest sales.

That brings us to Ms. Goodwin’s argument, presented winningly and gracefully on the PBS television network’s “NewsHour with Jim Lehrer” last week, that her technique got in her waythat fifteen years ago, writing this book, she took notes longhand and interspersed quotes from others with her own writing. That explains how plagiarism can happen. But historians, like bankers, are professionals. Would you trust a banker who, having “inadvertently” mingled your money with that of another client, pleaded poor technique and an inability to keep the funds straight? For a banker, skill with a ledger is a core competency. Similarly, for a historian to know who said what to whomand whether you or someone else said itis no mere optional talent. It’s a central, bread-and-butter task.

Why does all this matter? Because writing, like life, is a matter of trust and consistency. We learn to have confidence in writers not because we track down every footnote ourselves but because we assume they have. Once that consistency is broken, so is the trust. And then everything gets called into question.

Back at the Monitor, we couldn’t look the other way. Yes, that young writer was strugglingwith health, with stress about her weekly quota, with ambition to move beyond food writing. But in the end our loyalty had to be to our readers. It was an issue of trust: We represented to them that our published words were original, and they gave us their confidence in return. And we could never again be sure of that young writer’s work.

So she moved on to a nonwriting position. But then, she had no established reputation. Is there a double standard? When the well-known plagiarize, they quietly settle. When ordinary folks plagiarize, they get dismissed from college or sent packing by their employers. If plagiarism matters, plagiarists in high places owe us more than partial explanations, emended reprintings, and apologies extracted under duress. If plagiarism doesn’t matter, then those in low placesfreshmen English students, for instanceshould be allowed to copy away merrily. In which world do we want to live?

(c)2002 by the Institute for Global Ethics

“In another 10 to 15 years from today, people will look back, take their heads in their hands, and say, ‘What did we do?’”

WASHINGTON
The investigative agency of the U.S. Congress last week said it would sue the White House for access to information regarding Vice President Dick Cheney’s meetings while formulating the nation’s energy policy.

Despite repeated requests from the congressional General Accounting Office (GAO), Cheney and Bush administration officials have refused to provide information on the meetings, including the names of attendees and the topics they discussed.

Since last spring, the GAO has threatened to sue the Bush administration for those details. Last week, the agency said it had exhausted its options and would resort to litigation to gain access to the data.

“I’m not pleased with having to take this action,” GAO Comptroller General David Walker told the New York Times. “But I’ve got a job to do and I’m committed to doing it.”

Walker, leading Democrats, and a handful of Republicans say the White House is hurting itself and the transparency of U.S. government by withholding the information, which some critics claim will reveal the undue influence of corporations, including Enron Corp., on U.S. energy policy.

“What are they hiding? The harder they fight, the worse they make it look for themselves,” U.S. Rep. John Tierney (D-Mass.), a member of the House Government Reform Committee, told the Boston Globe.

The White House insists that it is hiding nothing, and that the fight against the GAO is a matter of principle and of protecting the administration’s ability to get advice unbiased by fear of exposure to the media.

The GAO’s “jurisdiction extends to agencies created by statute. That’s not me,” Cheney told Fox TV last week. “I’m a constitutional officer. And the authority of the GAO does not extend in that case to my office.”

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer added, “The White House expects to prevail because our case is strong, our policy is sound, and principle is on our side.”

The GAO’s Walker disagreed, countering that “the formulation and oversight of energy policy and the investigation of Enron-related activities represent important institutional prerogatives of the Congress.”

Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), who has helped lead the push for access to the energy-policy information, said that if the White House wins, it will be “virtually immune from routine oversight.”

“Future presidents could simply rely on your precedent that no White House could be required to provide information or submit to oversight,” Waxman wrote in a letter to Cheney, reported the Washington Post.

In a related development, the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) last week filed a motion against the U.S. Department of Energy, which also has refused to provide information on the formulation of the nation’s energy policy.

The NRDC says the Energy Department is violating the U.S. Freedom of Information Act by refusing to turn over the names of individuals, companies, and groups that provided input to the policy, noted the Post.

LONDON
British energy firms were slammed last week by a watchdog group accusing them of using heavy-handed sales tactics to push consumers to switch their power providers.

Watchdog group Energywatch said power companies were using abusive tactics, including forging signatures and phone permissions, to switch customers from other power providers.

Energywatch chair Ann Robinson denounced the behaviors as rogue tactics that “are widespread, on the increase, and can cause immense distress and annoyance to consumers,” reported the BBC.

The group is extolling power companies to adopt behavior controls, and urging the government to slap violators with fines and other punishments.

OFGEM, the government’s regulatory body for the energy industry, said the sector is undergoing rapid change as a growing number of companies are privatized, resulting in more vigorous competition — and more cutthroat tactics for consumers’ business. One million U.K. consumers switch energy providers every month, OFGEM has stated.

Despite making allowance for the confusion caused by such fast-paced flux, the government takes “very seriously any action by suppliers which undermines consumer confidence,” OFGEM executive John Neilson told the BBC.

WASHINGTON
In a move that could bolster the legal tactics of abortion opponents, the Bush administration said last week that it would add fetuses to a child care program operated by the federal government, classifying them as “unborn children,” and thereby guaranteeing low-income pregnant women prenatal and delivery care.

“Prenatal services can be a vital, lifelong determinant of health, and we should do everything we can to make this care available for all pregnant women,” U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson said last week.

The new arrangement extends the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, giving states the option to provide unborn fetuses, and by extension, pregnant women, with health care.

Pro-choice groups welcomed the announcement’s end result — health care for pregnant women, regardless of income — but slammed the measure itself as part of a campaign by the Bush administration to criminalize abortion.

“If they’re interested in covering pregnant women, why don’t they talk about pregnant women” instead of fetuses, Laurie Rubiner of the National Partnership for Women and Families, asked the Associated Press.

Rubiner and others say measures already exist to cover prenatal services for poorer women, and that last week’s move is a calculated ploy to pave the way for extending “personhood” to a fetus, an important step in making abortion illegal.

President Bush has done little to hide his opposition to abortion, speaking by telephone at an antiabortion rally on the twenty-ninth anniversary of Roe-vs.-Wade less than two weeks ago.

“You’re working and marching on behalf of a noble cause and affirming a culture of life,” Bush said at the rally. “Our nation should set a great goal: that unborn children should be welcomed in life and protected in law.”

VATICAN CITY
Pope John Paul II last week called on the world’s judges and lawyers to avoid litigating divorce cases, saying that they are abetting a process of social disintegration.

Divorce, according to the 81-year-old pontiff, “has devastating consequences, which spreads in the social body like a festering wound … and negatively influences” new generations, reported the Associated Press.

Judges who oversee divorce proceeding and “lawyers, who work freely, should always decline to use their professions for an end that is contrary to [divine] justice, like divorce,” the Pope decreed last week.

His words fell largely on deaf ears, even in Italy, which is nominally 98 percent Roman Catholic, reported the Reuters news agency.

For many, the Pope’s advice reflects a growing gulf between the Vatican and the world that surrounds it, showing non-Catholics “that the church is now so far away from their culture,” John Wilkins, editor of British Catholic weekly The Tablet told the Associated Press.

Many politicians, lawyers, and the public decried the Pope’s call as the derivative of an outdated dogma that overlooks the value many people find in divorce.

“What you do when you maintain these marriages that are totally dysfunctional is you get generational dysfunction,” said J. Lindsey Short, Jr., head of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers.

“You get generations of adults who teach their children it’s all right to yell and scream and perhaps use physical violence. I just don’t see the benefit in a dysfunctional union for people to stay together,” Short told the AP.

SAN FRANCISCO
A convicted felon in California was given a heart transplant last month, an operation that could eventually cost taxpayers up to $1 million and has already fueled debate over the decision-making process involved in transplant procedures.

The 31-year-old man, twice convicted of burglary and robbery, received the transplant upon the advice of the Stanford Medical Center after a heart problem caused by viral infection turned critical.

The surgery has sparked debate among many observers, who note that the felon’s transplant took place while more than 4,100 others wait for heart transplants — 500 in California alone, reported the Reuters news agency.

“We’re certainly aware that this is going to raise some eyebrows,” California Department of Corrections spokesman Russ Heimerich told Reuters. “We’re essentially giving a heart to an inmate when there are other people out there, potentially more productive members of society, who are in line as well.”

“It’s something we wrestle with, but the problem is not ours to resolve,” Heimerich added, noting that the state is required by law to provide adequate medical care to prisoners. “The judge didn’t sentence this guy to death. He may get out and become a productive citizen.”

Productive or not, the decision was correct, according to Anne Paschke of the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS), the nonprofit group that manages transplant waiting lists for the U.S. government.

When deciding how to allocate donated organs, “our system does not look at a person’s prison status, just the way it does not look to see if they are a famous celebrity,” Paschke told Reuters.

“Doctors in medical practice don’t have a right to make social decisions,” Dr. Lawrence Schneiderman, medical professor at the University of California, San Diego, told the Associated Press last week. “If it’s a limited resource, our choice should be who will it help the most,” not who deserves it the most.

Despite that stance, UNOS has engaged in such triage before — deciding in 1996 that people suffering from long-term liver failure because of alcohol and drug abuse should not be placed before others needing liver transplants, noted the AP article.

The prisoner’s heart transplant, which took place in early January but was not disclosed until last week, may signal a growing dilemma for U.S. states, according to Scott Chavez of the National Commission on Correctional Health Care (NCCHC), a prison healthcare watchdog group.

The U.S. prison population, which has swelled over the last few decades, is now aging and ailing, and will likely require extensive medical care. “It is going to be extremely costly,” Chavez told Reuters.

“Taxpayers are going to be asked to pay an unbelievable amount of money. It will definitely break the budgets of most state correctional departments,” Chavez warned.

JERUSALEM
More than 80 reservists in the Israeli army last week said they would no longer serve on missions in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, saying such operations are not necessary for security and amount to brazen military oppression of Palestinians.

An advertisement placed in Israeli newspapers last week displayed the signatures of 52 reserve soldiers who refused to serve. A petition drive to collect at least 500 signatures of like-minded soldiers had added more than 30 others to their ranks by late last week.

“We declare that we will not continue to fight a war for peace” in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, read the ad. “We will not continue to fight [beyond Israel's borders] with an intent to control, expel, starve, and degrade an entire people.”

Nearly 150 Jewish settlements have been established by Israel in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, where Palestinians far outnumber Jews. Israeli soldiers and reservists patrol the settlements to ensure the safety of the Jews living there.

But a growing number of soldiers and reservists — from generals to paratroopers to foot soldiers — say such missions frequently involve illegal harassment and violence against Palestinians, reported the Associated Press.

These missions have “nothing to do with security, and their only intent is to control the Palestinian people forever,” the protestors wrote in their published ad.

“We will continue serving in the Israel Defense Forces in any mission that serves Israel’s defense,” the protestors wrote. “The mission of occupation and repression does not serve this goal and we will not take part in it.”

Military leaders said the reservists may have legitimate concerns, but that taking them public was not the right approach, reported the AP.

“It worries us,” Maj. Gen. Uzi Dayan, head of Israel’s National Security Council, told an Israeli TV station. “We have to allow these discussions but I say that it shouldn’t be expressed in a refusal to serve.”

Supporters counter that the dialogue must take place in the open, not behind closed doors held shut by a secretive military.

Special to Newsline from Canadian correspondent Errol P. Mendes

AMMENDORF, Germany
After an intervention by German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder to stop the closure of a rail car assembly plant in the economically depressed city of Ammendorf, Germany, the owners of the plant, Bombardier Inc. of Montreal, Canada, have announced that the firm has reversed its decision to close the plant.

The Globe & Mail is reporting that the decision not to close the factory came after Chancellor Schroeder promised that the factory would receive new orders from the state-owned railway company, Deutsche Bahn AG, which will be upgrading its rolling stock and will involve about $8.7 billion in expenditures.

Chancellor Schroeder, due to stand for reelection in September, has reportedly made job protection in Germany’s depressed eastern region a major part of his reelection platform. Another smaller plant in eastern Germany is still slated for closure by Bombardier.

LAS VEGAS
Mike Tyson was barred last week from boxing in Nevada by the state’s licensing board, which ruled 4-1 that the boxer’s behavior made his planned championship fight in Las Vegas a bad bet for the state.

The decision by the Nevada State Athletic Commission eliminates the enormously profitable prospect of a Vegas match-up between Tyson and Lennox Lewis, who currently holds the World Boxing Council and International Boxing Federation belts.

“Nobody wanted this fight to happen more than me,” Nevada commissioner Tony Alamo told the Reuters news agency last week after voting against Tyson. “Unfortunately, his actions and lack of control put him in this position.”

Alamo and three others said Tyson was a great boxer, but a poor role model, citing his history of violence and loss of control, including a rape conviction, biting and maiming other boxers, and profanity-laden outbursts.

“I think this will teach guys who emulate Tyson … a lesson,” boxing promoter Bob Arum told the Las Vegas Review-Journal last week. “You cannot act like a [hoodlum]. This is a sport with rules. If you can’t control yourself and follow the rules, you’ll pay the consequences.”

Tyson said the ruling was not unexpected.

Lennox Lewis, who is required by boxing regulations to defend his title against Tyson, says he is considering his legal options for retaining his titles without fighting him, telling the commissioners that Tyson had bitten him in the leg during a January press conference.

“Mike Tyson bit through my trousers and took a significant piece of flesh out of my thigh,” Lewis said in a statement. “I was particularly disturbed by the fact that he went before the Commission today and did not tell the truth by denying what he knows occurred. I have made no decision yet about the possibility of fighting Mike Tyson in another jurisdiction that may license him because I want to consider carefully the reasons expressed by the Commission in denying the license.”

While Nevada’s ruling applies only to that state, other U.S. states may be hesitant to break ranks. South Africa, however, has said it would welcome the chance to host the Lennox-Tyson fight.

In South Africa, boxing is seen by many blacks as a way to rise from poverty to greatness, reported Reuters. “It would be a great thing if the Lewis-Tyson fight was staged here,” Phil Nyamane, boxing writer and commentator with the Johannesburg-based Star newspaper, told Reuters. “Just the name Tyson conjures up pictures of violence. If he came, mobs would greet him at the airport.”

HOUSTON
The fate of most corporate whistleblowers — persecution, pariah status, and blacklisting — may be escaped by Enron’s Sherron Watkins, the executive who warned of her company’s probable wrongdoing last August, according to an article last week from BusinessWeek.

“The history of whistleblowers is not pleasant to read. They usually don’t get good treatment at the hands of their companies or future employers,” Thomas Donaldson, business ethics professor at Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, told BusinessWeek.

Watkins may fare better than other whistleblowers because of two key points — her position at Enron, and her method of handling the matter, experts and ethicists contend.

Whereas many whistleblowers are disgruntled employees, Watkins had clout and respect at Enron, where she was vested and highly involved with management.

Also to her benefit, Watkins framed her concerns in language meant to help the company and protect itself from imploding “in a wave of accounting scandals,” as she wrote in her memo to former Enron head Kenneth Lay.

Instead of going public immediately with her worries, Watkins worked first to effect change from within. “She was clearly trying to act in the best interest of Enron” without condoning the company’s behavior, noted Steve Currall, an associate professor at the Jones Graduate School of Management at Rice University. “She could have gone to the press with that thing. But she was trying to keep it within Enron and bring the issues to the attention of the top executives.”

“Every now and then, a whistleblower so galvanizes public attention that the person becomes a kind of hero. Watkins may well achieve that status,” Wharton’s Donaldson added.

Special to Newsline from Canadian correspondent Errol P. Mendes

OTTAWA
Canada lost one round in an ongoing trade dispute with Brazil over subsides to their main aerospace corporations after a WTO panel ruled last week that Canada broke international trade rules when it gave a $1.07 billion low-interest loan to Air Wisconsin to buy 75 regional jets from Bombardier Inc. of Montreal.

The Canadian government had justified the loans as a defensive measure that matched export subsidies given by the Brazilian government to its major aerospace company, Embraer.

Canadian Trade Minister Pierre Pettigrew has attempted to downplay the loss, arguing that the ruling merely clarifies what Canada can and cannot do to protect its aerospace industry from unfair competition from Brazil.

Minister Pettigrew pointed out that the WTO panel had upheld the legality of other export financing programs of Canada. The minister also said that Brazil had lost in four other related WTO panel rulings and proceeded to suggest that such losses made it harder for the Brazilians to sit down and negotiate a settlement, a charge that Brazilian government representatives vehemently rejected.

From the Higher Education Research Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles:

More college freshmen identify themselves as politically liberal, according to the results of UCLA’s annual survey of the nation’s students entering undergraduate classes.

The fall 2001 survey conducted by the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA’s Graduate School of Education and Information Studies finds that 29.9 percent of students entering four-year colleges and universities characterize their political views as “liberal” or “far left,” the highest percentage in two decades, and substantially higher than the 20.7 percent who consider themselves “conservative” or “far right.”

The overall percentage of today’s “liberal” freshmen increased from 27.7 percent last year and 21.0 percent in 1981, but is still lower than the all-time high of 40.9 percent recorded in 1971. Most students labeled themselves “middle of the road” (49.5 percent, down from 51.9 percent last year).

“Although students are less likely to identify themselves as ‘liberal’ than they were in the early 1970s, the popularity of the liberal label has increased for five consecutive years and is at its highest point since 1975,” says Linda Sax, UCLA education professor and director of the survey.

The tendency toward liberalism among the 2001 freshmen is evident in their changing attitudes about a wide range of social and political issues, including the death penalty, drug testing, and gay rights.

A record high 57.9 percent of this year’s freshmen believe that same sex couples should have the right to legal marital status (compared to 56 percent last year and 50.9 percent in 1997.) Only one-fourth (24.9 percent) of entering students advocate laws prohibiting homosexual relationships compared to 27.2 percent last year. This is a significant decline from the record high of half (50.4 percent) of students who agreed with the statement in 1987, and a record low since the question was first asked in 1976.

Additionally, today’s freshmen express more liberal views about drug legalization and testing. Over one-third (36.5 percent) agree that marijuana should be legalized, an increase from last year’s 34.2 percent and the highest rating since 1980. While 75 percent of today’s freshmen agree that employers should be allowed to require drug testing of employees or job applicants, support for testing is down slightly from last year (76.5 percent) and is lower than any year since the question entered the survey in 1988.

Over the last two decades, there also has been a steady increase in the percentage of freshmen who believe that the death penalty should be abolished. This year, 32.2 percent of incoming college students advocate ending capital punishment, an increase from 31.2 percent last year and the highest score since 1980.

“In short,” says Alexander W. Astin, education professor and founding director of the survey, “what we have been seeing in the past few years is a broad-based trend toward greater liberalism on practically every attitudinal question in the survey.”

Now in its 36th year, the UCLA Survey is the nation’s longest-standing and most comprehensive assessment of student attitudes and plans. Conducted in association with the American Council on Education, the survey serves as a resource for higher education researchers throughout the world.

The fall 2001 survey included 411,970 entering freshmen at 704 of the nation’s higher education institutions…. The vast majority of these respondents (97.5 percent) completed the survey before September 11. Therefore, changes between 2000 and 2001 do not reflect students’ reactions to those events.

Following long-term declines in students’ attention to politics, the 2001 survey shows signs of renewed political interest and activism. The percentage of students reporting that they frequently discussed politics in the past year rose sharply from a record low 16.4 percent last year to 20.9 percent in 2001. This represents the largest one-year increase since the 1992 presidential election year. The percentage of students who feel that it is essential for them to keep up to date with political events also rose from last year’s record low of 28.1 percent to 31.4 percent in 2001, marking the largest one-year increase since the 1972 presidential election year.

“It is unclear whether gains in political interest signal a reversal of the long-term trend toward political disengagement,” says Sax. “These one-year changes likely reflect students’ reaction to the contested 2000 presidential election and its historic aftermath.”

Additionally, questions related to activism and volunteerism reflect continued growth. Participation in organized demonstrations during the past year reached an all-time high of 47.5 percent in 2001, compared to 45.4 percent last year and a low of 15.8 percent when the survey was initiated in 1966. The 2001 survey also marks a record high level of volunteerism, with 82.6 percent of incoming freshmen reporting frequent or occasional volunteer work, compared to 81 percent last year and a low of 66 percent in 1989….

Interracial interaction among freshmen reached a record high, with 70 percent of this year’s entering college students reporting that they have socialized with someone of another ethnic group in the last year, compared to 67.6 percent of last year’s freshmen. The 2001 figure represents nearly a twelve percent increase from 1992, when the question was first introduced. Women remain more likely than men to socialize with people from a racial or ethnic background different from their own (71.9 percent among women versus 67.6 percent among men).

…Enhanced racial awareness is also reflected in renewed growth in the percentage of entering college students who are committed to helping promote racial understanding (31.5 percent this year versus 30.8 percent last year). This figure, however, remains substantially below the high of 46.4 percent reached in 1992….

“What seems to be happening,” observes Astin, “is that as students of different races have more contact with each other, their concern about racism and their commitment to racial equity grow stronger.”

In a continuing trend, self-ratings in physical and emotional health hit record lows in 2001. The percentage of freshmen who rate their physical health above average or in the highest 10 percent compared to others their age reached an all-time low of 55.2 percent, dropping from last year’s 56.4 percent and the high of 64.3 percent in 1986. Student’s self-rated emotional health also hit a record low, with 53.4 percent of freshmen considering their emotional health as above average or in the highest 10 percent, dropping from 53.8 percent in 2000 and 63.6 percent when the question was first included in the survey in 1985. The percentage of freshmen who believe that there is a very good chance they will seek personal counseling while attending college reached a 28-year high at 6.6 percent, comparing to last year’s 6.4 percent and only 3.5 percent in 1989.

“Remember that these downward trends in psychological health occurred before September 11,” notes Sax. “As a result, we suspect that actual levels of emotional well-being among this year’s freshmen are probably lower than those reported here.”…

When asked to indicate their current religious preference, an all-time high of 15.8 percent of students reported none, compared with 14.9 percent last year and 6.6 percent in 1966….

Today’s college freshmen continue to be academically disengaged. An all-time record high 41.1 percent of students report feeling frequently bored in class during their senior year in high school, up from last year (39.7 percent) and a low of 29.3 percent in 1985….

The survey also finds that students spent less time studying and doing homework, with only 34.9 percent of entering students reporting studying or working on assignments for six or more hours per week in the past year. This marks the lowest figure since this question was first asked in 1987, when 47 percent reported studying six or more hours weekly.

Although students are spending less time studying, their high school grades continue to soar with 44.1 percent of freshmen report earning “A” averages in high school, compared to 42.9 percent last year, and a low of 17.6 percent in 1968.

“The combination of academic disengagement and record grade inflation,” says Astin, “poses a real challenge for our higher education system, since students are entering college with less inclination to study but with higher academic expectations than ever.”

“I thank God I am as honest as any man living that is an old man no honester than I.”

– William Shakespeare (English dramatist and poet, 1564-1616)