16 Hidden Effects of Examination Malpractice You Need to Know

16 Hidden Effects of Examination Malpractice You Need to Know

Hi readers and enthusiasts! It’s another lovely day to do some bookish stuff on this platform.

Mind you, you don’t have to be a nerd to be here, all you need is to be interested in learning. That’s all. So let’s get started with the issue of the day! – The effects of examination malpractice.

In twenty years or so of being in school, I’ve seen several variations of anti-regulatory practices that people would argue not to qualify as examination malpractice.

As a result, I would like to define this term in its original context. This would help you to have an accurate perspective on the issue.

Examination Malpractice

I would save you the stress of quoting a dictionary by just stating it simply. Examination malpractice is any passive or active action taken to compromise the original intent and integrity of an examining body.

You do this by negating the stated regulations or code of conduct stipulated in the examination.

I hope that wasn’t too complex. Perhaps I should state it simply this way: it is anything you do to the detriment of the ability of an examination to effectively evaluate your true standing.

Of course, a test also qualifies as an examination. It also evaluates the competence of its respondents based on the content of the material they are tested on.

Before delving into the dangers of examination malpractice, I would like to state a few scenarios that qualify as examination malpractice.

These include – bringing into the examination hall anything that contains information about the subject of the examination; having an illegal prior knowledge of the examination questions (classes and tutorials are of course legal means of acquiring prior knowledge of the examination, 😉 ); sharing information with other participants of the examination; exchanging either question papers or answer sheets.

The foregoing are a few of the most explicit instances of examination malpractice based on the most common examination regulations.

As an academic who is both a student and a teacher, I believe that I have seen enough to be able to write about this issue that is seriously crippling our educational system.

Read this: Facts about your handwriting.

Examination malpractice forms the basis of chronic deception and sheer injustice in any educational system that condones it.

It is like building a shed on termite-infested stilts, a certain crash is just around the corner.

Any system built on false ranking and misplaced competencies will find itself inevitably sucking the life out of meritocracy and authentic scholarship, only to be left with a rotten and empty shell, a charade of the most disgusting order.

That said (and hopefully pondered), I would like to state a few debilitating reasons for strongly advocating against this cancer in our educational system.

1. It breeds irresponsibility

Examination malpractice fosters unadvisable dependencies and corrupt alliances.

It has a way of disempowering people, making them slaves of what someone else will write rather than what they could come up with by themselves.

Plagiarism (a fancy way of saying ‘copying’) puts one’s success or failure in the hands and head of someone else. Meanwhile, a serious study would have given such a person exclusive and non-negotiable success.

But I daresay, even if a person does succeed in an exam through any form of malpractice, he or she is already a failure in character and learning which is most likely even worse than failing an academic quiz.

2. It breeds laziness

Quite related to the prior point is the matter of laziness. An irresponsible person will most likely be a lazy person.

Once a person has his/her mind made up to be a ‘parasite’ in the exam hall, the person will put little or no effort into exam preparations.

It was Aristotle that said – We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then is not an act but a habit.

Extrapolating from this true saying, we could say that a lazy student will most likely be a lazy employee or a lazy father or a lazy team member.

The point is this; habits have a way of spreading, especially bad ones because they are quite appealing to our senses of instant gratification.

Your approach to one ramification of life has an uncanny way of spreading to others.

Ultimately, having someone else do all the work for you is a very good motivation to be lazy. But note also, laziness never made a man great.

Read: Foods that improve your brain capacity and memory

3. It breeds incompetence

Also, building on the foregoing points, I’d like to ask you how competent will a lazy, irresponsible person be. Not very sure if at all.

So if going through school, a person schemes his/her way through quizzes, tests and examinations, what will be the true evidence of having been thoroughly trained in the discipline his/her certificate claims to be the person’s speciality?

Grades may lie (no thanks to such inglorious things as examination malpractice) but one’s ability to solve problems that require the deployment of acquired competencies never does.

But let’s say by some means the person is able to get a job. What quality of service would he/she render to customers/clients?

Imagine the kind of machines, buildings or bridges the person will build as an engineer.

Think about the kind of diagnosis or prescriptions the person would give as medical personnel.

What goes around comes around. Any system that wouldn’t severely address its bad eggs will be ultimately poisoned by those same eggs.

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4. It kills the integrity of the institution

The sweet thing about certificates is that they bear the name of the respective awarding institution.

So if a certain kind of ill performance becomes a trend in the graduates of an institution, that institution will soon have its ability to administer training in the field(s) of concern severely questioned.

Mind you, the certificate is not an end in itself. It is an official means of confirming the level of competence of its bearer.

Therefore, if the bearer’s output does not correspond to the stated level on the certificate, it leaves the issuer’s integrity at stake.

Leaving this issue unaddressed will compromise the ability of the institution to attract new students. It might also have its graduates employed.

5. It breeds limitation

Without equivocation, a ‘dubber’ (as a person who copies is sometimes called in this part of the world) can never exceed the performance of the person he piggybacks on.

Even if the person has the potential to exceed such by far, he will never do so having restricted himself to the shadow of another fellow.

If the person does that long enough, he will possibly get used to that level of performance and never aspire to be better.

In settling for that, the person severely limits his opportunity for advancement and excellence generally and subsequently in life. 

6. It breeds low self-esteem

It is quite simple; just as the borrower will continue to be a servant to the lender, a person who depends on others will always feel indebted and subservient to his benefactor(s).

So, tell me, how high will his self-esteem be? And I tell you, no man ever went all the way to attempt, talk less of achieving great things with low self-esteem.

Read: Beautiful Upsides of Failure

7. Manipulation

In addition to and as a consequence of low self-esteem, the fellow is subject to manipulation and blackmail.

After all, is he not indebted? His dependence to carry out the whims and caprices of his ‘captors/masters’ encourages that.

Even after extricating oneself from this unpalatable position, the stigma, if not properly addressed could cast a limiting shadow over the rest of one’s life.

So far, we have spoken about the recipient of the materials of malpractice. Let us now speak briefly about the giver. Let’s not forget a slight clause in our definition – “…passive or active…” connivance.

It is like a bribe, both the giver and receiver are culpable before the law. Apart from being complicit in something that just stops short of being a criminal, you are destroying the very system that you hope will validate the authenticity of your sweat.

Read this: How to concentrate on studies when in love

We mentioned earlier the effects of malpractice on the integrity institution. We also conjectured what kind of services a pseudo-competent professional would offer.

And like one fond lecturer of mine would say, consider for a moment the consequence if your child somehow ends up at the clinic of one such quack or if they somehow got a government contract to build the 6th Mainland Bridge.

8. NO REFLECTIVE READING

Exam malpractice is so bad that it makes whoever is involved in it so lost as not to know he or she is not having effective and reflective reading habits.

It deprives you of the joy of studying. It beclouds your mind with the fact that you have a place to fall back on rather than your brain.

You eventually will see nothing bad about it by gratifying yourself that you’re human and bound to forget, hence, justifying the act of exam malpractice.

9. DIMINISHED IQ

Anyone that indulges in exam malpractice always develops a very low IQ (Intelligence Quotient).

You will find it very difficult to reason, solve problems or even handle logic personally.

Exam malpractice affects the general functionality of the brain. Highly intelligent people avoid exam malpractice as much as possible.

10. DISLIKES EDUCATION GENERALLY

Anyone with a record of exam malpractice becomes frustrated that you lose interest in anything that connects to education.

You’re more comfortable doing menial jobs, other than having an interest in education. Education tends to pose a serious threat to your life, you do everything possible to keep entirely off education.

Whenever educational discussions arise around you, you find the environment so boring and uncomfortable for you to stay or contribute. Your education might be truncated because of exam malpractice.

11. NO REGARD FOR ACADEMICS

Exam malpractice is a vice that destroys your academic interest. It makes you feel less qualified to be a part of any academic pursuit.

When you fall victim to any exam malpractice, you lose your self-worth, your academic friends begin to drop and you find yourself most times lonely.

It is a cancer worm that eats deep into your academic life and destroys it without an atom of mercy. It should totally be avoided.

12. GRADUAL LOSS OF MEMORY (DEMENTIA)

Loss of memory is always associated with the inability to develop the brain academic wise. When the brain is fixed on cheating, it fails to retain any valuable academic work.

Exam malpractice can make you to even forget yourself sometimes. When you cannot remember the important things in your life, what’s the possibility that you can still remember yourself?

Exam malpractice destroys one’s memory capability and sustainability.

13. LOW COMMUNICATION SKILLS

Exam malpractice makes you have extremely low communication skills. It can be so bad that you find yourself losing your social life all because you feel and think you no longer have command over your communication skills.

Hence, a loss of interest in communication arises prompting you to have low communication skills.

Communication is a powerful tool and required powerful command and skill, when those two are lost, it is disastrous to every living being.

14. INFERIORITY COMPLEX

This is the height of it all. Inferiority complex is a huge product of exam malpractice.

When the brighter students are talking, you tend to hide just to avoid any sort of embarrassment. If you’re a student that involves yourself in exam malpractice, you may develop very low self-esteem, and you seldom stand tall to address a crowd.

In fact, you might develop stage fright whenever you’re beckoned to face a huge crowd. You might lack the boldness to speak for yourself, let alone talk for others.

Low self-esteem disrupts the normal function of your brain if you involve in exam malpractice.

15. BAD SOCIAL LIFE

Anybody without a good social life is a bored, frustrated and confused human. As bad as it sounds, it could be caused by exam malpractice.

Any student that indulges in exam malpractice usually has a bad social life and may not be able to maximize the positive effects of social media.

It reminds you that you cannot comfortably stand out in the crowd because it has become a part of you.

In most cases, you try to keep off social life, you start living a secluded kind of life and once you start living in seclusion, your social life becomes so bad.

16. POOR ACADEMIC PERFORMANCES

This is the summary of it all. Anybody that engages in exam malpractice always has a very poor academic performance.

You will never study, have any zeal to do academic work, have no interest in learning, unlearn and relearn.

The totality of your academic performance is dependent on how much you can stay away from exam malpractice.

You might surely be rusticated from school as a result of exam malpractice. It is one of the reasons students fail.

Here are some causes of exam malpractice that are worth mentioning:

1. Unstable educational system

Some government policies are not favourable to the educational sector. This is also evident in the amount they allocate to the sector. This might make the level of development in public schools very poor.

The education sector at all levels is faced with a series of challenges. 

2. Parental influence

The upbringing of a child is very important in determining their way of life. The issue of malpractice arises when parents are not interested in the academic activities of their children.

They don’t encourage them to study or see the level of progress they’ve made. They leave the entirety of the work on the shoulder of the teachers.

In worst cases, parents could even force their children to study a course they may not be interested in; thereby making them not committed to studying.

3. Environmental Factor

Some examination malpractices are collective efforts that involve both the examiner and the examinee.

This is so unbecoming because society does not see it as a serious offence.

4. The student

In spite of all the factors, students cannot be exonerated. This is because they should still be good students that believe in hard work and due diligence.

Students should succeed through sincere means. On the other hand, the bad students that do this could be lazy, such that they don’t attend classes and carry out assignments.

As such, they resort to crooked means to be at the same level as the serious ones.

Other Forms of examination malpractice

It is important to highlight that apart from regular cheating in physical examinations, there are other forms of examination misconduct. Some of these include:

1. Plagiarism: Extraction of text or ideas from another author without proper acknowledgement, and taking them as yours.
2. Unethical research practices: This ranges from the manipulation of figures to the general falsification of results.
3. Confidentiality breach: This is mostly observed in laboratories where analysis is carried out. The results from an individual’s analysis are meant to be confidential, but these results could be leaked for a fee.

Conclusion

Malpractice preys on most people’s natural aversion for thoroughness, detailed preparation and the modicum of decency that comes with these. But if we fall prey to these, they will mercilessly deal with us and our posterity.

Examination malpractice is a deliberate and unacceptable behaviour perpetrated by an individual or group of persons; that is geared towards succeeding in an examination. It is a vice that jeopardizes integrity and equality among examinees.

That is, it provides candidates with an unfair advantage or disadvantage as the case may be. It could also be referred to as academic misconduct, dishonesty or fraud. Examination malpractice is one of the reasons for the common statement “ examination is not the true test of knowledge”

However, the essence of examination is actually to test the level of one’s comprehension or understanding. Many examinees may or may not understand this. Perhaps the conditions they find themselves in could push them into examination malpractice.

Nevertheless, there is no justification for involvement in academic fraud. Everyone suffers. No one escapes the dark power of falling for the seduction of quick fixes and abridged solutions provided by unpalatable lures by such stuff as examination malpractice.

If you know of any other consequences of exam malpractice, feel free to share them in the comment section.