Sin and Punishment on Campus: Ethnic Differences in Academic Misconduct and Its Treatment by the Academic Disciplinary Committee

Aims: While academic misconduct has been the subject of a growing body of research, there is a lack in empirically based literature on how academic institutions are managing misconduct. We present a preliminary examination of academic misconduct patterns and how they were treated by the academic authorities in a teaching College, compared across 2 cultural groups: Jews and Arabs.

Study Design: A retrospective, comparative design was used to examine our research questions.

Place and Duration of Study: A midsized teaching college situated in northern Israel served as the study setting and as a representative sampling frame of teaching college nation-wide.

Methodology: 90 cases of disciplinary hearings regarding student misconduct were extracted from the college’s files, analyzed for content units and compared across various sections, emphasizing the possible role of culture (Jewish/ Arab).

Results: We compared Arab and Jewish students on type of misconduct, the nature of their plea and the decision by the committee. While no differences were found for type of misconduct across both cultural groups, patterns of students’ plea in their own defense varied marginally suggesting different basic assumptions. We found significant differences in the committees’ decisions for Arab and Jewish students, reflecting a complex and indirect bias.

Conclusion: Culture may play a more sophisticated role than we originally assumed in accounting for academic misconduct and the manner in which it is mitigated by the academic authorities.