August 15, 2023

On August 15, 2022, six law graduates found cheating in the 2020 Bar Examinations withdrew their applications to be called to the Singapore bar. This incident highlights the importance of creating and maintaining a culture of integrity in university and beyond.

In ‘Integrity in and Beyond Contemporary Higher Education: What Does it Mean to University Students?’ (Frontiers in Psychology, 2016), Dr Sarah Shi Hui Wong, Associate Professor Stephen Wee Hun Lim (both NUS Psychology) and Professor Kathleen M Quinlan (University of Kent) explore survey responses from 127 NUS students to understand their conception of integrity.

For many student respondents, integrity is a set of norms they should follow in their daily lives. It means not cheating in exams and assignments, completing homework individually, and fulfilling group work commitments. The respondents also reflected that integrity requires one to not manipulate data collected from experiments. More generally, maintaining integrity means one should not compromise their conscience.

Beyond student lives, the respondents also acknowledged that integrity entails upholding strong work ethics, such as not taking credit for work that is not one’s own and not abusing responsibility and power. Sometimes, whistleblowing to expose an organisation’s wrongdoing is also necessary. Integrity was also defined by some students as part of professionalism.

The authors observe that the respondents’ understanding of integrity extends beyond academic misconduct. Beyond that, using one’s knowledge and skills responsibly for the society and holding true to one’s beliefs and ideals are also what integrity entails.

Read the article here: https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01094