Cheating and Academic Discipline

Disciplinary Sanctions

When confronted with disciplinary actions such as expulsions from academic programs or institutions, students attending public colleges and universities have alleged that officials violated their rights to substantive and procedural due process. Yet the courts are unsettled on the question of substantive rights for students in higher education. In instances where the courts have agreed that students do possess substantive due process rights, students bear the burden of showing that institutional actions were arbitrary or capricious.

The courts have consistently required officials at public institutions to adhere to the general principles of procedural due process. However, the extent to which due process must be provided is vague. For example, in Board of Curators of the University of Missouri v. Horowitz (1978), the U.S. Supreme Court determined that medical school faculty provided adequate notice to a student who was being dismissed for her poor performance even though the faculty did not provide her with a formal hearing, which is a necessary element of procedural due process.

Private institutions, on the other hand, are not subject to constitutional due process requirements and have a great deal more latitude in the development and regulation of disciplinary rules related to cheating. Because claims of due process violations are not available to students in private institutions, these institutions are often challenged with contract law violations in instances of disciplinary sanctions. In essence, disciplinary sanctions for cheating at private institutions depend greatly on the language in university catalogs and supporting documentation such as class syllabi.

Although some might allege that disciplinary sanctions occurred for malicious reasons, the courts have certainly agreed that the vast majority of these sanctions have been for legitimate reasons.

Academic Discipline

The courts typically treat sanctions for cheating as an internal problem not subject to judicial review. They are reluctant to question the academic sanctions that university officials and faculty members impose on students who have engaged in academic dishonesty. In fact, the courts tend to limit their inquiries into awards of academic grades to considerations of whether educators acted arbitrarily or capriciously. In the academic cases, the courts have generally agreed that hearings are not required unless college and university rules require such proceedings as part of their appeal procedures. Still, officials must follow institutional procedures unless the processes exceed a college or university's own procedures as publicized in handbooks, catalogs, and the like (Schuler v. University of Minnesota, 1986).

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