Cheating Culture: Corruption-Related Behaviors in University Students

This paper aims to identify habitual corruption-related behaviors among students of a private university in Lima, Peru. The research is exploratory and follows a group-comparison design, with a sample made up of 1,572 university students from 10 of the university’s schools. The results show significant differences in 16 of the 19 habitual corruption-related behaviors. Men had a higher mean than women in all behaviors, but an analysis of the size of the effect found that the gender, age, study year, and school variables were not determinants of the frequency of behavior. Cheating and unethical behaviors among university students demonstrated the existence of a culture of cheating that worsens over the course of their academic life and impacts their future career.