Evidence suggests that academic honor codes which call for students to agree not to cheat in their academic endeavors and to notify a faculty member if they suspect that others have cheated are far more successful than are other methods at deterring cheat

In the passage, we are informed that academic honor codes have greatly improved Groveton College's exam status by avoiding cheating efficiently. By citing detailed comparisons on exam statuses between today and the past, the author ascribes all wholesome changes to the adaption of new honor codes. Quite convincing though such explanation appears at first glance, we cannot safely claim that it is the unique one that accounts for the fact presented in the argument. Therefore, we need to consider more explanations, which could rival with the one presented in the argument. To start off, the author attributes the reduction of reported cheating number in the first year of honor codes adaption to the policy's efficiency. While this may be true, such situation could have sprung from other reasons as well. First of all, it is possible that students who joined in this honor codes used less strict standards in terms of the definition of cheating. Without additional information to evaluate students' defined cheating standards, it is of equal probability that cheating situation hadn't been improved so much as it had shown. Thus, the reduction of cheating number could be explained as stemming from the less strict regulation rather than the real improvement. Second, while such statistic may reflect the status of exam, we cannot determine that all of cheating behaviors had been reported by students. Instead, it is of equal probability that they tended to ignore some of their own cheating behaviors in order to gain better scores. Once the authenticity of the statistic in exams prove unwarranted, the author's underlying logic will be weakened, namely: honor code application for the first year was really working. Furthermore, the ensuing five years' diminishing of cheating percentage could lend more support to the effectiveness of honor codes policy. However, such seemingly improvement may presumably result from other factors as well. For example, the enrollment of students in the college had been drastically increased, whic naturally led to the decline of cheating numbers. Moreover, perhaps other policies, like harsh punishments for cheating behaviors, had also been applied, which had deterred students from cheating. Without extra investigations to the status quo of the college, we cannot decide which factor finally lead to the continual decrease of percentage of cheating students. It is even likely that all of the aforementioned factors have conspired to such situation. Last but not least, while we can acknowledge for a moment that honor codes program had really contributed to reshaping students' behaviors and making them act honestly in exams, it is reckless to claim that the majority of them told their true feeling in the recent survey, showing the beneficial effects of honor codes. For instance, they may act not according to their allegation in the survey. Or, they just wanted to keep their positive image in front of interviewers. If any of these possibilities is true, then we are reluctant to agree with the author's conclusion about the effectiveness of honor codes. In summary, while honor codes program may have exerted great influence on student and let them follow up with the right track in exams, in the absence of sufficient information, we cannot determine whether the cheating situation had already improved or establish a causal relationship between such improvement and the efficiency of honor codes. The aforementioned situations accompanying with the adaption of honor codes is such a case that we should consider more explanations which could account for the facts given in the argument.