Are high school students hard wired to cheat? This page makes no claim about biology, but it can report what students themselves say in anonymous surveys, and how those answers looked after ChatGPT arrived.
One answer, from a Stanford interview published Oct 31, 2023, comes from Challenge Success, a school reform nonprofit affiliated with the Stanford Graduate School of Education. In its anonymous surveys at participating schools, not a national sample, 60 to 70 percent of students self reported at least one “cheating” behavior during the previous month, according to Denise Pope, a Stanford senior lecturer and Challenge Success cofounder.
What the surveys count as cheating
The questions do not ask students point blank whether they cheat. Victor Lee, an associate professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Education, said they ask about specific actions classified as cheating, such as copying material word for word for an assignment in the past month or knowingly looking at someone else’s answer during a test.
So the range counts students who reported at least one listed behavior in a month, not how often or how seriously.
Pope noted that, even before ChatGPT, help from a parent or a tutor on an assignment was not considered cheating, and that students in Challenge Success focus groups ask why a chatbot cannot play a similar role.
How reliable are self reports?
Pope said that because the surveys are anonymous, students are “surprisingly honest” and that students in follow up focus groups say the numbers seem accurate. In her view, if anything, students underreport these behaviors. That is the researchers’ account; we have no independent check of it.
Challenge Success has run surveys and focus groups at schools for more than 15 years, and Pope said the 60 to 70 percent range (self reported, past month, participating schools) held for years before ChatGPT.
Did ChatGPT change the numbers?
Pope said the share stayed about the same, or even decreased slightly, in the 2023 surveys, when Challenge Success added questions about new tools such as ChatGPT and how students use them for school assignments. Lee said the data suggest, “perhaps to the surprise of many people,” that the chatbots are not increasing how often students cheat, and added that this could change as students become more familiar with the technology. Those comments were published on Oct 31, 2023.
A 2024 study by Lee, Pope and two coauthors, in the journal Computers and Education: Artificial Intelligence, took a closer look. According to its abstract, the authors analyzed anonymous survey data from three high schools where cheating questions had been asked both before and after November 2022, when ChatGPT was publicly released. The abstract says the results “suggested that cheating behaviors remained relatively stable” after the chatbots arrived, while some changes in reported behaviors differed by type of cheating, such as social cheating and cheating that involves chatbots. This page uses the abstract only; we could not open the full paper, so it reports no figures from it.
What students say a chatbot should be allowed to do
The study’s abstract says most students did not think using a chatbot to produce an entire paper or complete an entire assignment should be allowed, while there was support for using chatbots to help start assignments and papers and to explain new concepts. Lee described a similar split in what he called Challenge Success’s “most recent survey” (as of the Oct 31, 2023 interview): many students said “starter” uses, like explaining a new concept or generating ideas, should be acceptable, and the vast majority said having a chatbot write an entire paper should never be allowed.
Why students say they cheat
The Stanford researchers point to reasons that have little to do with technology. Pope listed students struggling with material and unable to get help, having too much homework and not enough time, finding assignments pointless, and feeling pressure not to bring home a low grade. She said students are less likely to cheat when they feel a sense of belonging at school and find meaning in their classes.
Data limits
The 60 to 70 percent range is self reported, covers students at schools that take part in Challenge Success surveys, was reported in October 2023 as holding for years, and is not a national rate. The three school study covers only those schools. We could not verify a recent national survey figure from a saved primary source, so this page gives no national rate. Our page on how many college students misuse prescription stimulants also rests on self reports, from the Monitoring the Future national panel survey of US full-time college students, a different population and basis.
The short version
In Challenge Success surveys at participating schools, 60 to 70 percent of high school students self reported at least one cheating behavior in the previous month, a range Pope described in October 2023 as holding for years; that is not a national sample. The share stayed about the same or dipped slightly in 2023 surveys that added ChatGPT questions, and the abstract of a 2024 study of three high schools says its results suggested cheating behaviors remained relatively stable after ChatGPT’s release.
More of our pages on school and learning are on the Education page.
Last checked: 2026-10-20, against the Stanford Graduate School of Education interview with Denise Pope and Victor Lee and the abstract of Lee, Pope, Miles and Zárate (2024). This article was machine-checked against the sources above and has not been expert-reviewed. Spotted an error or a newer public figure? Please tell us on our contact page with the article link and we will review it.
Sources
- S1 Stanford Graduate School of Education, “What do AI chatbots really mean for students and cheating?”, by Carrie Spector, Oct 31, 2023 (interview with Victor Lee and Denise Pope on Challenge Success survey data). https://ed.stanford.edu/news/what-do-ai-chatbots-really-mean-students-and-cheating . Saved copy accessed Oct 20, 2026.
- S2 Victor R. Lee, Denise Pope, Sarah Miles and Rosalía C. Zárate, “Cheating in the age of generative AI: A high school survey study of cheating behaviors before and after the release of ChatGPT,” Computers and Education: Artificial Intelligence, December 2024, doi 10.1016/j.caeai.2024.100253 (abstract only). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.caeai.2024.100253 . Accessed Oct 20, 2026.