Last week an opinion columnist came out in favor of cheating to get good grades. As long as cheating only affects the cheater and doesn’t have any negative consequences, he argued, why not cheat? If cheating helps students “set themselves up for the brightest possible future,” then what’s wrong with cheating?

Online responders were quick to point out that cheating does affect other people. Cheating destroys the value of getting good grades, thus depriving students who earn them of their earnings. Employers, thinking they are hiring honest, competent employees are defrauded. And a university’s reputation for turning out honest, knowledgeable students is lost.

Cheating is a form of dishonesty. It is an attempt to gain a value by faking reality — by pretending one has earned something when one has not.

An honest student who believes his grades fail to adequately reflect his abilities will try to convince an employer or graduate school committee of his merits despite his low grades. The cheater, by contrast, attempts to gain values from others by misrepresentation. He tries to dupe the employer into hiring him or the professor into passing him under false pretenses.

But pretending does not change reality. Regardless of how many employers the cheater dupes into hiring him or how many professors he fools into passing him, his actual performance is unaffected. His unearned transcript no longer represents an education but becomes a worthless piece of paper.

For those students who understand the harmful affects of cheating, I have a bit of bad news. Once you graduate, cheating not only becomes acceptable, it allegedly becomes a path to prosperity.

Here’s how it works as applied to education:

First, professors give higher grades to those students who need them. Anyone who wants a grade boost or college diploma will get one as long as they are willing to use it right away. This will stimulate education because these students now have the grades they need to become teachers and doctors and lawyers. These future educators will in turn inflate the grades of their students, spurring a vicious cycle of education.

If this sounds ludicrous to you, go to the head of the class. The problem, of course, is the value of education is not the grade itself, but what it represents — actual knowledge — and this must be earned. Pretending students possess knowledge by inflating their grades doesn’t change reality. It doesn’t educate more students but destroys their payment for achievement while rewarding non-achievement.

Yet this is precisely our culture’s attitude toward wealth. To “stimulate” the economy, we’re told the government should inflate everyone’s grades. Anyone who wants a loan will get one as long as they are willing to use it immediately. Like a student who receives a gratuitous grade, recipients of so-called “stimulus” money are encouraged to pretend they are wealthier than they really are. They have money in their pockets — the symbol of earned wealth — but no actual wealth is created.

Just as unearned grades are only the illusion of an education, unearned dollars are only the illusion of wealth. Yet, this fantasy game of pretending money is the source of economic prosperity is running rampant in our culture.

If a bank does not have the capital to lend, the government allows it to pretend to have the capital by flooding it with cash and promising to bail it out.

If a car company fails to earn customers and attract investors, the government allows it to pretend to have earned these values by forcing taxpayers to finance its operation.

If a homeowner cannot afford a home, the government allows him to pretend to afford it by manipulating the lending market, dissolving contracts and pushing the risks and losses onto other parties.

But an orgy of pretending cannot lead to prosperity any more than cheating on an exam can lead to an education. Money and grades are only as valuable as the achievements they represent.

If an education cannot be commanded into existence by changing the grade distribution, why do so many think prosperity can be commanded into existence by changing the money distribution?

To those students who are proud of the grades they earn and are appalled by the idea of cheating, consider applying this standard outside the classroom. Ask whether money too needs to be earned or whether government can simply endow us with trillions of dollars in better grades.

Maybe give President Barack Obama a call and tell him to keep his phony “stimulus.” Tell him you have too much pride in your own achievements and respect for the earnings of others to accept his gratuitous handouts.

Jim Allard ([email protected]) is a graduate student majoring in biological sciences.