Russian university policies on students’ academic dishonesty: punishment or mental training?

Students’ dishonest behavior is one of the most significant problems of higher education all over the world. Therefore, researchers and university administrators attempt to develop corresponding prevention measures. The measures can be aimed at either punishing students or engaging them in ethically sustainable academic practices, the second type becoming more and more popular in universities abroad. In this paper, discourse analysis is used to explore university policies and public statements of the rectors of Russian universities participating in the 5-100 project. The analysis helps to understand what kinds of discourses, argumentation and ways of their linguistic representation are used by Russian universities to represent their position towards students’ academic dishonesty and to influence students’ behavior. This paper might be of use for university administrators and managers, as well as for those who professionally investigate students’ academic dishonesty, to analyze and reform strategies for students’ dishonesty prevention.