Corruption in higher education, academic fraud, and academic dishonesty are topics that are currently present in the discussions on both the academia and higher education as well. Researchers have identified numerous individual and contextual factors that influence students’ attitudes towards and academic misbehavior, whether they engage in it, if yes, how frequently, in what forms, for what reasons, and through which kind of ethical and moral reasoning/decision making processes, etc. Although respondents’ sex, the gender aspect has been proven one of the most influential individual factors related to academic norms and academic dishonesty, we have limited information on the correlation of the two.

From the perspective of moral socialization, men are found to engage in academic fraud more frequently than women, which is said to be the result of different moral socialization processes. Women tend to perceive moral norms through their personal networks, everyday relations, are socialized according to higher moral standards and are more concerned of the consequences of their (mis)behavior. On the contrary, men perceive moral norms as external agent independent of them, are socialized individually, less concerned of others and their behavior.

Others say that the traditional feminine or masculine nature of academic disciplines determines the attitudes to academic norms and actual behavior. Researchers found that students – irrespective of sex – tend to engage in academic fraud more frequently in traditionally masculine academic disciplines (business, engineering). In this respect, the masculinity of academic disciplines overwrites individuals’ gender features and roles and vice versa.

Finally, some say that men relate to academic misbehavior more positively that women and that the difference between them has been increasing over the past 30 years, implying a significant difference on attitudes to academic misbehavior between men and women. On the contrary, others found no such growing dissimilarity between men and women.

Based on previous research results, we formulated three sets of hypotheses:

1.      There is a significant difference between men and women related to attitudes toward academic norms, men accept academic misbehavior to a greater extent than women.

2.      The difference related to attitude to academic norms between men and women is increasing. Men in the 2010 database accept academic misbehavior to a greater extent than men in the 2008 database.

3.      Students of traditionally feminine academic disciplines (education, arts and humanities, helping professions and healthcare) reject academic misbehavior to a greater extent than students of traditionally masculine academic disciplines (business, law, engineering, informatics, medical, agrarian, science) – irrespective of their sex.

4.      As an alternative hypothesis, we may add that due to universal higher education, lots of women study at masculine academic disciplines, women have become socialized to men’s roles and norms, thus there is no significant difference related to their attitude to academic norms.

As attitudes to academic norms predict whether students engage in academic fraud and as these attitudes are context-sensitive (depending on the methodology, country, academic discipline), we wish to contribute to the available research results on the correlation of gender are learning attitudes in higher education.

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