Why do students plagiarize?

• Out to get a degree, not an education
• Pressure to maintain a high GPA at any cost
• View that any course outside their major is a waste of time
• Time pressures or poor time management skills
• Fear that their own writing is not good enough
• Lack of research skills
• Confusion between plagiarism and paraphrasing; belief that if you copy from several sources and combine them, it's not plagiarism--it's research!
• "Everyone does it"
• Thrill of beating the system