Good friend or good student?

Students are often reluctant to report the academic dishonesty of their peers. Loyalty to friends and classmates has previously been identified as an important reason for this. This paper explores loyalty conflicts among students from upper second- ary school, through bachelor’s, to Ph.D. level. Drawing on semi- structured qualitative interviews (N = 72) conducted in Denmark, Ireland and Hungary, we show that loyalty consid- erations among students can be complex and draw on a range of norms including responsibility. The study demonstrates how students are often willing to assume substantial personal responsibility for dealing with the academic dishonesty of a peer, often preferring this to reporting. However, when deciding on the right course of action, they also perceive tensions between the norms of the good researcher and stu- dent and their own norms of being a good friend and person. The loyalty considerations and tension were identified in all three countries and across the educational levels, which sug- gests that this is a cross-cultural challenge. We argue that institutions should formally decide whether they want stu- dents to take some degree of responsibility themselves for addressing less serious cases of academic dishonesty and com- municate their decision to their students.