Last academic year, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign saw nearly 1,200 cases of academic integrity violations, a 19.4% increase from the previous school year’s 1,000 cases.
Of the 2023-24 academic year violations, 1,380 sanctions were assigned to students compared with an even 1,000 sanctions issued the year prior. Sanctions, such as failing an assignment or having one’s exam revoked, can outnumber violations in circumstances where students receive multiple sanctions for a single case.
This jump in violations contrasts a 5% increase in the total student population, from 56,403 students in fall 2023 to 59,238 this fall.
Every student attending the University of Illinois is held to standards laid out in the Student Code. The code outlines expectations and guidelines for student behavior.
“It is the responsibility of each student to refrain from infractions of academic integrity, from conduct that may lead to suspicion of such infractions, and from conduct that aids others in such infractions,” the code states.
Once a student is found guilty of violating the code, they receive a disciplinary sanction. During the 2023-24 academic year, 49% of sanctions resulted in a failed assignment as a repercussion. Reduced grades in the class made up 21% of sanctions and it has remained the second most popular sanction for the past three years.

Once a student is accused of an academic integrity violation, they undergo an automated appeals process to defend themselves against the evidence brought against them. If found guilty, the student receives a sanction determined by the professor and a senate hearing committee.
The senate hearing committee comprises students and faculty members who determine the necessary sanctions a student should receive for any Student Code violation. As the final voice of reason, the committee can overpower instructor-issued sanctions.
Data released in annual reports, available on the university’s website, showed plagiarism is the most common violation committed.
In the past three academic years, plagiarism has made up 57% of all academic integrity violations. Cheating follows at 33% and facilitating academic integrity violations is the third-highest at 7%.
Bob Wilczynski, associate dean of students and director of the Office of Student Conflict Resolution, said first-time offenders typically receive a warning.
“A first-time violation, 99% of the time, never gets a hearing. It never even gets a disciplinary record,” he said.
Wilczynski, whose work includes overseeing cases for students facing academic integrity violations, explained that, in almost every first-time violation, all the student receives is a written warning from the university. However, a professor retains the right to issue their own sanctions for students as they see fit.
“We deal with all potential violations of the student code,” he said. “For academic integrity, our relationship is unique in that we work with the Provost Office and all of the academic colleges to serve as sort of a clearinghouse for academic integrity.”
Wilczynski’s office oversees these cross-department arrangements. He said the office works to ensure each student receives an appropriate repercussion that suits their violation.
Ishaan Bhargava, a university junior enrolled at the Grainger College of Engineering, was found guilty of plagiarism in fall 2023 and received a zero for his assignment as a disciplinary sanction.
“Before this, I’d always counted citing sources as just putting like brackets or footnotes and then putting the source,” Bhargava said in his interview. “I thought what I had done to cite my sources was enough, but I think the professor expected it in a different format.”
Out of every college at the university, Grainger College consistently provides the greatest number of academic integrity violations. The college’s class size typically rivals the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (LAS), and the two make up the biggest populations on campus.
According to the fall 2024 student enrollment report, Grainger has 15,713 on-campus students making up 27% of total students on campus, just greater than the population of 15,467 at LAS which makes up 26%.
Yet Grainger made up the biggest proportion of all academic integrity cases for the past three years. The college averaged 449 cases a year versus an average of 262 seen at LAS, 71% more than LAS despite their competing class sizes.
LAS has the second-highest number of academic integrity violations. In the 2021-22 school year, it made up 18% of the cases on campus with 189 total violations, before jumping to 29% last year with 345 total academic integrity violations.
Bob Steltman, the executive assistant dean for student academic affairs at LAS, said the increase in violations of academic integrity comes from students not fully grasping the significance of their workload. He also said social media and online resources drive up the number of violations his office sees each semester.
“If the goal is right answers, if that’s what’s important, ‘I have to get this right,’ then why can’t you use [the internet]? But if the goal is to master the material and figure this kind of stuff out yourself so you can do it whenever you want to do it, this is junk,” Steltman said.
To promote academic integrity, the university is looking for new ways to inform students of the expectations asked of them in their performance.
“One of the things we’re doing this fall is preparing to launch an academic integrity module for everyone that gets a [written warning] that we’re going to require them to do,” Wilczynski said. “Our biggest goal is we don’t want to see second and third [violations].”