Academic discipline: A guide to fair process for the university student

A 1993 survey of college students found that two thirds will have cheated before receiving their degrees, potentially exposing these students to academic discipline. Students facing discipline at public universities receive constitutional safeguards, as the federal courts view the student's continued enrollment as a property interest immune from arbitrary state action. However, for students facing discipline at private universities, constitutional safeguards do not exist. The thesis of this Article is that a registered student has a legally protected interest in her college education, and the protection of that interest should not rise or fall because the student attends a public rather than a private school. All students accused of academic misconduct are entitled to certain procedural safeguards. The authors use contract law as the bulwark for the private school student, arguing that a private school student should not receive less protection than a public school student receives under the Constitution. The public school student also enjoys contract protections. Indeed, contractual due process may exceed constitutional guarantees. In their research, the authors wrote to more than 200 universities, asking them to complete a questionnaire on their disciplinary procedures. The results indicate that on paper most schools promise decent safeguards to students accused of disciplinary violations. The record is uneven, however, and in some respects students quite consistently receive fewer safeguards than fairness demands. The authors create guidelines for measuring whether a school's process is fair, with particular attention to the student's right to legal counsel and to confrontation of adverse witnesses.