What is meant by academic integrity?

Academic integrity means honesty and responsibility in scholarship. It means doing your own work.
Here are the basic assumptions about academic work that I believe.

1.  Students attend school in order to learn and grow.
2.  Academic assignments are assigned for the sake of this goal.
3.  Grades on tests, labs and other assessments exist to show how fully the goal is attained.
4.  Thus, all work and all grades should result from the student's own effort to learn and grow.
Academic work completed any other way is pointless, and grades obtained any other way are fraudulent.

Academic integrity means understanding and respecting these basic truths, without which no educational institution can exist.  Academic misconduct or cheating  is against the rules. It violates the assumptions at the heart of all learning.  It destroys the mutual trust and respect that should exist between student and teacher.

Finally, it is unfair to students who earn their grades honestly.