Too few universities are willing to back up their professors when they catch students cheating, according to academic observers. The schools are simply not willing to expend the effort required to get to the bottom of cheating cases and they are afraid of lawsuits, according to Rutgers University professor Donald M. McCabe.

McCabe is founder of the Center for Academic Integrity at Duke University and has researched the incidence of cheating on campuses since the 1960s.

The center is a 7-year-old consortium of 200 colleges and universities working to foster academic honesty through the involvement of students, faculty and administrators.

• McCabe reports that 87 percent of students surveyed in 1993 admitted to cheating on written work and 70 percent cheated on a test at least once.

• Some 49 percent collaborated with others on an assignment, 52 percent copied from someone and 26 percent plagiarized.

• Copying from material on the Internet is on the rise, he says, and students often don't recognize that copying is plagiarism.

McCabe says that professors are becoming more intimidated by students, and worry about offending them and making them unhappy. "This stuff comes out of the '60s and it's gotten worse," he warns.

Faculty are also worried that if they challenge a student, it is they -- not the student -- who will wind up being put on trial. Student after student has told him that those who engage in academic dishonesty "will size up a professor to determine whether they can get away with it."

McCabe suggests that one way to thwart cheating is to require an outline of a paper early in the term, then a synopsis at about the middle of the course, and the full paper at the end of the term. He also counsels the assignment of unique topics that cannot so easily be copied.