Plagiarism

Well, exactly. So far as this is a problem, it’s only because a healthy dose of common sense is missing on one or both sides. For that matter, I think a university is entitled to argue that anyone who displays the stupidity described in not even knowing what is wrong with plagiarism is quite unqualified for its degrees anyway.

There’s a wrinkle that I think you are missing. The course work was judged satisfactory, and just before the final exam, he was told it wasn’t. Quite possibly, the notifications that he received would constitute evidence that an exchange had taken place. What the university has done is set up some plagarism detection software and run older materials through. This may hinge on differences in the UK and US system, but I can’t imagine a school being able to retroactively delete credits, as they are transferrable. (at least in the US)

(sarcastic interlude)However, this approach holds a lot of promise. Perhaps the university could, in an effort to reduce the supply of graduates in particular fields, run this software on various course work and pull people’s diplomas. Or force the now unapproved candidate to retake (and repay) for course work acquired under false circumstances. The repeat rate would then be a sign of the institution’s financial security. /sarcasm

I don’t disagree with the idea that there may be a lack of common sense here, but the law is really not about common sense, it is about establishing minimum procedures. The university undertakes the task of educating people, and it can’t put such things off till the last minute. It is the teacher’s duty to catch plagiarism and teach the student that it is wrong (which may involve giving a warning and then, if that warning is ignored, punishing the student) and it is the administration’s duty to support the teachers when they make this judgement. I don’t know the UK situation in detail, but my impression is that teachers are not often supported in these sorts of judgements unless they can provide incontrovertible proof and the work framework for teachers, which prizes research over teaching, makes it less and less likely that a teacher is going to take the extra time to educate the student that it is wrong. Thus, the university turns to a software program, which is a lot cheaper to run and certainly doesn’t need tenure. Though I’m sure that if the student wins, it will result in less attention to plagiarism rather than more, I kinda hope he does, if only to suggest to the academy that something is wrong with its priorities.

I take the opposite view –if plagiarism is useful strategy it is as much a sign of a weak course as a weak student; plagiarism is only a useful strategy if the questions are obvious and the grading doesn’t encourage initiative and risk taking. And if it really concerns you the perhaps far greater emphasis should be placed on exams as opposed to course work.

But in relation to course work I don’t have nay problem with plagiarism. In many professions, such as law and finance, (unacknowledged) copying is an integral and accepted part of the job; it is only in academia htat plagiarism is “a serious crime”. To the extent a course is designed to get a student a good job (as opposed to an academic job!) I don’t think plagiarism should be treated as any thing more than a misdemeanor – i.e. punishable with no marks for the essay if caught before its handed back. But after that I think you have to apply the Doctrine of Laches – equity aids the vigilant – not those who procrastinate in enforcing their rights. If you don’t hold someone up for plagarims as least before the end of the course then the problems yours and theres nothing cokcy about it. And my view is that the law is going to favor the student on this one too – especially since the judge will have been through a course – law school that is almost entirely centered around copying!

I caught students cheating in an ethics class and had them write essays explaining why they cheated and argue why or why not it was morally ok with reference to ethical theories considered in class. Two I remember raised serious points:

(1) My career goal is pre-school teaching. I’m very good with little kids–I like them and they like me. I don’t need the stuff I’m learning here at college to do that job, I don’t like academic work, and I’m not good at it but the rules are that to teach pre-school I have to have a college degree.

She had a point. In the US a BA is a prerequisite for virtually anything beyond minimum wage work. A liberal education, quite apart from vocational training is a good thing but not everyone wants it or can benefit from it. Making it a requirement for jobs that don’t really take much book learning is wasteful, imposes a needless burden on students with modest abilities and aspirations and, if anything, turns them off of the whole idea of education.

(2) I work full time. Some students don’t have jobs. They work at writing papers for school. I work at McDonalds and use the money I make to buy papers for school. I don’t see why I should be penalized: I worked just has hard flipping burgers to pay for the paper I bought as students who wrote their papers.

Is this the screening theory? This guy assumed that a BA is reward for hard work, and it doesn’t matter what kind, signaling to potential employers that an applicant a hard worker. Or possibly he regarded getting a degree as something like buying a commission.

The students at this college where I first taught years ago were largely working class inner city kids, most the first in their families to go to college and on the whole they weren’t in college either for fun or self-cultivation. They were after jobs in sales or child care or jobs that were essentially secretarial and the kids I caught cheating didn’t see any connection between the school work they had to do to get their working papers and the jobs they were going to college to get. They were right.

To H.E. Baber: I sympathize with your students’ situations, but I sure as hell don’t want that first one teaching MY kid. Or any kids.

At my Canadian university, I have yet to take a course that involved any sort of written assignment where we were not informed several times that if we were caught cheating or plagiarizing, there would be no second chances and absolutely no mercy. I don’t know the UK rules, but I find it hard to believe someone could miss all the dire implications of expulsion on the spot, no chance of *ever* attending another university, and the general sentiment that plagiarizers are evil people who mess up the class average and kill kittens in their spare time.*

*Not, of course, that any of these things necessarily happen, but boy, after a plagiarism talk, one sure feels like it.

If there’s one thing I remember about Harvard’s disciplinary policy, it was this:

You could kill your roommate, then get caught naked doing heroin with the President of the University’s underage daughter, and they’d ask you to take a semester off to re-evaluate your academic priorities. But God forbid you got caught plagiarizing, and you’d not only be out on your ear, but blacklisted from every other prestigious program in the Northeast.

Illinois has a different – but no more rational – policy. The instructor has the ability to do anything from slapping you on the wrists to failing you for the entire class and recommending to the administration that you be hung upside-down by your toenails (after being summarily expelled). Most instructors, myself included, have a policy that a plagiarized paper is worth the grand sum of zero points, and leave it at that.

Just to note another point, obviously teaching about plagiarism doesn’t begin one’s college freshman year. However, if this link is representative of the situation in junior high schools, and this situation is mirrored in the UK, it is no surprise that the point is not getting across.

(the url is http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2004/05/teachers.html in case the html doesn’t come through)

A true story from a friend.

Last year, in 2003 at a reputable institution, course instructors discovered a small group of 6 students in class of 300 all handed in similar work. Mass copying had taken place. Students were informed they would score zero. Students were paying high foreign-student fees. Father of one of the students phones up the university and threatens legal action. All student marks were reinstated.

I was accused of plagiarism as an undergrad for using an African proverb as a preface to some essay on the Green Revolution. I didn’t cite it, as a proverb or otherwise. I had never read the handbook on plagiarism, but I surely knew that what I was being accused of was far more threatening to my future than any of my proceedings in front of criminal judges. The point being that if you are smart enough to get into college, then you are smart enough to know when you are cheating.

I still do not think ‘common knowledge’ — or in this case proverbs — need to be cited; however, I now judiciously error on the side of caution.

At my Canadian institution, each course syllabus is required to have warnings about plagiarism, what constitutes it, and the dire penalties attached. I have yet to take a course that involved any sort of written assignment where we were not informed several times that if we were caught cheating or plagiarizing, there would be no second chances and absolutely no mercy. There has been so much of it in recent years that practically every instructor I have encountered has made a serious effort to outline not only the parameters of what constitutes plagiarism, but also the dire consequences for the student should plagiarism be discovered. If Kent University doesn’t have a similar policy for professors, instructors, and teaching assistants to follow, it should.
I think a university is entitled to argue that anyone who displays the stupidity described in not even knowing what is wrong with plagiarism is quite unqualified for its degrees anyway. If you are smart enough to get into college, then you are smart enough to know when you are cheating.

When I was in college many years ago, many many students, mostly the frat rats, didn’t plagerize, they bought fresh essays hot out of the oven from the poorer but smarter students.

This is far worse. The University knew of this but didn’t stop the frats. If a poor student was caught selling his wares, he was expelled but no one tried to track down the buyers.

In a discussion of this case elsewhere, it was suggested that the University of Kent’s guidelines on plagiarism are not, perhaps, as clear-cut as they ought to be. If a university tells its students that plagiarism is “hard to define” and “often hard to prove”, is it any wonder that students faced with a plagiarism charge will try to argue their way out of trouble?

Had a class once where the teacher purely despised my writing style, and I her tastes. I set out to craft an essay she’d actually like, since I needed to pass, and got accused by her of plagiarism. However, since she couldn’t produce the original I’d supposedly plagiarized, the charge didn’t stick.

The joke was on her; Actually, it was a pastiche, of her own writings!

Ignorance of the law is, uh … um, help me out here.

Lessee. Catch a cat-burglar on his third attempt. He gets off because he hadn’t been caught the first two times, so how was he supposed to know it was a crime?

The student is either ignorant or lying, neither of which should be rewarded.

If his university is anything like mine is, then it doesn’t matter if nobody caught him. Isn’t it the responsibility of the student to know the policies of the university?

The problem I have experienced is that plagiarism is pretty hard to prove. In the course I teach the issue is more one well-written piece compared to three badly-written. And I suppose I could spend hours and hours surfing the net to find the piece they’ve nicked (I’m prepared to spend a few minutes, but otherwise life’s too short).

But if it’s just a suspicion, what are you supposed to do?

hmm, well I used to sell essays. I have no conscience about the matter because I find the U.S educational system contemptible and deserving of being gamed. Then again I would never have plagiarised anyone else’s work, out of a sense of smug superiority.

There is of course a difference between the most commonly encountered form of plagiarism and plagiarism involving content that one has paid for with the understanding that the content is to be passed off as the sole work of the client.
I’m smirking sarcastically here if you can’t tell.

‘But if it’s just a suspicion, what are you supposed to do?’
One highly creative solution (and one that was at least as ethical as plagiarism itself) was hit upon by a professor of one of my ‘clients’. The professor was very impressed with some essay I wrote attacking “On the Hypothesis that Animals Are Automata, and Its History” and gave it an high grade.

She then changed her mind in the next two days because she had come to the conclusion that my client had not written the essay; this was of course true, but not provable. Given that my client could not have written the essay she was unwilling to pursue the matter and took the lowered grade.

The main error was my client’s in not rewriting the essay in her own words. I suppose I also provided a poor service by writing at a higher pitch than the case demanded, prodded by my interest in the subject.

_I have no conscience about the matter because I find the U.S educational system contemptible and deserving of being gamed._

Bryan-
Why is it particularly contemptible?

“Ah, the argument from entertainment.”
ah, the argument that intellectual interest is a form of entertainment combined with the argument that entertainment is a debased activity.

If a document is devoid of intellectual interest it is likely to be untruthful, and to be ignored.

Like Bryan, I am sufficiently misanthropic and disillusioned with higher education to admire anyone who successfully plays the system.

However, I also can’t understand why plagiarism is an issue even to those who still have faith in our educational institutions. What is the purpose of a university — to spit out diplomas with a certain market value, or to educate? If the latter, who gives a damn if a student is idiotic enough to forfeit the education for which he’s paying a significant chunk of change?

Of course I’m also opposed to grades in general on the same principal.

We have declaration sheets on the front of all coursework that counts towards final grade – ‘I confirm the enclosed report is my own work’ etc – and yet this year I’ve had a string of students acting utterly bemused when I’ve called them in, due to large tracts of their reports being identical. I don’t know if this is just a favoured first line of defence: if you act ignorant you get a free pass; general naivety is hard to swallow. The trouble is that if work cannot demonstrably be shown to be copied, it’s a hard position for a teacher to be in, especially, if like me and many other individuals involved in student assessment, you’re a postgraduate with only a year or two of authority behind you. None of our work is currently handed in electronically, so it’s down to strategic allocation of marking to group students who took the same topic to research. Essays, which thankfully do not go toward final grades, we rely on guts and glaring mistakes. But there are no resources to systematically exclude plagiarism. We do our best with a bad situation, and for the onus to be further put on us and excuse the student who does try and milk the system seems plain wrong.

There’s also the little problem that all the work is not turned in to the same people. In the US, there are even privacy laws that protect student confidentiality — to the extent that legally, faculty are not allowed to discuss a student’s performance with each other — even if they believe there is a real problem with plagiarism or even (although I’ve seen this one ignored, since there are few protections available) if they feel a particular student may be physically harmful to others.

There are some ways of getting around this, I think. I know of one private university that asks faculty to turn copies of all plagiarized assignments and their documentation in to the Dean of Students, who keeps a file. The does help to catch repeat offenders. The legal difference is that private schools can demand that students sign releases of information of this kind to certain school offices if they want to be admitted.

Still, if a student only turns in 2-3 papers a quarter, and they all seem to be fairly consistent and don’t show any of the earmarks of plagiarism, I can’t blame the university, and I certainly can’t agree with Teresa Niel Hayden — Gunn was lucky not to have been caught, not cheated because he wasn’t.

An effortless way of catching plagiarism from online sources is to google a sentence or phrase from suspicious papers. I discovered eight plagiarized papers that way last semester. The great thing about catching students this way is that there is absolutely no doubt about the plagiarism, which makes it possible to fail students without guilt or worry about complaints or (except in a case similar to that of Gunn’s, of course) lawsuits.

Some students at my institution use secondary sources excessively, without quote marks or sufficient attribution; in most cases, these students are simply unaware of the proper way to write a paper. I treat these cases of plagiarism as learning opportunities. That kind of ignorance is not their fault.

Some of the above commentators, those which excuse student plagiarism because of the morally questionable nature of the academy, do not adequately acknowledge that students themselves are hurt by their acts of plagiarism. Perhaps the commentators are thinking of the sort of highly qualified and already sufficiently educated sorts of students that attended school along with them, I don’t know; but my students, who come to college underprepared, need the practice that we give them to be ready for future employment or graduate education. They may think that cheating is the easy way out, because writing is very difficult for them. They need ethical education (obviously) but also a institutional framework in which cheating is not clearly easier than addressing their educational deficits. Allowing them to cheat shortchanges them of the education they are often too immature to know they really need.